Engineer Talk - Session Concepts#

This week’s engineer talk introduces some important things to think about when choosing to make changes to a building or how it is used. It then introduces a set of cards we have produced to help the groups think about change.

a pyramid with "reduce demand" at the base, "reduce losses" in the middle", and "generate" at the top

Centre for Sustainable Energy’s pyramid of change

These are this week’s talking points:

  • Reduce demand so you need less energy, address heat loss, and generate energy - in that order. (By “reduce demand”, we mean thinking about when you are putting energy into the building and whether that is doing useful work for you.)

  • The less a building is used, the harder it is to afford to make major building changes or to get grants.

  • It takes time to make major building changes, but the planet can’t wait for change to start to happen.

  • Running costs are important, because options that are cheaper to install might cost more in the long run.

  • Thinking in terms of “payback” periods can help know what’s reasonable to do. Payback periods are shorter when energy prices are high.

  • Some building operators have policies about how to make decisions based on payback periods and running costs.

  • Major renovations need professional assessment, especially in traditional buildings. There’s a big difference between an installer and a consultant who can reason about the right things to do.

  • Technologies and government policies are changing fast, and that can make it hard to predict what to do and what grants will be available when.

  • UK policy is that almost all buildings need to be locally net zero in future - generating as much energy on site as they need to run.

If there are obvious connections between these points and what happened in session 1, you might be able to draw that out. The questions following the talk are a chance both for group members to ask for clarification. This might naturally lead to a short discussion of some points and consensus on things like the group stance regarding payback periods. If that’s going to happen quickly and easily, you can let it, but we’d expect most groups to need the time between now and session 4 to mull this over.