For voters, policymakers, and consumers around the world, environmental concerns are beginning to weigh extremely strongly. These concerns have driven the government in the UK to tighten the rules around house-building, making efficiency and eco-friendliness a legal requirement.
There are also straightforward financial reasons to prefer a more efficient house. A few rolls of loft insulation will not only drive down a building’s carbon emissions; they will also reduce the cost of running the building in question. In an era of rising energy prices, the benefits of a greener home become especially compelling.
But exactly how are buildings becoming more sustainable?
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Smart building design
We’ve already mentioned the value of insulation. By reducing the amount of heat energy leaving the building, we can reduce the amount of fuel that needs to be burned in order to replace that energy. If you have efficient double-glazing, heating a room becomes much cheaper. The same goes for other touches, like heavy curtains and cavity wall insulation.
The use of efficient heating systems, and renewable energy sources, can also make a big difference. This might mean a heat pump, a set of solar panels on the roof, or a more efficient, modern boiler.
Technology that supports greener living
It isn’t just the fabric of the building itself that we need to consider. We should also think about the way that the building shapes our behaviour. If it’s easier to turn the heating down when we aren’t using it, then the impact on our energy consumption, and by extension our carbon footprints, could be significant.
The good news is that there are a number of modern technologies that allow us to do this, without spending too much time thinking about how much money we’re spending on energy.
You might think of smart monitoring systems that report exactly how much money you’re spending in a given week – in real time. If you have a smart meter just beside the kettle, for example, you might be less inclined to overfill it. You can nudge your behaviour in a similar way with the help of smart thermostats, sensors on your windows and doors, and thermostatic radiator valves.
As well as supporting greener living, the right technological aids can improve your quality of life, and leave you with more free time to commit to your priorities. A set of smart scales, for example, might allow you to more effectively track your weight and body composition, and to link these figures to those provided by your wearable devices. This means more actionable information, and less time spent peering at your scales and taking notes.
Naturally, it can be expensive to invest in many of these technologies. But the good news is that there is help available. In the case of heat pumps, for example, you’ll be able to apply for a government grant of up to £7,500 – provided that you’re based in England or Wales, and that you’re upgrading from an existing fossil-fuel-based installation.
The annual savings involved in this installation could help to justify this spending. However, you’ll need to be sure that your home is sufficiently well-insulated, and that you’re upgrading from an older system. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that an upgrade from an old boiler could save you a few hundred pounds; if you’re upgrading from a storage heater, then you could be looking at annual savings of more than a thousand pounds.
Community and lifestyle benefits
It isn’t just a particular house and the people who live in it that can have a big impact on energy consumption. In many cases, groups of houses built in close proximity to one another can enjoy considerable ecological benefits. This is the thinking behind many eco-first developments.
Eco-first developments can offer special facilities that can’t be offered by the houses themselves. These might include gyms, spas, recycling hubs, and parkland. This might allow private homes to be made smaller, and encourage healthier, greener routines.
If you have access to a vibrant local community, for example, then you might be able to start a running club. A small group of you might get into the habit of going running through the local park before work, and thereby cut your spending on other forms of exercise.
There are some activities that require the input of other people, and thus confer a massive social benefit. Whether you’re playing football, chess, or Dungeons & Dragons, having access to a community will improve your quality of life – often while driving down the power consumption in your living room.
Practical next steps
So, what if you’d like to enjoy all of these benefits? It’s important to research your options thoroughly, and to ensure that the home you’re moving into actually offers these features – or, that they can be easily installed via renovation and home improvement.
Of course, your choice of location will also make a big difference to the options you have to choose from. If you need access to the centre of London, then you might find that your options are considerably limited. Fortunately, there are many apartments to rent in London that embed sustainable features of the kind that we’ve mentioned.
Apartment buildings, naturally, tend to be cheaper to heat and run on a per-resident basis. This is because the heat energy rises naturally from one floor to the next.
On the other hand, a poorly-conceived apartment block can be distressing to live in. It might not offer easy access to green space, for example. For this reason, it’s important to think about design, and to favour the right kind of development. What this looks like will depend on your personal priorities.
Before you settle on a given location, however, you’ll need to perform all of the checks that you would in any other kind of home move. This means researching your new lodgings thoroughly, and ideally spending some time in the area so that you can get a sense of whether it will fit your needs and priorities.