Academics and professionals from the construction industry gathered at the recent University of Salford Retrofit 2012 conference focused on the urgent need for behaviour change in energy reduction.

At the event more than 350 delegates heard from Salford University’s Prof. Andy Steele, whose research concludes that while solutions to finance (through the government’s imminent Green Deal) and technology (though a plethora of innovations to make households more energy-efficient) are emerging, policy makers have yet to engage with the third key element in the retrofit challenge – human behaviour.

Prof. Steele explained how innovations can actually work against energy and cost-reduction objectives. His research shows how residents in energy-efficient houses were more likely to take resource-inefficient baths rather showers, with the prevailing view that, as one said: “It doesn’t matter, it’s energy-efficient.”

Another challenge is that expectation of personal comfort in the home had risen, with the public’s definition of ‘comfortable’ home temperature rising from 12 deg C in 1970 to 17.3 deg C in 2008.

On the Green Deal, James Walker, head of innovation for Kingfisher plc (parent of the 660-strong B&Q store chain), told delegates that if the government is to achieve its household retrofitting and carbon reduction targets that the marketplace for the assessment and installation of home improvements will have to be opened up the nation’s small trades businesses. The numbers which the government need to deliver will require, he said, a diversity of providers beyond a few large companies, if the government is to deliver the number of homes needing to be retrofitted.

Keynote speaker Brenda Boardman, of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, outlined a report titled Achieving Zero commissioned by Greenpeace. Its key recommendations included the need for the government to introduce progressively more challenging and legally-binding standards of energy efficiency for properties, based on Energy Performance Certificates, and the creation of Low Carbon Zones that target action on the worst homes, especially those occupied by the fuel poor.

The independent report’s strategy to transform the UK’s built environment will enable the UK government to achieve its legal obligations on climate change by reducing C02 emissions from buildings to zero by 2050 in an equitable way.

The executive summary and full report are available here.