Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
'Thrive in Construction' is the only podcast that delves into the personal journeys of sustainability leaders and innovators in the construction industry across the UK. Our show differentiates by offering unscripted, passion-fueled conversations that go beyond the buzzwords to the heart of what's driving the industry forward. It's tailored for aspiring professionals, seasoned experts, and anyone with a keen interest in the sustainable evolution of construction. We're here at a time when the call for sustainable development is not just a trend, but a societal imperative, empowering listeners to build a career that contributes to a greener future.
Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans
Ep. 79 The Blueprint for Zero-Carbon New Builds: Energy, Heat Pumps, and Smarter Design
The net-zero future depends on new builds designed from the start for low-carbon energy — not retrofitted later.
In this episode, Mark Lufkin maps out the standard for net-zero-ready new builds: smart electric heating, embedded controls, and performance-first energy planning. This is the future of UK homes — and it starts now.
You’ll learn:
• Why energy usage matters more than low emissions after the build
• Key role of heat pumps within an entire energy system
• How thermal design, insulation, and controls interconnect for performance
• The economic case for building smart now vs future retrofit cost
• What policy and market forces are making this the new standard
If you're involved in designing, delivering, or living in new homes — this is the episode to watch.
Watch now and find out how to build for the future, not just the brief.
If you want to see our other insightful podcasts, click here:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOHI_yaqB2U8KWbsfJDPCoYEfOh-TTnip
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Links:
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Wondrwall's Website: https://wondrwall.com/
There's a big push towards going and using heat pumps, for example. So if you look at the future home standards, what's supposed to be coming out for new homes? They're all supposed to be going with heat pumps. But the point I'd like to make is if you take a passive house with really good fabric and really low heat loss, you can stick direct electric heating in it, be that electric on the floor or panel heaters or infrared panel heaters, whatever it may be and that house will use less energy and have lower bills for heating than a future home standard house with heat pumps. So people seem to go and forget the fact that the energy you consume and the cost of running a home is not just about the heating system you put in it. It's about that combination of the fabric, the insulation, the airtightness of the home and that heat pump put together.
Speaker 1:So I like the fact that she's pushing and a proponent of the whole passive house thing. And then you get the benefits of direct electric heating. Systems last for longer. They last for 30 years. When they have to be replaced, typically that's a lot cheaper to be replaced than doing a heat pump. There's no annual maintenance needed. You don't need any specially qualified installer to go and put that in place. Overall it's better for the consumer and it's actually an easier property to build at the end of it. So I tend to push that as my thing, even though we do do heat pumps in the meantime and you can't really get away from them the other interesting fact as well.
Speaker 2:Within that is, you don't need um the amount of copper where you don't need any copper piping that's running around your house. So you know that that, that or that that material that's being harvested or recycled, the the carbon element that's attached to that that's not needed anymore.
Speaker 1:That's true. Yeah, you lose about 80% of your plumbing, but I always find that as sort of an interesting how things have gone. People tend to forget that actually we started using gas boilers originally because what we had previously was more polluting. Actually, a better one is. A better example is cars. So cars moved to petrol because they were less polluting. A petrol car was less polluting than the form of transport around before that was horses, and the problem with horses is they poo. So basically the city was getting full of they poop. So basically the city was getting full of horse poop and cars were seen as less polluting than that. So we brought out cars and then suddenly cars become like this horrible polluting thing and we're now all onto EVs.
Speaker 1:But to your point, there actually EVs need batteries and there's an awful lot of stuff goes into those lithium and cobalt and graphite, carbon, whatever and we have to get that from somewhere. And where does it go at the end of it when those batteries have to be recycled? So I can envision at some point in the future maybe we say there's something better than EVs and the environmental impact that they're going to have. For the moment they're better than the status quo. So petrol or diesel cars, and the same goes for, I suppose, for heat pumps and solar and all of this stuff. It's better than the status quo, which is a gas boiler. But who knows, maybe there's something better out in the future.
Speaker 2:It's going to be beyond my lifetime, that's it yeah, I mean, it's an interesting line that you've gone through there, because I I know that back in the days of the the horse and cart, the amount of manure that was on the street was a real problem. Yeah, um, which is difficult for us to think about or imagine, because we, you know well, we're inconvenienced by a horse going down a country lane maybe every now and again, or someone may be on a horse feeling inconvenienced by a car going down a country lane, but they're not all around like they were in the 1800s.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I guess there's probably a lot less horses, as there's a lot less other sorts of animals around, except maybe chicken and pigs, because we eat them yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting, but the OK. So the interesting fact here is what you're talking about is this evolution and this move away from this isn't great. We need to comeers with heat pumps and the primary function of that has shifted and adapted, but the framework of which the gas boiler and the heat pump is based on is fundamentally the same. You have a unit, you have pipes. Those pipes run um either water or some type of fluid, even if you said that, okay, we're not. We're not running effectively a fluid at a temperature to a radiator.
Speaker 1:It was called a radiator but really it's um maybe a radiator will be a panel panel on the wall or some pipes running through the wall.
Speaker 2:So, instead of thinking, right, let's get rid of the gas boiler, which I think is what you're talking about here. Instead of getting rid of the gas boiler and not replacing it with that, replacing it with a different way of insulating a structure or a home. Passive house isn't just domestic, it is non-domestic as well. So instead of doing it that way, then we can completely rethink the whole heating system.
Speaker 1:Potentially. I think it's more difficult with a retrofit so where you're trying to replace in an existing home because that pipework and those radiators already in place. Therefore, it is a lot simpler to just go and take almost like for like replacement. So you take out the gas boiler, you put your heat pump in, all the pipe work stays the same Not quite, but near enough, but near enough. But certainly if you're building new properties and new homes or new buildings, then actually I do think that there's been an overemphasis on how do we address heating and we've failed to look at all the other energy consumption within those buildings.
Speaker 1:So by use homes, when we go and look at homes, a new built home today is that well insulated, even the current ones, without going passive house that the energy consumption for heating, even with direct electric, is only about 20 to 25% of the total that's used. The other 25% is going to be hot water and then actually 50% is everything else. So cooking, washing, watching TV, working from home with your laptops, gaming, whatever all of those things are. They're actually 50% of the total and as we build our houses we tend to ignore that piece, we're not thinking about it, all of the so-called regulated energy and the way we design houses and the regulation around it is focused on the heating, the hot water, a little bit of ventilation, a little bit of lighting, although they're both really small, and all of those together are at most 50% of the total energy consumption or total energy bill of that home.
Speaker 1:And it just we're missing a trick. There are things you can do to go and address that other 50%. You know, stick solar panels on the roof of the house. Fortunately that's coming through. But equally, you know you're using your TV in the evening, when the sun's not shining, so you need a battery in the home. Why aren't we doing these things? So I said, I think we're missing a trick there.
Speaker 2:So what are the tricks, then, that are being missed? What would you list out as things that need to be included in this new shift when it comes to building regulations? So we're talking here specifically around the future home standard?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, for me, the big one is the battery. Personally, I think energy storage, the lithium-ion battery in the home, is the big piece that's missing. You know the really simple thing we're going to make solar mandatory with the future home standard to some level, whether that's 20%, 40%, whatever it may be. But, as I said, the sun shines during the day. Peak generation is going to be, I don't know, 12, 1 o'clock in the midday during the day, but peak energy consumption is between 4 and 7 pm in the evening as the sun's going down. So actually a lot of that generation is going to be wasted and potentially, if you're not using it during the day, we're going to put a load of stress onto the grid because we're putting a load of solar back into the grid at a time when there's low consumption and it can't go anywhere. So if you go and look at places like California, this has already become a problem. They talk about their duck curve. So where you've got this massive peak in solar generation during the day and nobody's using it and they have got nowhere to go with it, the way it's been addressed in California is lithium ion batteries both within the home and grid scale batteries to go and store that energy such that it can be used later in the day, and that becomes the key. So I think we've focused heavily on decarbonization. You know, put a heat pump, electrify your heating, electrify your hot water, electrify the house and the cooking, put solar panels on to generate your own energy and get to that, in theory, net zero position, where you're generating as much as you consume.
Speaker 1:But we've forgotten about the piece which is renewable. Generation doesn't happen when we want it to. So the little example I use is if today's electricity or energy consumption is very supply driven. So we have a consumption pattern. So people use a little bit of energy when they get up in the morning. They don't use much very much during the day at home, and then they use a load again in the evening as they get home, and that pattern has stayed the same really for ages and ages. So all we do is when we need more energy in the morning, the power plant burns a bit more gas and or it used to be a bit more coal, generate more energy. And the same thing in the evening you burn a bit more gas. So the power plant would generate a bit more electricity through burning gas or coal and we supplied as much as we needed and we adjusted the supply With renewables. That's no longer possible. You know, you can't just say wind, blow or sunshine at four o'clock in the afternoon. When you're getting home it doesn't happen. So we're going to have to adjust our consumption patterns to match the generation patterns.
Speaker 1:So that means being able to store energy, being able to store it as hot water, to be able to store it as heat within the home or to store it as electricity within a lithium-ion battery within your home or potentially in an EV. But they tend to use their own energy anyway, but then you can store it when it's available for use, when you need to use it later. And if I'm looking at the future home standard, that's kind of been ignored so far. That standard is missing. So I think the batteries are absolutely critical, because without them we're not going to be able to decarbonize the grid, because without them we're not going to be able to decarbonize the grid. And I'd like to see the consumer win from this and not necessarily all of the big utilities and energy suppliers who maybe do grid level batteries, because that's what they're planning on or they're getting their curtailment fees or whatever it may be, and the energy prices continue to go up. I'd like that to be at a home level, with the consumer helping them to reduce their energy bills. Have you?
Speaker 2:seen anywhere where that works? Have you seen a country where that setup and that system is in operation and is working well?
Speaker 1:You first said that was about to go and say in one of our houses.
Speaker 2:But in terms of a country, yeah, so I mean, I get it that you can get this on a local level. So I've got PV in my home. I've got a battery system in my home. It works really well for me, Absolutely great. But that's great for Darren, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's not the consumer. I am the only person at least definitely on my, on my street and my neighboring streets, probably within a hundred homes of of where I live that has got a setup like that. But why shouldn't everybody?
Speaker 2:have that that's well. That's the question. Although when people on my street saw what was going on when, initially, I had it installed, they they thought I was bonkers. They're like why do you, why are you having this and why that, and all the rest of it. So there is a bit of an attitudinal shift that needs to go on. But even if you park that to to one side, you've then got the cost, the initial outlay, that that goes out. So cost of batteries aren't that cheap? Pv is cheaper than batteries. Um, generally speaking, but the, the path and the route to get the system that I've got. There is no way that my parents, when I was being raised, would be able to afford that's that, that system that I've got now. So a really good point. So my question is on a country side or a countrywide perspective, because in isolated incidents works really, really well. But is there anything that you've seen or a model that you have whereby we could say we could do it this way?
Speaker 1:I haven't seen it implemented anywhere. So what I understand? Well, my daughter's out in Australia for a little while, so we're out there and they're apparently the global leaders in deployment of solar on homes. I see quite a bit of it in Germany. So they've gone out and done it. But it's like you say, people have gone out and, oh, in California, to use my example from before but that's, people have gone out, bought it themselves. They are doing it either because they hope they can get a return over the lifetime of that product. This one for sure, yeah. So on the solar side, yeah, it's pretty easy because those things last for about 25 years and you can get a return on the solar. These days Batteries a little bit more difficult. Maybe coupled with solar, you can just about make it work, but it's kind of tough to do. Evs up until now, maybe, maybe not. If you're charging at home, yes. If you're charging publicly, less so. But no, I haven't seen anywhere where this has been deployed and made possible on a whole countrywide basis.
Speaker 2:Because? So the reason that again I kind of bring that up is just to talk to your point where you're saying that you want to see the public win as opposed to the corporates or the organizations. But I can't see how the public can win unless the fundamental structure which we've got at the moment for those renewables, um, fundamentally changes yeah, well, that's where we come in, so I've got. I hope I wasn't doing slightly smug um you had a grin, but grinning's fine, it was probably have.
Speaker 1:So we've been doing this sort of setup you have in your home we supply to house builders. So solar on the roof with a battery, we couple that with actually a direct electric heating system with a hot water tank with integrated heat pump built into it, and then we control that through an intelligent home energy management system and that system reduces the energy bills for a consumer. So the example we always use we did a house for Allison Holmes as it happens we don't know if it's anywhere Allison Holmes is the one we use as an example. The energy bills without the solar panels, without the battery, without the smart controls, would have been £1,750 per year. We reduced those energy bills through the solar, the battery, the energy management system down to £450 per year, so a £1,300 saving. So we've been doing that for about five, six years and we thought you know, we go out, we'll say to a house builder we can put this stuff in and it will reduce the bills down for your home and everybody's going to love us. So you'll have a net zero home with low running costs.
Speaker 1:And the feedback we got was well, hang on a minute, this is going to increase the cost of the home, so that home's going to be getting more expensive let's say, 10,000 pounds more expensive, 15,000 pounds more expensive to put all of this kit in, and we are worried that actually people can't afford to pay for that.
Speaker 1:It's a real problem, especially first-time buyers or families looking to upscale. The cost of homes just keeps going up and I saw a statistic somewhere 40% of people young adults can't afford to buy their own home. So this driving up the price of the home is a real issue. So the concept we came up with was actually I suppose it sounds really simple, but we'll give it away for free. So when we first started doing this, it was like, how do we do it? And we basically came up with a concept where we'll put it in and we'll sell the energy generated from those panels back to the consumer at a reduced price. So we use a model from the commercial world PPAs, power purchase agreements, ppas, power purchase agreements. So to give that example, let's say you're a big company, you want to improve your ESG your environmental sustainability governance I probably got that wrong ESG things anyway.
Speaker 1:So reduce your carbon footprint and you want to put solar panels on the roof of your warehouse, your shops or your office or whatever it may be, but you haven't got the cash to go and do it. What you do is you get somebody to put that on for you. They retain ownership of that asset and they sell the solar generated or the energy generated from it back to you at a reduced price. So you pay 15p instead of 25p, so you haven't had to pay for this and you benefit from reduced energy bills.
Speaker 1:We've used the same mechanism for a home, so a residential PPA. We retain ownership of that solar, the battery, and we sell the energy back to the consumer. So, using the example before, £1,300 of savings, we'll charge £800 for that energy that we sell to the consumer. We'll charge 800 pounds for that energy that we sell to the consumer. They're 500 pounds better off. But that home costs exactly the same to build and to buy as a home with a gas boiler in it today and it's going to be 10 15 000 pounds cheaper than another home, and I'm really well. I think it's a model to effectively make net zero homes, ubiquitous, you know, to be able to roll them out everywhere, which is kind of the dream that I have. I did what you did originally, you know. Sorry, I'm going off track, I'm not off track.
Speaker 1:I wanted to do what you did and it was, ok, I'll do my own house and we'll put battery in the solar and do all of these things. And then I thought, well, hang on a minute and do all of these things. And then I thought, well, hang on a minute, that's just me and all of my neighbors haven't got this. So how do I help more people to get the same thing? And that's what Wonderwall came in. I love what I do because I'm able to help more people to do what I wanted to do, what you've already done, and that's a fantastic thing. So, yeah, the consumer can win. So what we're doing is we're taking that money away from the energy supplier and we're handing it back to the consumer. And it's actually pretty easy to do. You know, if you go through the mechanism, what most people don't know is that the price of electricity varies during the day. So when the energy suppliers buy that energy, if they're buying it at two o'clock in the morning, it costs them a lot less than if they buy it at five o'clock in the evening. What we do is we take advantage of that mechanism, but we're doing the purchasing for them. So at the moment For the resident. That is For the resident, exactly so most consumers go to an energy supplier and they get their electricity. Let's say what is it? 25p, slightly over 25p per kilowatt hour at the moment, and that's fixed all the way through the day. Doesn't matter when they use it behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:What the energy retailer has done is looked at when you use your energy across lots of different homes, all the different homes they supply, and they've said I buy a certain amount at this price, a certain amount at this price, a certain amount at this price. Now, if I can get people to shift to buy more when it's cheap, then I can get more money. So that's where all these time-reduced tariffs come in. But if you can actually take advantage of the wholesale price and give the consumers the access to that wholesale price of electricity, then they can benefit and they can get the savings rather than turning into profit or covering the costs of running an energy supplier. So that's kind of all we're doing, you know, combining the using your own electricity from solar panels on the roof of your house, combined with buying energy at a cheaper price and providing that to the consumer where the system comes in. And really this is where I'm a computer engineer, so maybe that will come across at some point.
Speaker 1:But it's about using artificial intelligence, computing power, to go and manage all of this. Because, again, the wholesale price of electricity you get 48 different prices, so a different price every half hour and that changes every day. So for the typical consumer that's way beyond what they want to be managing. I don't even want to manage that. So what the system does is it looks at their consumption, it looks at the price of energy, it looks at when the solar is being generated and it basically decides what's the best thing for you when to charge your battery, when to charge your EV, when to heat your home, when to heat your water and it takes care of it all for you. So it's kind of becoming it's taking the place of that energy retailer making all of those decisions, but to the benefit of the consumer, you and your home, as opposed to the benefit of the profit of the energy supplier.
Speaker 2:So that's really fascinating, the thing that you are speaking about there. So two questions then. First of all, under my current setup that I've got, I'm I don't have yourself as my energy supplier. So do you offer out a service or a way to tap into that ai intelligence so that I can benefit that? I can benefit from that and say to my energy supplier look, this is the setup that I want when I'm selling back to the grid from my battery or when I'm charging it up, or whatever setup is. Second thing is, if I wanted to come away from my energy supplier and say do you know, I really like the setup that you've got, is that possible for me to do?
Speaker 1:First one. Can we set it up for you? Potentially, yes. The problem we ran into is when we first started doing this we couldn't control all of the devices. Not everybody had a Wi-Fi connection with what's called an API or application programming interface. So the ability for our system to control those devices to control the heat pump, to control a hot water tank, to control the heating system, to control that inverter, solar battery so we picked a few which we knew we could control and we built a system around that that worked. That evolved over time to our own set of products which are vertically integrated and we can do more with them. So we've got a tighter control. We can basically make it run optimally Over time.
Speaker 1:What we've seen is people do want other devices. So we've started integrating other heat pumps, other inverters and batteries and we're open to that. In the meantime, what we have found is the level of control that we have on those devices is not as good as what we can do with our own. So we always get a slightly better optimization from our own devices versus using other people. But in theory, yes, it could be done. But most of our focus at the moment has been on new build, partly because we've and get enough efficiency out of the electric heating system in order to be able to reduce the cost to the level that people were used to with the gas heating. So then they used to get upset, and especially in January and December when you can't do much with solar because the days are shorter, the weather's rubbish or sometimes rubbish, and you've also got the highest energy consumption per heating with the lowest energy performance of your heat pump. Your COP is really low. So the energy bills in January and December end up being higher than they were previously with gas and people panic and they get upset. So we've avoided that, unless the fabric can be improved to a level where we are confident that the consumer will be happy within that home. So there's a whole different piece around that.
Speaker 1:So the answer is yes-ish, I suppose, to that first question, the one with your energy supplier. So what I probably should have specified is we become a secondary energy supplier, so we the consumer still needs to buy energy from their grid. But we recommend certain tariffs, particularly the Agile tariff, wholesale tariff, tracking tariff, which I hope will become more widespread with market-wide half-alley settlements. So that's been proposed by Ofgem as a way to enable consumers to get better access to these tariffs. But, generally speaking, if you use EV tariffs or some of the smart tariffs for heat pumps or solar and battery tariffs that are out there now, those will work better. Now I don't know what you're using. What are you using at the moment? Have you got just a standard tariff or have you gone for time of use?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we go for time of use.
Speaker 1:Then presumably what you're doing is trying to use the cheaper energy when it's available. Where you may be struggling a little bit is which energy supply, so when to charge the battery using cheap energy from the grid and when to use it from solar. And that's really dependent on A, the amount of solar that you can generate, how much it's going to generate during the day. Is that enough to run your home? If it's not, then obviously you're going to have to import something to supplement the solar. The other thing is what people struggle to understand sometimes is you can actually make more money from selling surplus electricity generated from your solar panels than it costs to buy it. So you could potentially buy it at 2 o'clock in the morning, let's say at 7p, but you can export it back to the grid at 15p during the day.
Speaker 2:That's what we do, you do, that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah so perfect and some of those tariffs are subsidized, so you're probably doing better. So if you're using an EV tariff, which is what that sounds like then, yeah, they're sort of somewhat subsidized. That means some other consumer somewhere is paying a bit more. Yes, yes, as your tariff.
Speaker 2:Pay for mine, yes, and so part of that feels like really good, getting a good deal here, and another part of me is like actually someone's getting a really bad deal because I'm getting a good deal of which you can say, well, that's just life, right, that's just the way that it works. But it's an interesting concept the reluctance, generally speaking, of people when it comes to retrofit or maybe even going after a new property with solar panels and with a battery, and that being seen as or on equivalent, almost to got a really lovely view out my window. Really love the size of this kitchen. I can see my family doing that and the other and entertaining and and and so on and so on, where at the moment, it feels like, from the consumer's point of view, that we're not we're not at that stage quite similar to my neighbor which is like why are you putting that stuff on your roof?
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, I well, I. I I'm probably a bit you're a bit weird, because I walk around houses looking up at the roofs, going why hasn't that got solar on it? I think it would look so much better with solar. But there is an element of our homes need to look the same you know this whole historical the way we should build homes in keeping with the local environment. We should build homes in keeping with the local environment. I have to admit I find that slightly weird because I feel that homes I wish one day in the past I wanted to be an architect. I would love to build houses myself, but I was absolute rubbish at these technical drawing stuff, so I gave up that idea and became a computer engineer instead. But anyway, I do go around and I look at buildings and I think about the design of them and I think it's appropriate to the times. We're in a situation at the moment where we're thinking that our current properties are the way we should have them. But with climate change and the way the world is changing and it's getting warmer, I think that we have to think beyond that and think about how do we design homes or buildings appropriately for the times that we live in. A simple couple of little examples. One of them is if we were really worried about the way our buildings look and building the way that we used to in the past, we'd still be living in mud huts. Clearly we're not, because a mud hut wasn't appropriate. So we moved ahead and we built homes as they are now. But as we move forward to those homes, the requirements of them change.
Speaker 1:And a little simple one. You know, when we started talking at the beginning we were talking about, I used to live in Geneva, on the continent, and it was a lot warmer there and we had shutters on the front of the house. So when it got really hot in summer, we closed the shutters, we opened the windows and the house was really nice and cool during the day. But we don't have shutters in the UK. Why not? You know, that's not a massive difference. What does it take to get people to change their minds? Do they get upset enough with the fact they get really hot and therefore say, ok, I need shutters on my house at some point? Do they even realize that that's potentially a solution? I'd hope so, because a lot of us go on holiday in very hot places and we see that in Greece they build houses which are white because that reflects the sun and keeps it cooler. Thick walls because that also keeps the interior cooler. Shutters on the front of the house which again keep the home cooler. I think we've got to adapt and I do see some of that changing. But to your point, I think.
Speaker 1:And again back to the affordability question.
Speaker 1:You know, I do believe that everyone wants to do the right thing for the environment, to avoid pollution, to avoid climate change, to do what's right, a big one and people are unwilling to be forced to pay more to do those changes necessary for climate change.
Speaker 1:I truly believe that if you can make it cost negative or at least cost parity for a consumer, then yeah, why wouldn't they do it? You know, if you can get a reduction on your energy bills and you've got this zero carbon home, then why wouldn't you do it? But if it's going to cost you more to buy that house and it's going to cost you more to run because electricity is so much cheaper, more expensive than gas, then actually no, why should we be forcing people to do it? You know it's not everybody, maybe like yourself and myself, that are lucky enough and privileged enough to go and be able to afford this and do the right thing, because that's what we think we should be doing and we want to set an example and whatever else. But there is a huge amount of the population that can't afford that and we shouldn't be forcing that on them.
Speaker 2:The issue with that, though, stephen, as you're talking now, I'm thinking well, people can feel a bit self-righteous and a bit like I'm the good guy and someone else is this, but the only separating factor is, either understanding. Now I would say that the separating factor is the ability. Someone has the ability to do it, so they will go and do it. Someone else doesn't have the the ability to do it, so they don't, either because they've not got enough money, or they don't understand, or, um, they don't own their own house, maybe they're renting. You know, there's lots of different reasons why someone's got a reduced ability in that area, um, but but one of the the the areas that I'm interested in um you explaining more especially around the house builders, around the new house builders, because it seems as though you're able, under the current structure, to give renewable technology to the house builders without increasing the cost of their build. Have I understood that correctly?
Speaker 1:That's exactly right, yep, so no incremental cost on that build at all. It's the same of their build, have I understood that correctly? That's exactly right, yep, so no incremental cost on that build at all.
Speaker 2:It's the same cost to build as Gassi did on today. And what objections have you had from house builders when you presented that to them and said, hey, this is our model, this is what the outcome is. We think it's a really good idea. Are you interested? Is our model this is? This is what the outcome is. We think is a really good idea. You're interested? And they've turned us and, uh, and have they given reasons why?
Speaker 1:um, well, some of them have said yes, so it's not as if all have said no, but um the the main concerns around it, um, we only want to build to regulations, so so we want that.
Speaker 2:So even though let me just kind of go just dive into this bit here so even though it's not costing them anything to build above regulations, or even though they've got the ability to say right, because I can get this for free, I can start to tweak down the insulation or change some of the things within the structure, they've still said we just want to build to regulations. No, thank you.
Speaker 1:And a lot of it is also related to. For this to work, we need electric heating in the home, so a heat pump or something direct electric. So a lot of house builders are still building with gas boilers today, so they haven't made that step because that's what the regulations are going to require. So there's an element of that. So it really helped us. A future home standard finally got finalized and out and in the market well, we're not far away from that, really.
Speaker 2:so, yeah, so so I think that that will take off. But they're not having the gap and saying right, we're going to pull out the gas and we're going to put in the air source heat pump. You don't include the air source heat pump in your deal, I guess?
Speaker 1:no, it's PV and batteries we sell a heat pump, but we sell the heat. So if we were to sell it, we would sell the heat pump and cylinder as a replacement for the gas or the some infrared heating panels, or they can put somebody else's in. They could put a dyke in an ideal for whatever it may be. But yeah, we supply solar battery, inverter, ev charger, uh supply and install for free.
Speaker 2:We put those on the home and this when it when it comes to, then, the installation of that, do you sort the installation out? We do?
Speaker 1:Okay, we can either do the installation ourselves or it can be done by any solar installer.
Speaker 2:We just check that they're doing what we need them to do what we need them to do, because it doesn't seem like to me, from what you're saying, then, that the cost of a developer getting someone in to do a gas heating system is going to cost any more than an air source heat pump heating system. That's correct.
Speaker 1:The other reason is also being able to explain it to consumers. Because we're asking them to sign up to a contract One. They get an energy supply from a traditional supplier but then they buy other electricity from us, wonderwall, as a supplier to them. And because it's a longer term contract, so a minimum of five years, there's a concern about putting people into five years. So logically it makes sense. You know they're paying 500 pounds less for their energy every year and the house is not going to cost more to build. But you've got to sign up for a five-year contract minimum to be able to access that. And they get concerned and they say well, what happens if somebody says no, I don't want to sign up for that contract? And what happens then? I can't sell my house and so it's. I suppose a little bit about getting people used to this way of financing the equipment and understanding that there's a positive. It's better for them and not worse. But there is a little bit of extra explanation needed, martin, do you know what?
Speaker 2:I think that the main issue is the whole of this year is that finance is not taught in school. Oh, I agree with you there. Most people don't know how to use money, but they know how to lose it.
Speaker 1:I saw it, it was three basic questions, which was something along the lines of you've got 2% interest on your cash, You've got £100. At the end of five years will you have well, I think it was even at the end of one year will you have more than £102, less than £102 or £102? Than 102 pounds, less than 102 pounds or 102 pounds, and over half of the population can't answer that question. That's just nuts, you know. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:It's not. I don't think it's the teacher's fault, I don't think it's the way that the system is. There needs to be a shift in the system, as in the way that we do things. But in order for that shift to happen, then people need to understand why that system needs to shift and what that shift actually means.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yes, no, I absolutely agree. I think education is key. I actually worked for a little while for a company called Promethean putting whiteboards into schools, and one of the interesting things that came out of that was there is a direct correlation between investment in education, so improving the education levels of the general population and the GDP of the country. And the most forward thinking countries were looking at this as let's invest more into our education because that will have a knock on effect on our GDP or will make us a richer, better country. We'll get more tax payments. We'll be able to give a better lifestyle to everybody. On the flip side, if you don't invest, it has the same correlatory effect on your GDP and it goes down.
Speaker 1:The same correlatory effect on your GDP and it goes down. And sadly I don't see the level of investment into education over here that I see in other countries, and I think that's part of the problem we have. I do believe we should be putting a lot more money into education. It's one of those things that can't be wrong for the country as a whole.
Speaker 2:Those things that can't be wrong for the country as a whole. Yeah, I really do think, just listening to you and the experience that I've had over the what 18 years that I've had my energy consultancy, sustainability consultancy, and the conversations that I've had with developers, with architects, with clients and everybody in between m and e, is that there is a. There is a, there is a track that people look at the finances from when it comes to the end client, especially the, especially the homeowner. But that fear that you're speaking to there about the developer not being able to sell their house, can't release the value of that house because no one understands, cost about £10,000 more to buy than current homes with a gas boiler in them, the energy savings that we'll achieve will be somewhere between £100 and £200.
Speaker 1:That doesn't take a genius to work out the fact that actually consumers are going to be worse off. They're going to have to pay more mortgage, they're going to pay a more stamp duty. They're going to have to pay more mortgage. They're going to pay a more stamp duty. They're going to have to pay a bigger deposit to get onto the housing ladder, be able to buy that house in the first place, and they're not going to recover it sufficiently from whatever savings they make on the energy bill. And that's a bit of a problem, especially when houses. Already we're struggling to get people on the housing ladder in the first place and I just see that pushing more people into poverty and are struggling more and relying more on the social housing providers to provide that housing to people and it's a bit of an unfortunate downward spiral.
Speaker 2:So, now that we've uplifted everybody this way, we do have a model to make it work. What is your remedy for this? I appreciate that you have a model at the moment, but what is your model to this? When it comes to changing regulation, what is your uh model in terms of what someone listening to this podcast, that's an architect or there's an m&e consultant or that's a developer, what is it that they can do?
Speaker 1:So we know that the UK has got a legal obligation to go net zero. We're going to have to do this stuff at some point. So it's how do we bring people along? You've got kind of two choices. You can kind of do what London did and you can force through all the cameras with the ULESS zone and people are a bit upset. Yeah, effectively there's a cost associated with it. But I've also seen the stats that says this has a knock-on effect because actually people have benefited from lower pollution. We've got less cases of asthma, less cases of people going into hospitals with sort of respiratory diseases, and that's helped. So there is actually a benefit.
Speaker 1:But we've had to force people to do it. I don't know if I like that particularly, but it's one way of doing it. The other one is you can teach people, educate people and show them the way to go, and that thing needs to be led by the house builders, the architects, the providers, the investors into those properties to say, look, there are models that can allow us to deliver homes that are good for the environment and good for the consumer. We're just going to have to make a little bit more effort to explain to them how this works and why it benefits them. Because, as I said, logically it makes sense. If you look at the numbers, it absolutely makes sense. But there is a little bit of education to make it, uh to, to teach people that and um, somebody's got to take the lead and it's either going to be the government tells us to go and do it, or we can do it ourselves and make it, the.
Speaker 2:The people will be sick of me saying this that listen to the podcast regularly. But when we rely on the government to tell us what to do, I think we start to sleepwalk into a communist type of state, believing that the government has got all the answers and the only way to change behavior or innovate or to affect anything positive. Then we need to. You know, seek for that china rule or that russian russian grip, but but and the reason I say that is because when I look at the great things that have gone on, the innovations, the way that the world has got smaller in terms of time, for us pu to go and see family members, members in Germany is not going to take you anywhere near as long as it would have done in the late 1800s, early 1900s. You know, for you even to go to the US or go to, you know, north America, south America, you can. You can get there within a day, but you go back to the 1800s you're looking at a month or so, the US probably longer than that. Even so, the world has got smaller, but these changes have come because of individuals as opposed to the government has said right, we need to develop a faster way of getting from Europe to the US. We need to develop broadband, we need to develop AI, we need to develop the iPhone. Those things don't exist, and so one of the things that I'm working on as a consultancy is trying to bridge that gap between where we are now to the ideal, but to make it easier for people to go from where they are to where they want to be, and working out, putting time and effort in to actually how do I break that down and what does that actually look like?
Speaker 2:To make something easier for for someone to do, because I know if I'm using an ipad as an example, not because I'm I've got shares in apple or anything like that, I've got no affiliation with them. But if I give it to a two-year-old, three-year-old, they can figure it out and they can use it. So the ability for me to use that is a lot higher and it's a lot easier for me to use that than it would have been for the old. Do you remember the old BlackBerrys? Of course, give a BlackBerry to a two-year-old. They'd be like well, what is that? What is that? What's it all about?
Speaker 1:Because it's too complex. Yeah, it used to be quite popular with teenagers, mind you, the old BBM messaging stuff.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I get what you're saying so, overlaying that onto onto a situation where we need to change the way that we waste things. So if you, if you say, okay, climate change, all of these things, you're going to get a group of people that say, no, no, I don't believe in that. Fine, I don't think there's anyone that will get really, really excited by seeing large levels of waste going somewhere, either into landfill or going into a bin at the back end of a restaurant or whatever it is. We look at waste and we're like this does not bring us joy. So that's all really, that we're talking about here is how do we stop wasting stuff? How do we use things in a better way so that there's a less amount of wastage, but just taking it in that area, how do we do that? Well, I really want to do that, but I don't know how to get from where I am to where I want to be, where there's less waste. So we're, as a consultancy, just trying to make that bridge between the two.
Speaker 1:I like your analogy. As I said, I started off computing and sort of using your analogy. There, computing used to be centralized, you know big mainframes and everybody logged in sort of centrally, and your iPad, my iPhone, whatever has got as much computing power as that mainframe used to have. That was a consumer driven change, and what we gave is that power back into the hands of a consumer-driven change. And I see the same thing probably from a housing and an energy perspective. It will eventually be the consumers that drive that. If you can deliver a home, that's better.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite things when I first started working, I was over in Germany and I was putting computing into cars. We were basically applying computing to cars. So it's like things like you didn't have anti-lock braking, so we used to put little processes in for ABS, and we didn't have sat-nav systems and you wound up your windows. I'm old enough to remember that. Yeah, me too. All right. So anyway, look how that car has evolved over time and the technology that's gone into the car makes you wouldn't dream of buying a car now without a sat-nav in it, without anti-lock braking, without electric windows in it.
Speaker 1:But our homes haven't adopted technology in the same way and I see, see, there's definitely an opportunity. You know, make that technologically advanced home with the smart systems in it smart lighting, smart heating, the smart burger alarm, smart blinds maybe and consumers, I believe, want that. You deliver that. There is a nascent demand for it, but there's nobody supplying.
Speaker 1:So how do we take our homes from where they are at the moment, where people are just putting odds and ends in because they've bought it off a retailer somewhere and just added it in to actually integrating that technology into the homes to make them more comfortable, to make them safer, to make them more efficient, in the same way as our cars have? And there has to be a demand for that. So from your point of view, yeah, I think that computing has got its part to play, both there, but also from an energy perspective. You know, put the power, take energy from away from a few centralized suppliers and give the power back to the consumer and put it in their own hands, generate their own energy, manage when they buy their energy and when they sell their energy themselves, but with a computing system that basically manages it and adapts it to their needs and to their benefit, and then the consumers will buy and then that revolution will happen.
Speaker 2:Martin, it's been great having you on the podcast. I want to just give you an opportunity to give a plea out to two groups of people. One would be the consumer, the other one would be the developer. In a sentence or two, or in 30 seconds or less, or what would your message, your closing message be, separately to those two groups of people?
Speaker 1:oh, wow. Well, the to the developer. We'll start with them. Um, it is possible to build low carbon homes. Have the ambition. Let's put it that way have the ambition to build these net zero homes today, to do the right thing for the climate and for the consumer. It is possible. You just have to want to do it For the consumer. My pushback here would be don't accept mediocrity. You know it is possible to build these better homes. It's possible to build a net zero home that's not going to cost you more. That's going to reduce your running costs. Don't accept anything less and the same thing. You know around some of the tech that goes in it Smart lighting, smart heating systems. That should be ubiquitous. You should be expecting it and push back. Ask your developers for it and it's possible to deliver.
Speaker 2:Good Mark. It's been great having you on the podcast. Appreciate your time, your wisdom, your passion and wish you well for the future.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much. Been great to be here. I love the conversation, thanks for watching to the end.
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