“Cleaning up two wood-burning stoves every day, you know, it’s hard on the knees,” one resident from County Durham shared with our North East conference attendees.

• Read more about North East retrofit revisited:

“What is a virtual power plant?” It was an interesting question from Alex Thompson, sales director of AceOn Group and a panellist at our Shropshire Retrofit Revisited conference in September.  

The Shropshire retrofit event - hosted by Shropshire Council - really showed just how ahead of the game Shropshire was when it came to innovation on energy schemes like AceOn’s 

Heating our homes accounts for 14% of the UK’s carbon emissions, requiring a wholesale switch to energy efficient heat pumps. According to the UK Government, 600,000 heat pumps a year need to be installed from 2028 to meet our carbon-reduction targets, aligning with installation levels of other European nations.

Heat pumps create warmer, better homes whilst improving lives and livelihoods.

“We used to love living at our home in the summer,” said Paul, a homeowner from Cumberworth. “Then, in the winter, we used to start to hate it because it was so cold, drafty and miserable.”

It was a powerful message to our Low Carbon Homes Solent conference. The social benefits of retrofit, of lifting people out of fuel poverty, are just as important as the environmental reasons.

“Last August, I found myself on the sharp edge of the economic shutdown” Andrew Glassford, a sound engineer from Manchester, told our Low Carbon Homes Oxfordshire conference in March.

• Read more about Oxfordshire retrofit revisited

We reflect on Kent's retrofit activity, examined at our recent Low Carbon Homes online event

“It’s a wonderful change. We don’t have to really worry about whether it’s going to be cold or hot, because our home is automatically self-regulating.”

We examine Liverpool's focus on retrofit's role in supporting local economic recovery

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