Interesting piece in #TheEconomist who attribute 68,000 excess deaths in #Europe to high energy prices. Who to blame?
Putin obviously for weaponising #energy in the invasion of #Ukraine.
Successive governments for not #Decarbonising and #insulating buildings faster?
Voters and consumers for not demanding #EnergyEfficiency and a resilient robust society?
Ultimately perhaps blame is not constructive: but I feel this analysis does show where to focus efforts
https://social.platypush.tech/@economist_bot/110348931361311866
As you’re a British citizen too, I assume you have a lot of first-hand experience with British residential construction standards and, in general, British residential market… This experience alone should be sufficient to answer all the above 🤷♂️
Do energy efficiency standards for new build homes vary across Europe?
In the EU they are largely harmonized (=same or similar) but UK is a different story: even before Brexit the building standards were quite lax, with most energy efficiency requirements being either generation older than in EU or optional.
For a practical example, in the UK you can legally live in a house with a electrical installation from 1942 with aluminium cables, ancient fuses and fusebox etc.
Majority of houses have ancient single-glazed windows, often in such a state that you can easily stick your finger outside through the gap between the window and the frame.
If you buy new double-glazed windows, which are marketed as some kind of incredibly modern luxury here, you will get old generation ones, whereas in EU everyone would get triple-glazed with inert gas filling.
These are just a few examples, but the residential sector in the UK is unbelievably backward, especially if you come from Eastern Europe, where everyone happily picks up the latest available tech on the market.
As for the why, there are so many cultural, economic and historic reasons that you could probably write a whole book on this subject. It’s difficult to point out a single party that could be blamed for that. Ultimately, everyone is complicit and it’s practically impossible to fix it.
I find it hard to believe that you have ever been to the UK. It isn’t THAT bad.
However, yes, I have found comparative analysis which shows it in a poor light. The issue being existing housing stock rather than current building standards (better than Sweden?)
I have been living in the UK since 2013 and completed full refurbishment of one house and one apartment here in the meantime 😉 So I do have some first hand experience.
As many Eastern Europeans here, I was buying many materials in Poland for the refurbishment. For example, for the price of a single double-glazed window with old hardware in the UK I got two triple-glazed with modern hardware (PL). The same applies also to kitchen and bathroom appliances - in the UK for the same price you get an older model, with poorer energy efficiency and noise rating (and one year warranty, when in EU you get two).
The root cause is that the market in the UK is largely supplier-driven and competition is limited, and it’s not only construction market but mobile, broadband etc. In all of these sectors you get a worse service for much higher price than in EU.
Additional specifics of the construction market in the UK is that people in vast majority don’t build houses on their land: in Poland you can easily buy a 500 m2 plot of land and hire a company to build a 100 m2 house there, and that’s 100% by the design and standards you chose.
In the UK there’s simply no such plots for sale, so you can either buy an old house, demolish and rebuild it, which few people can afford, or you can buy a 10 ha land and build 200 houses there, which is only available to developers.
And the problem with developer-built houses is that they are built for their profit, not yours, so they stick to the lowest required standards, quality of construction is poor and you essentially build a house designed and built by someone else.
The latter issue is the same in the UK as in Poland, but competition in the latter against creates pressure on developers, while in the UK the attitude is that even the worst rathole will eventually sell, and that’s the only thing people are interested in.
In total, it creates a situation where we are now: 60% households in the UK have poor energy efficiency and any effort to improve that is pushed back by a lobby of developers and rental property owners, who don’t care about it as it’s not them who pay the bills 🤷♂️
@kravietz @Ruth_Mottram @chowderman
Yes, when I bought a derelict cottage in the UK and refurbished it, I ended up driving to France to buy the floor tiles as the same tiles in the UK cost 5 times as much as in a DIY supermarket in France! On the money I saved by driving to France, I paid for the ferry fare, the petrol, the tiles, the adhesive, a night in an hotel, a slap up meal and I still saved a load of money!
You could think it would be the same case for the modern windows I wrote about, or really anything else… except for the factor I also mentioned: supplier-driven market and oligopolies, both of which severely restrict market competition.
Of course, before ordering my windows and appliances in Poland I also did research in local stores and asked British builders. They were generally surprised that I was asking questions about the brand, model and parameters of the solutions they recommended. As if it was rude of me to even want to know the details of a device I’m going to use for another 10 years rather than blindly rely on their expert recommendation 😂
That makes me think other customers rarely ask the questions, and just rely on the recommendation of the company they get a quote from. And that’s a classic supplier-driven market.
@kravietz @Ruth_Mottram @Paulos_the_fog
Oh! Yeah, builders get the hump with me researching before speaking with them. All they want is an easy life, they don't have to live with the results.
The double glazing is a mystery - I have seen units on the internet quite cheap - the issue being that they will only be the lowest spec.
@kravietz @Ruth_Mottram @Paulos_the_fog
Which raises another thought - why don’t Brits build their own homes? - having to deal with British trades people!
@chowderman @kravietz @Ruth_Mottram @Paulos_the_fog I mean you had the chance with Polish contractors whilst you were still in the EU.
@t_mkdf @kravietz @Ruth_Mottram @Paulos_the_fog
Still do. The money here is too good to miss.
@kravietz @Ruth_Mottram @Paulos_the_fog @chowderman which is kind of a culture shock for anyone from the continent I suppose.
@Paulos_the_fog @kravietz @Ruth_Mottram
? There is something very wrong here.
I mean, I don’t question the drive for a decent meal, but economic theory suggests that in a functioning market, there shouldn’t be such a price difference.
Were these tiles something that might be “niche” in the UK but common in France?
5 times the price is one hell of a markup!