Kirklees Warm Zone - Final Report
Kirklees Warm Zone is a Kirklees Council initiative which won the Ashden Award for the best local authority sustainable energy scheme in the UK.
Carbon Descent was appointed to conduct an economic impact assessment of the Kirklees Warm Zone.
Offering free loft and cavity wall insulation to all residents, its primary aim was to improve the thermal comfort and energy efficiency of every suitable home in Kirklees over a three year period. It is the largest local authority home insulation scheme in the UK, and the first such scheme to offer free non-means tested insulation to every household. Set up to improve the domestic energy efficiency of housing, the project has also helped tackle fuel poverty and improve the carbon footprint of Kirklees, whilst creating jobs in the local economy. The project has reduced around 34,000 tonnes of CO2 per year (January 2010), and estimates reductions of up to 55,000 tonnes per annum by the end of the project. To date over 46,000 homes have received free insulation measures, saving the average Kirklees household £200 per year on their fuel bills.
We will be analysing direct and indirect employment impacts, energy and fuel bill savings and associated impacts such as the likely health benefits resulting from increased affordable warmth. We will also explore whether the scheme might have had any impact on house value and whether this could be realistically included. We will conclude with a comparison of this scheme with other Warm Zone approaches, and attempt to quantify the economic benefit of an area based approach such as the Kirklees Warm Zone as opposed to a conventional approach. The deliverable for this project is a report detailing the above recommendations, methodology and any assumptions made. Key numbers set out in the report are:
- Employment impacts in terms of job years created
- Household energy and carbon savings
- Community return on investment/NPV
- Health service financial savings
- Benchmarking against other Warm Zones
You can view the full report here.