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Vulcan: a scalable mechanism to invest in retrofit

We explain how Vulcan addresses the systemic issues that stop UK homeowners from investing in retrofit

Why don't more UK homeowners invest in home energy retrofits?

If UK homeowners invest in energy efficiency and electrification improvements, they can live in higher comfort, lower cost and healthier homes.

The National Retrofit Hub estimated 250K UK homes are upgraded each year. The majority are grant funded retrofits of social housing or fuel poor homes: few private homeowners choose to retrofit. With 250K/yr retrofits every year to 2050, UK homes may emit 33Mt/yr CO2e emissions in 2050 (1). Increasing the rate at which UK homeowners invest in retrofits is therefore critical to meet the UK’s Net Zero goals.

We believe the key reason homeowners don’t choose to retrofit is the high cost and uncertain payback of improvements. Reducing this uncertainty with a robust retrofit assessment and plan costs at least £500 per dwelling. Homeowners without a retrofit plan are vulnerable to cowboy installers and builders. This creates a catch-22: homeowners don’t understand the cost and impact of retrofit, and therefore don’t see the value of better information. 

The way most UK homeowners understand the performance of their homes today is through Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). EPCs are created for 1.4m existing UK homes annually and cover 20m homes in total. EPCs are useful for compliance and benchmarking. However, the energy consumption and potential improvements proposed by EPCs are not accurate or specific enough to invest in retrofits.

Vulcan: a mechanism to invest in retrofit

The low accuracy and precision of EPCs is a result of their calculation methodologies (SAP or rdSAP). These methodologies are due to be replaced by the Home Energy Model (HEM). HEM will be used to assess new homes against the Future Homes Standard from 2025, and to create existing dwelling EPCs from late 2026. 

HEM has 1440x higher resolution outputs than SAP, enabling precision design of improvements and more accurate prediction of their impact. However HEM also requires more detailed inputs. This has the potential to make home energy assessments more complex and time consuming.

Today Vulcan makes HEM easy to use for domestic building energy assessors and designers, with a web accessible graphical user interface and documentation. We are the first company to offer tooling to model with HEM, and to use feedback to improve our user’s experience. Vulcan will be useful for compliance, but can already enable models to be calibrated with dwelling-specific data to predict actual performance (instead of using compliance assumptions). Our early adopters include organisations such as Savills and Energiesprong, that want to deliver retrofits with real impact.

Vulcan benefits all stakeholders involved in home energy retrofit: domestic building energy assessors & designers, builders & installers, and homeowners.

Vulcan is affordable and user-friendly for domestic building energy assessors and designers, and enables use of HEM’s increased precision for more useful client advice. Vulcan is a fraction of the price of other Energy Assessor Scheme tooling, and provides zero cost training. This reduces financial barriers to become an energy assessor and develop new skills. We will continue to reduce the cost to calibrate models to reflect energy bills, and precisely value-engineer retrofit specifications, to reduce the cost of actionable client advice.

The detailed specifications produced by Vulcan creates clarity for retrofitted solution installers and builders on performance expectations, and enables explainable scope variation and precision auditing. Vulcan plans to enable top suppliers to directly bid on specifications - and in the process reduce design and sales costs, and access a consistent stream of work.

As a result, Vulcan is removing barriers for homeowners to invest in a higher comfort, lower cost and healthier homes. Value-engineered, detailed improvement specifications enable homeowners to confidently work with builders and installers. Quotes from top suppliers removes payback uncertainty. Accurate evidence of retrofit impact will enable grant funding bodies and consumer lenders to finance improvements, removing up-front cost as a barrier and enabling immediate savings.

Where we're going and how to get involved

Vulcan has been developed to address the systemic issues that prevent UK homeowners from investing in energy efficient homes. Our goal is to build a £5B/yr sustainable UK retrofit market. Vulcan can eventually be exported to EU nations with EPCs, enabled by HEM’s Open Source and modular architecture.

We want to hear from domestic building energy assessors & designers, builders & installers who are interested in producing better client outcomes. We are also looking for financiers that want to invest in better performing homes. For more, please contact hello@usevulcan.app.



(1) Assumes the average retrofit electrifies heat and reduces heat demand by 12% as per the UK's 6th Carbon Budget target (from CCC); gas and electricity consumption uses Ofgem’s “medium” household; fuel CO2e emission intensity uses UK Government Green Book data, with electricity grid emissions including Scope 2 and 3 (eg, including transmission and distribution). 

Early Adopter

✓ Desktop Access to HEM
✓ Documentation & Datasets
✓ Customer Support

£10 / month per seat
Full Launch

✓ Low cost accreditation
✓ Use our full feature set
✓ Enterprise-ready

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