Here are a selection of key reports and projects that focus on how to deliver deep cuts in the carbon emissions from the UK’s existing housing.

  • Paying For It - Existing Homes Alliance paper submitted to Government analysing possible finance schemes for retrofitting the UK's existing housing

  • Low Carbon Housing Learning Zone A Leeds Metropolitan University Learning Zone offering guidance on how to design, construct and manage dwellings that are capable of achieving very low carbon emissions.

  • Grand Designs Great British Refurb campaign Public-facing campaign partnership between Energy Saving Trust, UK Green Building Council and WWF, with Grand Designs Magazine, calling for a nationwide retrofit programme.

  • How Deep To Go   A report from the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy on how to find the cost-optimal level for building renovation. It argues that conventional payback calculations contain several distortions, which lead to sub-optimal estimates of what cost-effective renovation should be aiming for.

  • Renewable Heritage A follow-on guide to Changeworks' 'Energy Heritage' guide, Renewable Heritage is a guide to microgeneration in traditional and historic buildings.

  • Low Carbon Existing Homes UK-GBC Releases new report.


  • Building a greener Britain: Transforming the UK's Existing housing Stock. (Federation of Master Builders: Report written by Gavin Killip, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford).


  • How Low? Achieving optimal carbon savings from the UK's existing housing stock. (WWF-UK: Report written by: Centre for Sustainable Energy, Association for the Conservation of Energy & Dr Richard Moore for WWF-UK, March 2008).
  • Existing Housing & Climate Change, House of Commons Communities & Local Government Select Committee, Seventh Report of Session 2007-8, The Stationary Office, April 2008.
  • Old Home, SuperHome (A network of exemplar, low carbon energy efficient old dwellings, designed to be local and publicly accessible within 15 minutes of nearly everyone in the country)