Dr. Caroline Engel Purcell:

The Chairman referenced Georgian Limerick. There are certainly things that can be done to those types of buildings to reduce draughts and improve airtightness. A lot of it goes back to the traditional crafts and working up from those and maybe upskilling people from their original skillset. Photovoltaic, PV, and district heating are options. We may not be able to put PV panels on the front-facing roof but perhaps on an outbuilding or a new extension to the back. Although I do not do modelling for solar PV, the knowledge is there to find a way to make it work.

With regard to life-cycle assessment, we would love to do a bigger study. I was thinking about where we could get data. Perhaps the deep retrofit pilot programme might have the type of data we need to do a larger study to look at how much embodied carbon is actually associated with the retrofit of different types of buildings. A lot of that will come down to the amount of materials used, the carbon intensity of those materials and their use across the board.

I would certainly like to look further into the help to renovate scheme. Is there anything published on it?