Historic Homes Energy Survey underway in Northumberland

One of the many findings from the Humshaugh 2020 Carbon Footprint Survey was that the heating of homes is the largest single source of carbon emissions by households in Humshaugh Parish. The study, carried out by Newcastle University in 2020, also found that households living in historic homes typically have a markedly higher carbon footprint from home heating.

Newcastle University is working in partnership with CAN and Northumberland County Council to identify the scale of this challenge across Northumberland and identify a clear strategy to address the issue. Northumberland is exceptionally well endowed with Listed houses, houses in Conservation Areas and houses over a hundred years old. Northumberland County Council at the same time has ambitious plans to lower carbon emissions.

Newcastle University is looking for householders willing to take part in this important research. They are looking to include those living in houses in three categories:

  • Listed
  • In a Conservation Area (both new and old)
  • Other historic (over 100 years old) but not Listed or in a Conservation Area.

The survey, which takes a just few minutes to complete, asks questions about your home, energy efficiency and your current home energy use in order to help work out how much carbon dioxide emissions are produced from heating Northumberland’s historic homes and gather important data to assess the obstacles to reducing these emissions.

Anyone living in a house in any of these categories who would be interested in taking part in this important survey should contact David.Bradley@newcastle.ac.uk or hailey.james@newcastle.ac.uk. Alternatively, you can use this link to access the survey: https://forms.ncl.ac.uk/view.php?id=12040572

Before completing the survey, where at all possible, it would be helpful if householders could find from your records/bills the approximate amount of fuel for heating that you have used over the last 12 months and similarly the approximate number of electricity units used. This would help considerably with the accuracy and robustness of the survey.

A full report of the survey will be shared when this is available.

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