#26 Insulation
#26 Insulation
One of the most cost-effective ways to make buildings more energy efficient.
Read time: 4 minutes
In this week’s issue you will learn about the best action you can take at home to save lots of money and CO2 equivalent emissions: Insulation
“Air infiltration accounts for 25 to 60% of energy used to heat and cool a home, energy that is simply wasted“ - US Green Building Council
Top Insulation News 🗞️
Bans in France: France is banning the rental of poorly insulated homes and its measures are getting strict with energy-inefficient homes.
Insulation + Circularity: A leading manufacturer of construction materials has a program to recycle used insulation from clients. They are expanding it to other countries.
UK going too slow: The UK’s scheme is not good or fast enough to cover the 19 million homes that need better insulation.
Let’s dive in 🧠
On average, heating and cooling account for 54% of a home’s annual utility bills.
On top of that, around 15% of global CO2 equivalent emissions come from poor building insulation.
How does heat work?
Heat always moves from warmer areas to cooler ones, until a temperature equilibrium is reached. This flow of heat can happen in 3 ways:
Conduction: Heat flows through a material. The way a spoon placed in a hot cup of coffee conducts heat through its handle to your hand.
Convection: Occurs when a liquid or gas, like air, is heated, becomes less dense, and rises. When it cools it becomes denser and falls.
Radiation: Heat travels in a straight line away from any surface and heats anything solid that absorbs its energy. The Sun heating the Earth.
This heat flow is key to keep buildings at a nice temperature.
In the summer, hot air infiltrates indoor spaces, making air conditioners work a lot.
In the winter, warm air escapes buildings, making heating systems work hard.
Both of these increase your energy bill and your carbon footprint drastically. Instead of increasing our energy consumption to reduce that temperature gap we can just invest in better insulation for our homes!
How does insulation work?
Insulation works on a simple concept: It keeps the outside out and the inside in.
It decreases this heat movement by providing an effective resistance to the flow of heat.
It can consist of several different actions like:
Choosing better building materials, installing double or triple pane windows, sealing gaps and cracks, adding layers of insulation on all sides (floor, exterior walls, and roof), etc.
And the best is we can measure this insulation improvement with something called the “R value”.
The R value is the system of measurement for thermal resistance. The higher the R value, the more effective the insulation (extra resources about this at the end).
Materials
There’s a very wide range of insulating materials and every year even more come out.
Some examples include: Fiberglass, polystyrene, cellulose, and natural fibers such as hemp, sheep’s wool and straw.
We also have radiant barriers, which are layers of a highly reflective material that reflects radiant heat rather than absorbing it.
It is estimated that if 54% of existing residential and commercial buildings install insulation, 8 billion tonnes of emissions can be avoided at an implementation cost of $3.7 trillion. Net savings could be $2.5 trillion over 30 years and $4 trillion over the life-time of the insulation upgrade.
So if we can save so much money and CO2 why aren’t we insulating like crazy?
Challenges
Cost: Even though you can start benefitting from smaller energy bills almost right after investing in insulation, it takes several years to cover the cost and the upfront investment can be quite high depending on the current state of your house.
Inconvenience: It can be really inconvenient having workers at home during several days and dealing with the whole process. This of course depends on the extent of the insulation. In any case, it’s always better to do it before moving in or when building the house from scratch.
Government incentives: In many countries Governments are not providing enough financial support to incentivize the insulation of buildings. In the cases where such support exists it can take very long until the owner receives the money.
Top Insulation Startups 💰
Kestrix 🇬🇧: They use mass thermal image capture to map how heat leaks in buildings and build retrofit plans.
AeroShield 🇺🇸: They manufacture a super-insulating glass sheet based on aerogel that can be installed in windows. Basically they help make extremely light and transparent windows that are 2-3x more insulating than standard windows today.
Q-bot 🇬🇧: They use tiny robots that can fit under your house to spray an insulating foam. Their underfloor insulation helps to keep you warm, reduce your bills
and improve your home’s energy rating.
❗Extreme knowledge area❗
2023 US rebates for insulation: For all of you US readers, see how the insulation tax credit from this year can help you save thousands of dollars. This is all thanks to the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit.
R values: Everything you need to understand about the R value and a US map showing the recommended one depending on where you live. You can also find R value maps for other countries :)
That’s it for today, 1 climate tech topic in under 5 minutes.
Next week… Retrofitting! 🤯
If you enjoyed today’s issue, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it :)