Robin Murray

Remembrance of Robin

 Remembrance of Robin

 

 By Philip Jessup

Robin and I worked together on a project of the London Climate Change Agency to create an initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from London’ domestic sector. At the time, Robin was working for the Design Council, and I was on secondment from the Toronto Atmospheric Fund to London’s Deputy Mayor, Nicky Gavron, to help set up the London Climate Change Agency.

At the time, domestic energy consumption accounted for 44 percent of London’s CO2 emissions or 18 million tonnes of CO2. Research indicated that 15 million tonnes of CO2 or 36 percent could be attributed to households that would be able to pay for energy efficiency retrofits, if they had the appropriate information and incentives to do so. Since central government’s funding was primarily directed at fuel poor homes accounting for just about three million tonnes of London’s CO2 emissions, Robin believed new thinking and initiatives were needed to address the able-to-pay or “fuel rich” sector from a carbon perspective. 

There were program delivery models available to us in both the U. K. and Canada. We thought that if we could bring together those knowledgeable about each country’s initiatives; the resulting cross-fertilization could lead to an innovative design framework for a future London domestic energy efficiency program. So it was decided to organize a charette under the auspices of the Design Council where Robin was based at the time.

The U.K. government’s Warm Zone program delivered integrated advice and incentive programs through house-to-house, street-by-street contact with all households in a defined area. Three-year pilots were underway in several communities. Stockton Warm Zone had assessed 51,000 homes and carried out surveys in 18,600 homes. As a result, CO2 reductions of about 26 percent were achieved, and 11 percent of fuel poor homes were removed from fuel poverty status.                           

Meanwhile, Canada’s EnerGuide for Houses Retrofit Incentive had been successfully piloted in Toronto, Ontario, eventually becoming a £160 million national climate program to retrofit 500,000 homes by 2010. About 150,000 homes had been assessed at the time of our collaboration, achieving 27 percent CO2 emissions reductions on average per household across the country.

The goal of the Domestic Energy Efficiency Charette, then, was to explore the future possibility that able-to-pay or “fuel rich” London households—given appropriate information and incentives—could significantly reduce energy use and CO2 emissions, while saving money, creating new jobs, and making the U.K. more energy secure. More specifically, the charette sought to facilitate development of a user research project in a London borough to investigate approaches that promote energy efficiency retrofits among able-to-pay homeowners, leading eventually to a pilot delivery initiative. The objectives of the charette were: 

  • To outline the elements that an energy awareness and saving package for the able to pay sector in London and the UK would need in order to succeed;

  • To incubate a number of ideas as to how to meet those needs.

The Design Council, in partnership with the London Climate Change Agency and the London Energy Partnership, sponsored and led the charette. Prior to the charette, a Canadian team consisting of EnerGuide program delivery specialists conducted audits of London homes using the Canadian EnerGuide approach. These audits were then filmed by Design Council staff for comparison with SAP audits homes delivered by London based groups, the film to be shown during the charette to stimulate creative thinking.

At the end of the day, the assembled charette participants collectively agreed a number of important policy recommendation to all levels of government. Among the key recommendations were:

  • The GLA should set a CO2 reduction target for the household sector of 20% by 2010 in order to drive individual action;

  • Governments should create and facilitate a one-stop shop approach that provides technical advice, household energy audits, financing, and coordinated services by health and building science professional organizations to the household sector; 

  • Expand the number, role, professionalism, and certification of Energy Efficiency Advice Centres (EEACs) and their staff to become House Energy Doctors offering a concierge service to facilitate the participation of individual house owners in energy efficiency retrofits;

  • Seeking financing from the EU, service referral fees, CO2 offsets, and allow GLA sources for other services, including reduction of Council and stamp duties, to be used as incentives for this program; 

  • Create a platform for common standards.

I returned to Toronto the following month, but Robin and the partners he recruited together worked to create a pilot for a national green home program that was eventually implemented across the UK. The element that Robin added that we did not have in Canada was the concierge, a person or service that would help support the homeowner and shepherd each home energy efficiency audit and retrofit to its completion.

 That one-day charette is a modest example of how meaningful change happens, I learned from Robin. It is a deep social process wherein influential leaders with strikingly different backgrounds and interests freely share valuable information and experiences, become open to learning from each other, and lose their fear of risk taking by co-designing a project. My work since then has reflected this learning from Robin. If I’ve been at all successful, Robin deserves some of the credit 

October 30, 2020