The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) reports that 80% of the buildings that will be in use in the UK in 2050 have already been built, meaning we must begin addressing the built environment now if the country is to meet its aggressive emissions targets.

UKGBC data shows that 19% of the UK’s carbon emissions result from heating, cooling and powering buildings. Based on many years’ experience in the housing industry, Bryan Charter, CEO at SuSy, believes the energy efficiency of most homes is damning, driving his enthusiasm for helping owners and occupiers improve them. The Digital Accelerator funding competition run by Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living Programme provided an opportunity to develop a new app to make this task easier.

“We knew that the UK’s homes are generally the most leaky and inefficient in Europe and we wanted to simplify the process of improving them,” Bryan says. “We looked at the barriers preventing people from doing their own assessments and realised that the first barrier was information.”

Mauro Fazion, SuSy’s Chief Technology Officer, had already built data models of the UK’s homes based on publicly available data. The impact of undertaking energy efficiency improvements on those homes could be predicted and, more importantly, the consumers could use the app to see what improvements were available for their homes and how these would save on their energy bills.

The app would also identify registered contractors, provide a facility for requesting quotes and help users explore financing options. This was the initial concept for the SuSy House app. It included portals for householders and contractors, which also improved communication between customer and contractor should a survey and subsequent home visits be required for improvement work to be carried out.

Supporting Bristol

At this point, representatives of Bristol City Leap, an initiative to accelerate green investment in Bristol in line with the city’s ambition to become carbon neutral by 2030, contacted the SuSy team. Wanting to help people on lower household incomes or living in social housing improve the energy efficiency of their homes, Bristol City Leap asked if the SuSy House app could be modified to suit this new market.

It could, but the SuSy developers lacked the resources needed to fund the work. Considering its role in reducing carbon emissions, making home energy efficiency easier to achieve and helping users reduce their bills and potentially improve their standard of living, this new direction for SuSy Home made it a strong candidate for an Innovate UK Net Zero Living Programme grant and £249,000 was awarded.

Bryan explains: “The Innovate UK funding allowed us to develop the app across different types of housing, with elements supporting users seeking grant funding options for home energy improvement. We also built it so that it can be branded and localised to every authority and registered housing provider.”

Local authority interest

The first customer for the developed product, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) requested additional features, including eligibility checkers for grant funding from a variety of sources which simplify and streamline the application process. Early customer feedback is positive.

As a digital platform, SuSy Home will inevitably continue evolving through input from householders and as authorities and registered providers sign up. It is already designed to adapt to data input from individual users, adjusting the energy efficiency score as appropriate for their home.

For now, the major challenge is to onboard early adopters among authorities and registered housing providers, while further refining the interface for householders living in lower income homes or social housing. “We’re speaking with people all over the country – the Scottish Government, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, Warm Homes London and more. They all really like it and want to know how we can add more features, so we’re looking for a new injection of funding to work through those steps,” says Bryan.

Without the Innovate UK Net Zero Living Programme grant, SuSy would not have met Bristol City Leap’s requirements nor progressed to the point where the GMCA became a customer. Bryan believes the association with Innovate UK also brought credibility to the team, helping them raise additional investment and backing up their sales process.

We wouldn’t have worked with Bristol City Leap without the grant, while the grant also gave us the credibility to pitch to the GMCA.

– Bryan Charter, SuSy CEO

Bryan says that the company’s ambition now is to achieve national coverage and replace the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). “We already have the most up-to-date data on the energy efficiency of every home in the UK and next we want to connect to smart meters, maybe water meters and other sources too, to make that data even more accurate.”