Renewable Energy x Our Buildings

Buildings are designed to keep you safe and comfortable: warm when it’s cold outside, dry when it’s wet and sheltered when it’s stormy. As the climate changes, buildings may struggle to serve your needs.

As summers are getting hotter, we need to adapt our homes to help keep us cool. Likewise during winter, we need to keep the warm air in to keep us warm and keeps your energy bill down, while helping the planet.

Just as better roof and wall insulation and double-glazed windows keep warm air inside during winter, they keep it outside during summer. Shutters or blinds that block sunlight are a simple option for lowering indoor temperatures by keeping out even more heat. It even helps to paint roofs a light colour to better reflects the sun’s rays.

Most homes in Dundee are heated with gas boilers but have no equivalent system for cooling. Heat pumps can help. These machines are essentially refrigerators working backwards. Where a fridge sucks heat from its interior and disperses it through the coils on its back, a heat pump sucks the heat from the air (or ground) outside and transfers it to the inside of your house to keep you warm in winter. The process runs on electricity, so it does this without to using gas.

For summer, heat pumps can be programmed to work a reverse cycle, allowing them to pump cold water rather than hot water through the radiators to cool your house. This cooling cycle has to be built into the heat pump system when it’s installed.

The Home Energy Scotland offers funding to help you make your home more energy efficient and save money.