Utopi: warm homes offer cold comfort to developers

Research by ESG tech company Utopi into 1,200 apartments or beds over last year’s heating season has revealed the extent of elevated energy consumption in multi-tenanted real estate. Headline figures revealed that 10% of residents consistently run the temperature of their homes higher than 24°C. Half of those are away from the home on at least one two-day break a month and up to 95% of them do not turn their heating down while they are away.

This is just one of many problems revealed by the data that will not only have a huge impact on the planet but is leaving asset managers saddled with underperforming, unnecessarily expensive portfolios at a time when energy prices are soaring.

Stuart Peterson, head of impact at Utopi, took to the stage at EG’s ESG Summit to dig into the data and explain why engaging with residents is one of the most effective ways of encouraging a widespread change in behaviour.

Incremental changes

“The Change in Behaviours Project is not anecdotal,” he said of the study. “It’s not based on what we think as a business or what the market thinks. This is a data-driven study to understand the correlation between the environmental data and residents’ behaviour.”

Peterson said the data has shown that 90% of overheated rooms have temperature regulated by opening a window. “These are people who are literally paying to warm our planet,” he said.

Utopi’s figures show the hottest home had been running at 38.6°C for the last 30 days.

“I wouldn’t choose to go on holiday to a country at that temperature, let alone choose to have it that high in my home,” said Peterson.

He said the data delivers the insights necessary to tackle the problem head-on and that engaging with residents is by far the most effective way to address unsustainable behaviour patterns.

The first opportunity for an operation intervention by the asset manager or owner comes off the back of identifying outliers. When the data picks up homes running consistently at an unusually high heat, investigations can be launched and possible problems can be addressed.

There is also an opportunity for targeted campaigns, said Peterson. “They might just be people who run their homes quite warm. They might be the people who use the window to regulate temperature. They might be people who go on holiday and never turn their heating down.

“Those people will show up in the data and when we intervene, we ask them to make small, positive, incremental changes that will have a huge impact on the asset as a whole. We are not asking them to change the way they live.”

He refers to the Christmas period as a prime case in point. The data shows 60% of residents in a particular asset take a 10-day break away from home over Christmas and new year. Half of them are away for 20 days or more. The average temperature within those homes is 22.2°C and that average holds firm even when swathes of the residents are away. “There’s a huge opportunity here for education and operational intervention,” he said.

Pizza incentive

A recent intervention saw Utopi work with City Developments to reduce energy consumption at one of its purpose-built student accommodation assets. Students were promised a pizza party if behavioural changes resulted in an energy reduction on the site.

Asset manager Laura Starkey joined Peterson on stage. “We entered the PBSA market a year and a half ago and very quickly saw the impact of soaring energy bills on our op ex and bottom-line figures. The student population engages well with events, so we introduced Progress to Pizza to get them involved and help them understand why we have put this technology in, what it means for them and how we can track performance.”

Peterson added that, while students are generally known for being sustainably minded, behavioural patterns around energy use are very similar regardless of demographic. Students are usually away from home for the first time and learning to manage their lives. Student accommodation is an all-encompassing rent model so energy use does not hit them in the pocket directly.

“They often have no way of measuring the impact their behaviour has on the planet,” he said. “If you are able to offer them clear insights by saying something like ‘if you reduce your average heating temperature by 1°C, that’s the equivalent of flying to New York’, you can provide tangible context. When we talk about carbon as a currency, that really hits home.”