It's important to find better ways to build houses for reduced environmental impact, but most existing housing stock will still be around fifty years from now, and all that time they will continue to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. With 25 million houses in the UK alone, that's a real concern.
So E.ON in the UK has built a replica 1930s house, complete with "more than 100 sensors to monitor energy use, temperature and humidity, making it one of the most sophisticated research houses in the world." Even the housing occupants "will wear the latest tracking devices to pinpoint the energy cost and CO2 emissions of their activity as well as helping understand how the living space is used and how it changes as the property is upgraded." All for the sake of finding the best way to upgrade old houses to bring them as close as possible to carbon neutrality. The UK government wants all new homes to be carbon neutral from 2016.
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