Earth Notes: General Bibliography (pauker2026improvement)

• [pauker2026improvement] Madeleine Pauker and Donal Brown A Plan for Places: Transforming Housing and Lowering the Cost of Living Through Home Improvement Corporations (accessed 2026-02-26), 2025-02-26, doi:10.25377/sussex.31242124 (report) (BibTeX).
  abstract

  Millions of households live in cold and damp homes that are increasingly expensive to heat and cause health problems. At the same time, heating homes accounts for about 18 per cent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. Around 3.5 million occupied homes in England fail to meet minimum decent homes standards, and nearly 12 million require retrofitting to achieve a basic level of energy efficiency. The burden of cold, damp and unsafe homes falls most heavily on underserved communities — yet existing retrofit programmes have prioritised reducing emissions from individual properties over improving the overall quality of homes and neighbourhoods. The Warm Homes Plan provides an opportunity to change course, but the approach taken by government prioritises heat pumps and solar panels over ensuring that homes reach basic standards of health and energy efficiency. Though expanding access to clean energy technologies is essential, the plan risks missing those most in need — people living in homes that need substantial repairs to be ready for green upgrades, those struggling with energy bills but with incomes above grant eligibility thresholds, or living in older homes that require navigating more complex interventions and planning restrictions. A neighbourhood-based retrofit strategy — which combines lowering energy bills with addressing homes in need of repair, protecting tenants and bringing empty homes back into use — can shift the narrative that climate policy has failed to improve daily life.
  note

  [[**UF] Also see: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/calls-to-move-england-home-insulation-scheme-into-council-workers-hands]