Measuring What Matters: Inside the UK's £500 Billion Retrofit Problem

Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb Connect

Guest: Tom Fenton, CEO, Senze

In partnership with Urban Future Lab

The UK's housing stock is responsible for a significant share of the country's carbon emissions, and the estimated cost of retrofitting it sits at an eye-watering £500 billion. But what if a large portion of that spend is being directed at the wrong interventions, based on certificates and models that don't reflect how buildings actually perform?

In this second episode of our mini-series in collaboration with Urban Future Lab, Tom is joined by Tom Fenton, CEO and Co-Founder of Senze. They discuss how live sensor data and digital twin technology are exposing the gap between buildings 'as designed' and buildings as 'lived in', and why measuring first could transform both the economics and the impact of the UK's net zero retrofit mission.

Tom Fenton co-founded Senze alongside David Partridge of Related Argent and Joseph Daniels of Project Etopia - a lineup that brings together data science, large-scale property development, and net zero housebuilding in a single founding team. Tom previously built Veritherm, where he first encountered the persistent gap between modelled and actual building performance.

Senze deploys live sensors directly into buildings to capture real-time data on energy use and thermal behaviour, combining that with digital twin models to deliver actionable insights for building owners, landlords, and large estate managers - from housing associations in Northern Ireland to portfolios in New York.

What you’ll take away:

• Why the EPC system is fundamentally broken and why one Senze pilot found a home performing 59% better than its rating predicted
• How Senze’s combination of live sensors and digital twin models gives building owners something neither approach can deliver alone
• Why the £500 billion retrofit cost estimate could be dramatically reduced by measuring buildings before intervening in them
• What working on portfolios in New York has revealed about the universality of the performance gap problem
• Whether the government’s proposed EPC C standards for landlords by 2028–2030 will drive genuine improvement or simply a compliance scramble
• Why open, shared building performance data infrastructure, as championed by the Live Data Trust may be as important as any individual technology

Show Links:

• Connect with Tom Fenton, CEO of Senze
• Visit the Senze website to find out more
• Our strategic partner, Urban Future Lab at NYU Tandon, is a non-profit innovation hub for best-in-class climatetech startups with a focus on clean energy and sustainable urban infrastructure solutions.
• Check out other episodes of the Decarb Connect podcast and suggest a future guest.
• Connect with Tom Angus, Director of Conferences of Decarb Connect

Learn more about Decarb Connect
Our global membership platform, events and facilitated introductions support leaders driving industrial and energy innovation. Our clients include the most energy-intensive industrials from cement, metals and mining, glass, ceramics, chemicals, O&G and many more along with technology disruptors, investors and advisors. We have summits coming up in Houston, London, Hamburg, Boston and Toronto and the opportunity to find the biggest brains in energy and carbon management – your future collaborators. For year-round introductions and meaningful insights, get in touch about your membership of the Decarbonisation Leaders Network – so many benefits, hundreds of people equally focused on decarbonisation – find out more and talk with Jack Figg, Community Director.