About the measure
Energy policy usually treats homes and cars as separate problems: insulation and heat pumps for the home, electric vehicles for the car. None of these measures changes the shape of the place around them.
That shape sets both kinds of demand. Dwellings that share walls need less heat, and compact neighbourhoods place daily destinations within walking distance. Dispersed neighbourhoods need more heat per dwelling and more driving, because their destinations lie further away.
A neighbourhood should therefore be judged on the everyday access it provides for the energy its households use. Both sides of this ratio are measured directly: metered and survey-anchored kilowatt-hours, and amenity counts over the road network. This Atlas maps the ratio for every neighbourhood in England.
Each neighbourhood receives one grade from A to G on access per kilowatt-hour, modelled on the energy performance certificate. Each band held one seventh of England's households in 2021, and the thresholds are frozen. A grade therefore changes only when the underlying quantities change. Two further map views show those quantities directly, energy per dwelling and amenities reachable on foot, as plain values.
The levers apply insulation, heat pumps and electric vehicles at any uptake and re-grade the map. They reduce energy use and leave access unchanged, because none of them brings destinations closer. Each area's card shows its status quo grade, its adjusted grade at the chosen lever settings, and its grade at full rollout. Closing the remaining gap requires changes to urban form.
A neighbourhood here is a Census 2021 Output Area, the smallest statistical geography in England, holding about 125 households. Every figure is computed directly from open data; the sources are listed on the sources page. Energy is reported per dwelling because that is how it is metered and billed. Areas with weak data coverage are flagged on their cards.
The Atlas draws on a study of about 178,000 English neighbourhoods. On foot, flats reach about 27 times the amenities of detached neighbourhoods. Per kilowatt-hour of driving, flats gain about 3.9 times the access. Full deployment of insulation, heat pumps and electric vehicles closes under a third of the energy gap between compact and dispersed form and none of the access gap. The study is unpublished and under development; links will follow.
Contact: Gareth Simons, Building Stock Lab, UCL Energy Institute, University College London.