About this site
Plain English. Real numbers. Sources you can check.
Home Carbon Hub is an independent reference for UK homeowners weighing up retrofit decisions. Articles are AI-researched and human-reviewed, every factual claim is cited to a primary source, and we don't take payment for placements or recommend specific installers.
Why this site exists
The economics of insulating a draughty house, switching from a gas boiler to a heat pump, or applying for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme change every year. Most of the easy-to-find guidance is written by installers selling something. Public information is good, but it's spread across gov.uk, Ofgem, MCS, the Energy Saving Trust, dozens of consultations and grant schemes, and several different price caps. You shouldn't have to assemble that yourself to make a sensible decision about your own house.
Home Carbon Hub does that assembly job. We translate the original sources into plain English, attach the actual numbers, and keep the pages updated as the schemes and prices change.
How articles get written
Research is done with the help of AI tools (currently Claude), which speeds up cross-referencing primary sources. Every article is then reviewed and edited by a human before it's published. We don't auto-publish AI output.
In practice: AI helps gather data from gov.uk consultation papers, Energy Saving Trust calculators, MCS-installer rate cards and the like. A human checks each cited figure against its source, removes anything we can't verify, and writes the framing.
Sources
Every factual claim (costs, grants, eligibility rules, payback periods) is paired with an inline citation linking to its primary source. If you click through and the source has been updated since we last checked, please email us and we'll update the page.
Sources we use most often:
- gov.uk: Boiler Upgrade Scheme, ECO4, Great British Insulation Scheme, EPC and SAP guidance.
- Ofgem: energy price cap, supplier obligations.
- Energy Saving Trust: heat pump and insulation cost / payback estimates.
- MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme): installer standards and certification rules.
- Office for National Statistics: housing-stock statistics, fuel-poverty data.
- HM Treasury: relevant tax and policy announcements.
What we don't do
- We don't take paid placements in articles.
- We don't run affiliate links to specific installers, manufacturers or finance products.
- We don't use stock photos that imply a person we don't have.
- We don't publish anything without a human reviewer reading the final draft.
Get in touch
Spotted an out-of-date figure, a calculation that doesn't add up, or a topic we should be covering? Email [email protected].