Cheaper, greener…retro? Tomorrow’s homes

The Hive Home Report 2025 is out today, and I’m spending the day in the studio with Tomorrow’s World’s Maggie Philbin, discussing it with radio stations across the country*. We’re looking at the predictions they made back then, and the expectations that I have as a futurist now. As well as the stats from the report itself. 

A number of things stand out. First, that the overwhelming driver for investing in smart home/eco technology now is to save money. Perhaps not surprising in an age when so many of us are feeling the pinch. But it is quite the contrast to a few years ago when these things were seen as middle class luxuries. Now we’re all looking for ways to trim our energy bills. And if it’s good for the environment too? Then great. But that’s not the primary driver.

Ecotech in the broadest sense is pretty widely deployed across the UK now, as the report shows. 250,000 heat pumps, over  1 million EV chargers, and more than 1.6 million solar installations. But these are fractions of what the technology will eventually reach. There are around 28 million homes in the UK. None of these technologies are suitable for all of them, but we might expect to see ten times as many solar installations in a few years, for example. And for all the (sometimes reasonable) griping, heat pumps will ultimately replace most boilers. Domestic gas is a thing of the past and will be as archaic for our grandchildren as back boilers are for most of us. Bear in mind, those were only outlawed for new installation in 2005. While gas boilers are not being banned yet, the effective ban on them for new homes means economies of scale should quickly make heat pumps a much more natural option for most.

The Energy Home

Following on from the recent episode of Dough where we discussed future homes, I popped over to the Salford Energy House project for a tour with Professor Richard Fitton - one of the experts on the show. If you haven’t seen this facility, it’s incredible. Giant chambers, big enough to fit two houses inside, in which the climate can be controlled to the nearest half degree, with sunshine, rain and even snow able to be modelled. Here the big house builders, and technology companies like Hive, test their tech for the future of homes.

Inside the Energy House project

The test homes are entirely liveable. Fully furnished. And people do come and live in them for a night or two as part of experiments. They are plastered in sensors of all kinds, designed to get a realistic reading of not just heat but comfort, as well as measuring the energy required to maintain that comfort. And comfortable they are, with excellent insulation, triple glazing, and more. And they’re not just testing new homes, they’re also looking at retrofit - albeit not currently for draughty 150 year old homes like mine.

Modern tech, retro style

If you listened to Dough, you might have picked up on a personal bugbear of mine. While we’re evolving the technology inside homes, we seem to be resolutely against changing how they look on the outside. Even when the homes are being built with modern methods to maximise their thermal performance - timber frames, thick skins of insulating material - we skin the outside with fake bricks that get hand pointed as if they’re real. 

It’s not even the bricks I mind so much, even though they’re probably not the best material to build from in our changing climate. It’s the aping of a style of home from over 100 years ago. 

If we’re changing everything about the fabric of a building, maybe it’s time we started making them look like they’re from the 21st century? Unfortunately it seems neither house builders nor buyers have the appetite for something a bit more modern.

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*It’s not the first time I’ve worked with Maggie, but yes, every time I pretend I’ve been chosen to present Tomorrow’s World.