The UK government UK government has made a legal commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Decarbonising the existing building stock is part of this.
The scale of the challenge is daunting. There are currently eight million lofts that need insulating, five million uninsulated cavity walls, and 20 million uninsulated floors that need upgrading.
The government commitment has stimulated over three-quarters of organisations to say they are working towards net zero, but fewer than one in four are looking at how to make their premises more environmentally sustainable, according to a study published by property consultant Ridge and Partners.
It reveals that just one in 10 public and private sector organisations are assigning any kind of budget to retrofitting buildings to reduce their environmental impact.
As a result these organisations are “sleepwalking towards a building crisis”, according to the report.
Whereas the office sector has recently seen much refurbishment in an effort to meet a legal deadline for minimum energy efficiency standards set by the government, the domestic sector has seen little action after the failure of the Green Homes Grant.
The exception to this has been in Scotland where the Scottish government actually has a minister for zero carbon buildings, Green MSP Patrick Harvie, who recently suggested that the passive house standard should become mandatory for zero carbon homes North of the border.
(The Green Party in Scotland supports the SNP-led government through a power sharing deal. The shared policy program between the two parties, published in September 2021, expressed “explicit support for passivhaus and equivalent standards” and says that all buildings that apply for a building warrant from 2024 onwards must use “zero emissions heating as the primary heating source and meet significantly higher energy efficiency standards”.)
Government ignoring energy efficiency
The National Energy Action charity estimates that there are 6.5 million households in fuel poverty in the United Kingdom. Many of them wouldn’t have to spend so much on their energy bills if they lived in energy efficient homes.
The Climate Change Committee, which is an independent watchdog set up by the British government under the Climate Change Act to keep an eye on whether the government is keeping to the Act, has said that the UK’s legally-binding climate change targets will not be met without the near-complete elimination of greenhouse gas emissions from UK building stock by 2050.
Emissions reductions from the UK’s 29 million homes have stalled, which makes a comprehensive program of home energy efficiency even more urgent. The Environmental Audit Committee, a cross party group of MPs, says that the failure of schemes to address this challenge adequately is “of great concern. Improving the energy efficiency of all homes provides a huge opportunity to develop supply chains and provide jobs across the UK for all levels and skills, helping to deliver the government’s levelling-up agenda and a sustainable post-covid recovery.”
Energy efficiency delivers much wider benefits, including lower energy bills and improvements in health, and makes a vital contribution towards achieving net zero, wrote the committee in a special report.
There is a chronic shortage of appropriate skills in the home retrofit sector. The retrofit of the existing housing stock needs much greater focus and is at risk of letting the rest of the economy down on decarbonisation. The task is colossal: in England alone, over 10 million owner occupied homes and over three million private rented sector landlords need to upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes to become A, B or C rated Energy Performance Certificates by 2035 for the government to achieve its climate aspirations.
According to the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA), a non-profit member-based body, there are insufficient policy drivers for net zero buildings, particularly in retrofit. Making homes more energy efficient is a precursor to low carbon heating. But grants tend to be offered more for heat pumps than for insulation.
Doing their best
Isolated industry players are doing their best; groups like RetrofitWorks and Parity Projects have created a compelling value proposition for retrofit.
Working with the Construction Leadership Council, RetrofitWorks has created a national retrofit strategy that offers a plan for scaling up this approach nationwide.
Mostly at present RetrofitWorks designs, implements and manages energy efficiency and retrofit schemes in a defined geographical area in partnership with local actors, usually a local authority but it might be an energy services company.
On a national scale government has decided to prioritise the decarbonisation of heat with relatively unambitious plans for demand reduction and energy efficiency. This risks exacerbating the cost of living and energy crises, and fails to seize the opportunity to use the net zero transition as a means to remedy longstanding issues with the health of our buildings, says the BSRIA.
Embodied carbon is rising up the agenda. But there are many technology gaps, in particular cost-competitive low and zero carbon substitutes for concrete and steel. Best estimates are that a scalable solution for these is at least a decade away.
This makes it even more important for the construction industry to do the best it can now.
The UK must retrofit one million buildings per year if it is to meet net zero requirements. This is incredibly unlikely, an impossible challenge.
But to finish on an optimistic note by quoting BSRIA, speaking on behalf of its members. “For each essential ingredient such as technology, process, and monitoring, we have effective examples that are proven at the building scale and ready to be replicated nationwide. Net zero requirements. This is incredibly unlikely, an impossible challenge.
But to finish on an optimistic note by quoting BSRIA, speaking on behalf of its members. “For each essential ingredient such as technology, process, and monitoring, we have effective examples that are proven at the building scale and ready to be replicated nationwide. Net zero refurbishment is here.”
