After many years of chronic under-investment, the damage being done by the UK’s ageing infrastructure is becoming stingingly clear. According to the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), nearly 40% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been traced back to old buildings, the majority of which fall short of national energy efficiency standards. This out-of-date stock is now a national energy sinkhole, wasting already meagre progress towards the government's new net zero target.  A swift and seemingly arbitrary amendment to the 2008 Climate Change Act by Theresa May’s administration in 2019 saw the UK become the first G7 country to enshrine in law a commitment towards reducing emissions by 100% compared to 1990 levels. Now, with a 2050 deadline, successive UK governments face the unenviable task of zeroing the nation’s balance sheet, and have just 30 years to do so. 

On the back of stern IPCC recommendations to reorient and hasten conservation efforts towards a new 1.5 degree warming threshold, the policy change has forced sustainability taskforce groups to reconsider the role of domestic housing in the climate bout. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for example, afforded special attention to improving the energy-performance of existing UK buildings in their post policy report, deeming energy retrofits a cornerstone means of achieving net zero. The construction of new-builds however, will have little role to play in all this. 80% of 2050 infrastructure has already been built, leaving little scope for even the greenest housing developments to move the needle on emissions. In other words, the UK is staring down the barrel of almost 29 million infrastructure revivals and conventional-form retrofits won’t provide the bailout. 

Conventional retrofits are a linear exchange, where old technology models are swapped out for their more modern, sustainable counterparts - think incandescent lighting for LEDs. Such exchanges neglect to take account of the complex interplays between individual energy systems and their users. That being said, the simplicity with which they can be implemented has proven wildly successful in terms of consumer uptake. We only have to cast our minds back to the double-glazing boom of the 1980s to see evidence of this; during just one decade, adoption rates soared from 16% to well over 60% in what seemed to be a first major greenwards attitude shift. However, even with sky-high adoption rates, the potential of conventional retrofits are a mere drop in the ocean compared to deep energy retrofits (DERs). DERs provide a holistic, cradle-to-grave solution, where a single project can involve comprehensive improvements.. It doesn’t stop at modern insulation. Heating, cooling, distribution, and recovery systems are carefully implemented and come complete with smart metres to bond people to their smart new homes. While the difference DERs can make to a building’s energy performance are stark, taking such a hardline approach is not without its quarms. 

The UK’s political landscape is proving to be a minefield for DER-related policies. Inadequate incentives are slowing uptake and halting investment.  At the same time, rapidly advancing technologies are outpacing personnel training at a rate which has created a skills shortage. The vacuum has been hastily filled by rogue traders and opportunists, undermining the credibility of DER projects. What’s more, the UK is witnessing an infuriating divergence of scientific guidance and policy. The government continually fails to make good use of expert advice, especially when it is not politically expedient. Until there is full cooperation, net zero by 2050 looks increasingly unlikely. 

Flawed Incentives

Since the advent of the Energy Efficiency Office (EEO) in 1986, monetary savings on energy bills, or ‘monergy’ (yes, that’s right), has generally been the government’s choice incentive. This empty stimulus is a band-aid solution that hands responsibility over to consumers. Despite being a low-cost, low-risk approach for the government, monergy falls woefully short. Pay-back rates for efficient technologies are notoriously high - 30 to 45 years for solid wall insulation - and thus inconceivable for the fuel-poor. Contrarily, the ‘able-to-pay’ are generally unconcerned with the cost of their energy bills and prefer to stick with what they already have in favour of parting with cash right now for future gains that are difficult to picture. 

Unfortunately, any incentive that relies on consumers to bear most of the initial costs and risks is fundamentally flawed. Instead, the government should collaborate with the private sector to play a subsidiary role. Two recent schemes, EnergieSprong UK and the £5 million GHFIF, have attempted to do exactly this, shifting initial retrofit costs away from the consumer and onto housing developers. Encouraging at first, meaningful investment has since dwindled and neither scheme was able to live up to expectations. An aura of mistrust looms large over the retrofit industry. It will not be lifted so long as dodgy traders and antiquated policy keep scaring off much needed investment.

A Construction Industry That’s Playing Catch-up

One way the government has attempted to combat this is by funnelling £1 billion of public funds towards drastically upscaling apprenticeship schemes. Despite such a big financial commitment, not enough trainees make it into long-term positions. Many companies simply don’t take the bait. Others exploit it, using the scheme as a source of cheap labour by only offering short-term work. Smarter incentives have to be set out to bridge the gap between a class of demoralised apprentices and unconvinced executives. An ironclad plan to upskill existing workers and bring fresh talent in would jumpstart the industry. Skilled workers bring quality installations that will impress consumers and drive uptake. Some newfound momentum could finally sway close-fisted lenders and reverse the fortunes of an industry that has the potential to thrive in the coming years.

The funding and the will to use it clearly exists but it is too often squandered on half-baked initiatives. Remarkably, In yet another instance of garbled policymaking, the government’s flagship subsidy scheme actually stalled uptake.‘The Green Deal’, which offered affordable loans to give more consumers access to deep retrofits, completely misfired. On average it incurred financial losses of £17,000 per loan, the brunt of which was absorbed by the taxpayer.  

We could do with more considered long-term policy approaches, but with the spectre of 2050 skulking on the periphery, ministers are under pressure to publish results and not more proposals. Expert advice from the Green Finance Taskforce (GFT) or CCC is there to be heeded, but interest from policymakers is perennially lukewarm. In fact, among experts, the jury is still out on whether setting such ambitious targets, especially so arbitrarily, will achieve much beyond encouraging widespread greenwashing. 

Where Do We Go From Here? 

Ousting CERT for TGD is now widely considered a failure and there is dire need of a water-tight alternative. This time around, consumer experience should be central. Sensible budgeting, realistic target-setting and the creation of national energy performance datasets would not be remiss. The latter is key since big data on carbon usage can feed energy policy modelling tools (see the National Household Model) in assisting future decision making. Uptake can be driven with strategic incentivisation; targeting the ‘able-to-pay’ demographic and offering genuine return on investment. 

Even if such changes are implemented, any policy going forward risks being undermined by an industry which is ceaseless in exploiting loopholes. 2008’s ‘crackdown’ on energy efficiency standards revealed that 10% of modern dwellings were found to be non-compliant, yet remained on the market with no consequential action. Similar policy flaws, such as block averaging, are continually being manipulated. 

I’m firmly of the belief that the vast majority of the public are willing to make significant compromises for the sake of the planet and future generations. But they will rightly not be compelled to gamble on a rotating cast of schemes that have so far failed to make an impact. Until the optics improve, the public will hold onto their cash and schemes like TGD will stagnate.

A COVID Era Update

The Green Homes Grant is the government’s most recent attempt at tackling the retrofit challenge, yet it seems to be fraught with the same blunders and mismanaged handling as before. Delayed start dates, shortened deadlines, and unrealistic standards have negated any improvements made. In upkeep with the u-turn-Britain of 2020, the government has now scrapped the grant, leaving already committed able-to-payers, along with their contractors, high and dry on their green journeys. This will have a lasting impact on the ability of future consumers to trust in similar schemes. 

Even if lessons are learnt, barriers overcome, and the 2050 target is resoundly met, some glaring caveats remain. Two of the nation’s largest emitting industries, shipping and aviation, were omitted from the initial ‘net zero’ calculations. Effectively, this means in the unlikely scenario that the government fulfils its ambitions - it will only be able to celebrate by rolling out new targets that compensate. 

To date, we stand at the halfway point, having achieved a 51% reduction in GHG emissions since 1990 - a hopeful prospect, it seems. However, by failing to include provisions for aviation and shipping, will achieving net zero have any tangible effect? According to the IPCC, we are on track to surpass the 1.5 degree warming threshold by 2040, 10 years before the net zero deadline.