A new report from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership sets out an integrated business case for banks, insurers and the government to retrofit the UK’s ageing housing stock.
The report illustrates the necessity of ‘an integrated and long-term retrofit strategy’, which is ‘essential to support the resilience and insurability of the £1.16 trillion mortgage portfolio, support economic growth, job creation, energy security and reduced health spending’.
Produced in collaboration with the Banking Environment Initiative and ClimateWise, the report brings together financial sector and built environment industry perspectives on how to prepare Britain’s homes for the climate crisis.
The report comes as the government confirmed it would allocate £13.2 billion to the Warm Homes Plan. CISL welcomed the move, but said more needs to be done: ‘There are crucial opportunities to also integrate resilience aspect of our housing stock with the rising climate crisis such as flooding’.
The statement added:
“The UK’s housing stock accounts for 12% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, 84% of households still use fossil gas or oil for heating and hot water. On top of this, poor energy efficiency and lacking resilience to the impacts of climate change expose households to rising bills, health risks and mounting extreme weather events.
“Alongside having a major impact on households, these drive-up public costs and reduce economic productivity. Most homes that will exist in 2050 are already built, underscoring the urgency of a national retrofit programme that delivers energy efficiency, low carbon heating and climate adaptation.”
Jonathan Kassian, head of research at FloodRe, said of the report:
“Making our building stock resilient to climate impacts is where the climate challenge hits home. This report sets out clearly the value to both householders and institutions of addressing these issues – flood risk, energy efficiency, heating, health – in an integrated way.”
Becci Taylor, director at built environment consultancy ARUP commented:
“Call it retrofit or call it integrated investment in foundational housing infrastructure, upgrading our homes to be safe, healthy, efficient, resilient, and sensitive to our planetary system is urgent. This report builds a broad case across the opportunities for both positive outcomes and risk mitigation – unifying industry actors across government, finance and insurers to move us closer to scaling action.”
The full report, with detailed conclusions and recommendations, can be downloaded here.
