The UK’s green housing initiatives lag way behind our European counterparts, explain Jon Bloomfield and Patrick Willcocks
Energy is the issue rising up the political agenda. Bills are increasing fast, with a big hike in the price cap set by the Government scheduled for this April.
Listen to voices in the right-wing press and coming out of the Conservative ‘Net Zero Scrutiny Group’ and the main culprits are green levies and subsidies to renewables. Read the cultural warriors like academic Matthew Goodwin and they have the climate change agenda set firmly in their sights.
This is a foretaste of battles to come.
The climate deniers have morphed into sceptics; they now profess to accept the science but claim it is too difficult and expensive to do anything about it. They may have changed tactics and tone, but they remain deniers at heart.
As Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister appears to be drawing to a close, climate change looks set to be the new ‘culture war’ battleground, as the hard-right looks to rally around a figurehead seeking to reverse Johnson’s tepid – but real – acceptance of the climate change agenda.
The Draughtiest Housing in Europe
The climate sceptics never mention that UK households are particularly exposed to spikes in electricity and gas prices because Britain has the worst housing quality in western Europe with the most energy inefficient homes.
As the map below shows, on a cold day UK households experience three times the heat loss of their German or Scandinavian counterparts. People cannot see the heat loss, but it shows in their bills.
Yet, the Government’s two efforts to address the coldest and leakiest housing in Europe have been disastrous failures.
David Cameron’s flagship scheme – the grossly misnamed ‘Green Deal’ – aspired to be “Europe’s most innovative and transformational energy efficiency programme”. However, its annual target of two million retrofitted homes struggled to reach just 6,000, less than 1% of its target.
The Government’s model of high interest, private loans through an independent finance company simply did not deliver. Its broader failure was highlighted recently in an article in Carbon Brief showing how Cameron’s anti-green measures have added £2.5 billion to UK energy bills since 2015.
The Conservatives’ second attempt at energy efficiency – the Green Homes Grant scheme – was launched in Boris Johnson’s 10-point ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ plan. It was contracted-out to the US global consulting firm ICF. Of the £1.5 billion promised in its first year, only £71 million – less than 5% – was spent. The scheme was then scrapped, having reached just 10% of the 600,000 homes that the Chancellor had promised would be improved.
The contracted-out, top-down, ‘householder as consumer’ model has failed – yet the Government is still pursuing a largely individual, householder-based approach, without setting an annual target for housing renovation.
Learning from Europe
This is not just a UK issue. The swift and effective transformation of housing stock is one of the central tests for Europe’s net-zero ambitions.
All the advantages of focusing on building refurbishment are clearly laid out in this European Commission document – not least ensuring substantial emission reductions before 2030 and creating thousands of jobs.
Is Europe up to the challenge?
The agreement hammered out between the German Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals represents the most serious attempt yet by a national government to develop an eco-social market economy. The combination of three parties drawn from distinctive political traditions, along with the backing of the Confederation of German Industry, indicates the breadth of the coalition mobilising around the climate change agenda.
On energy efficiency and renovation, this new German coalition can build on the impressive work undertaken by previous governments operating the country’s social market model, which gives a crucial role to state financial intervention and regulatory support. Thus, in 2020, the state reconstruction bank, KfW, in its energy efficiency programme awarded loans and grants worth €27 billion for the renovation of almost half a million residential units.
The contrast with Rishi Sunak’s Green Homes scheme is astounding. The German programme is now being strengthened: it covers both residential and non-residential buildings; wholesale retrofit as well as partial; includes grants for a whole range of technologies as well as systemic measures such as the installation of dig