“But, how do we pay for it?” If this is a question you hear (or ask!) a lot in reference to home energy upgrades at scale, then this Futurebuild panel round-up is for you! Our Dr. Zachary Gill shared a stage with fellow finance fanatics to explore the critical question of whether retrofit is ???????????????? investible. ?? ???????????????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????? chaired by Sero's Andrew Sutton ?? Green Finance Institute's Ryan Jude & National Wealth Fund's Jeremy Barker shared that there are billions in finance available for retrofit (you could feel the excitement in the crowd!) The challenge is getting the?funding models right to unlock it. Jeremy explained that?finance?is like a mortgage, and?funding?is the ability to repay that mortgage borrowing! ??? Chris Brown shared Climatise's approach for the private sector - buying Victorian terraced houses and retrofitting them to an Octopus Energy Zero Bills standard. The investment is then recouped through directly increased sales value (and then some). ?? Zack presented our Comfort Plan? model for the social housing sector whereby a proportion of the landlord’s capital outlay is recovered via a simple monthly charge to residents. This is all underpinned by monitoring, measurement and performance guarantees. We raised the need for government, industry, and finance institution collaboration to: ? ?? Review and update rent cap flexibility (and/or introduce service charges) proportionate to performance guarantee retrofit measures ?? Reduce the spark gap to incentivise the electrification of heat ?? Introduce flexible grant funding mechanisms that focus on the?outcomes?of retrofit rather than individual measures ?? Develop alternative funding mechanisms to overcome fuel poverty issues and underheated homes (approximately 15% of social housing!) that would not benefit from a Comfort Plan?. ?? ?????????? ???????? ?????? ???????????????? ??? The audience agreed that the language of retrofit needs changing and we agree (hence why we talk about "comfort") ?? The audience also questioned the need for whole house retrofit vs a staged approach and panellists agreed that both can work and we simply need to be getting on with everything that we can. We need to get those funding models working to access the finance pots available, and deliver demonstrable high-performance retrofit projects. ? And as long-standing champions of collaboration, we were delighted to hear audience member Haig Housing's Dan Gatenby BSc (Hons) usefully note that if the panellists worked directly together, there was a clear delivery vehicle for scaling up retrofit right there! Stay tuned for more insights into our Comfort Plan??model very soon! #EnergyEfficiency #Finance #Retrofit #NetZero #ComfortPlan The Retrofit Academy
Is it me .. or … is Ryan asleep, Jeremy considering how sitting this panel may impact his pending challenge on the conservative seat in Dagenham (good luck in the locals and killer socks - should ideally match a pocket square though), Chris wondering how Octopus can quietly acquire Energiesprong and absorb the unwelcome noise without anybody noticing and Dan trying his best to make those still listening, understand reason from the housing perspective. And Zach.. sit back, smile and let the madness prevail.. I’m with Dan (and Zach.. Zach looks chill..) . Dan looks like the only sensible (and awake) man of the people.. Nice one Dan. Keep it real. Ps. Has anybody worked out what energiesprong actually is or do yet? I consider myself a reasonably intelligent chap who has spent 20 good years in this blessed industry and I personally don’t have clue. Answers on a postcard.
Oh and meant to say - thank you to Jamie Abbott for the photo! Always good to have a friend in the audience
Language and collaboration are going to be core components. We also need to invest time in developing business models that deliver. We know the technologies to deliver but we still need to work on the models to unlock the finance available.
Very interesting discussions - good summary. To support clients, whether #socialhousing sector or any future wider private sector initiatives, I look forward to these colloborations and initiatives moving forward.
Founder/Director @ ENERGY LOCK | Retrofit Coordination and Assessments and Air Testing
5 天前I was unfortunately not in attendance ti this and would love to have been there. I like the concept of Comfort Plan for SHDF but I question whether a savings payback option would work. In reality most occupants in SHDF are heating to what they can afford and that's often not much heating with large under consumptions. If improvements were made, yes it would take less energy to heat the property but the occupants would just increase their useage to their budget and so there wouldn't be any energy/cost savings as such. ￡5 of heating may give you a few hours on gas before retrofit, and then after it may give you a day of adequate heating and comfort. Unless these homes are made almost self sufficient (which isnt being achieved in current budgets) will we really see any cost savings where the occupants can then afford to pay higher rents? We don't want to have a situation where they can't afford to heat their home before and still can't afford to heat their home after. I see the comfort plan model working for the private sector but I'm not sure if it allows us to help vulnerable residents within SHDF, happy to be educated on this to better understand how it wouldn't.