Greening the built environment is one of the biggest economic, social and environmental opportunities for the UK over the next three decades. It will create jobs, stimulate economic growth, reduce fuel poverty, improve health and wellbeing, not to mention helping to eliminate the 40% of UK greenhouse gas emissions that are produced by the built environment sector (UK Green Building Council).

B4NZ recommends that Government should roll out an ambitious programme of deep retrofits in the social housing sector, bring forward implementation of the Future Homes Standard and Future Buildings Standard, and set out a clear pathway for how energy efficiency standards that will ratchet up all the way to net zero compliant over the next 20-30 years. Some of our recommendations can be accessed in this report which contains recommendations to drive greater public-private collaboration and unlock private finance that support household retrofitting.

In order to turn these recommendations into action, B4NZ are currently working on two live projects:

1. EPC Policy Campaign

B4NZ launched a campaign to reform EPCs in October 2023 and are working with financial institutions and other sector leaders to gather and enhance feedback on existing Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) reforms. The programme aims explore innovative technologies and solutions to improve energy performance in buildings and examine how EPC ratings can be made fit for purpose to deliver on the UK’s Net Zero targets, with the ambition to align reform recommendations across the financial and retrofit sectors.

B4NZ and the National Retrofit Hub are hosting further roundtable and workshop discussions with retrofit sector stakeholders and financial institutions to develop a series of policy recommendations that are aligned across sectors. To learn more and participate in these workshops, please reach out to action@b4nz.co.uk.

2. National Retrofit Hub Finance Working Group

B4NZ are co-convening Finance working group for the newly formed National Retrofit Hub with our partners at the Green Finance Institute and LSE Grantham Institute. The National Retrofit Hub is an industry and UK Government backed initiative to enable the delivery of retrofit at scale across the UK. This working group works to define and implement solutions to retrofit financing processes across the domestic property market.

The group was launched in July 2023 with its first sessions bringing together lenders, local authorities, delivery partners and the wider ecosystem to begin exploring the barriers and enablers for financing retrofit at scale and to identify opportunity for collaboration to drive positive change.