Building for Tomorrow’s Climate
Britain’s homes weren’t built for today’s climate, let alone tomorrow’s wetter, warmer, windier world of extremes. It’s cooling and heating, energy efficiency, ventilation and air quality, noise, water and more. But we’re stuck with them for the next 50 years or more. The topic was covered in depth by the BMBI experts at the latest annual BMBI Round Table Debate. This is what they said:
Tim Wood – Editor of BMN: What should we do to keep Britain’s housing stock habitable?
Mike Rigby – CEO, MRA Research: We have the oldest and the least energy-efficient housing in Europe, but I think it goes beyond energy, heating and cooling. Our homes were built and designed with a different climate in mind. Noise can be a real problem. Air pollution is rising, just like temperature.
The United Nations Climate Chief, Jim Skea, just said, ‘Forget 1.5 degrees, that’s history. Emissions are still rising. People are saying one thing and doing another. It’ll be a real struggle to cap it at 2, and 3 is the most likely outcome.’ Western Europe is heating up faster than other areas.
With new builds, it’s easy to ramp up the standards and go to 150mm cavities and more insulation in the roof and so on, but the real challenge is what you do with the housing and building stock.
Relying on the government to actually come up with the answers and the money is a pious hope. So, what can we do, as an industry? I know in other markets, often they find the finance and ally that to the schemes themselves rather than waiting for government. Finance becomes an enabler.
John Newcomb – Chief Executive, BMF: We’ve called for a National Retrofit Strategy. It’s still a central plank of CLC. If you go onto the National Retrofit Hub, there are fantastic examples of what businesses are doing to support retrofitting of homes. And there’s some great work happening in places like Wales and Scotland supporting social housing.
Dan Cheung – Lead Channel Marketing Manager, wienerberger: We take the approach of short-term actionable goals for longer-term change; 3-year cycles of goals. We’re retrofitting our Broomfleet Clay Tile factory to have fully electric kilns. Our new Smeed Dean factory will be fully electric, the first whole plant in the UK to do that.
Ian Doherty – Chief Executive, Owlett-Jaton: People’s behaviour only changes when it costs them. So, let’s get energy prices up because then people have an incentive to insulate their houses. But then we’ve got a cost of living problem. Or you’ve got a problem if you live in rented accommodation because the landlord is going, ‘Well, you’re paying the heating bill, not me, so I’ve got no incentive’.
One of the big problems with things like heat pumps, is the cost of gas compared to electricity. Money changes behaviour, and gas is very cheap. So, if you move people onto electric heating, their personal costs go right up. A massive disincentive to move off gas. There’s a big conundrum in pricing, so there’s a role for government.
Charles Burns – Divisional Director, Brett Martin: Most people when they talk about climate they talk about energy. You’ve talked a little bit about noise pollution Mike. But water is a huge issue. There was an industry association under the Clegg-Cameron coalition. The price of water in Germany was four times the price of the UK, and nobody was saving water in the UK because it was too cheap. We worked on changing the business plan that Ofwat would give the water utilities, making it a target to offer water-saving devices to existing housing stock. And they would put that into their AMP programme and be responsible for rolling that out. We did it with merchants, distribution, and lots of manufacturers.
They were going to put half a penny on your cubic cost of water across the country to create a fund of 100 million deployed as discounted products for existing houses. It failed because the coalition fell. But it was working through a regulated entity, and a huge opportunity to make a significant difference.
John Newcomb: You’ve got to be careful with government incentives. Apparently the market in Germany market has collapsed in heat pumps because the government brought in incentives, driving volume and demand up. The moment those incentives were taken away, the demand for heat pumps – because they realised they’re actually a very inefficient product, particularly in a retrofitted home – has just collapsed. And now a lot of the manufacturers in Germany have been left with large stocks of heat pumps.
Charles Burns: The beauty of the Ofwat plan it wasn’t funded by government. It was effectively self-funded.
John Newcomb: It has to be driven by the consumer’s demand or drive to change. If you’re living in an old house that’s leaking energy, it’s partly your responsibility to bring somebody in to advise you how to make it more energy efficient.
Ian Doherty: As long as that’s economically viable.
John Newcomb: But if you want to make a difference individually, then you do these things partly because it’s a logical thing to do, partly because you know you’re helping to reduce emissions. We still have homes that have no loft or cavity wall insulation.
Dan Cheung: There are probably 29 million new homes that need to be retrofitted to hit net zero by 2050. So, there is a revenue opportunity. But when we talk to social housing companies and schemes, there’s an assumption that they are experts. But they need the manufacturing perspective, and we have teams to support and give expertise in the range of solutions. Not just ours, a multi-product range of solutions.
We speak to house builders all the time and they’ll say, ‘We’d love to use this new, more sustainable product’. They specify it, but because planning is under so much pressure, they need to get as many houses through as they can. So, with something that takes a little bit more investigation and work it’s like, ‘I’d love to, but can we just go back to the norm?’ And then they don’t approve it. That’s just one example of some help that could come that’s not financial.
Mike Rigby: Knauf Insulation is doing some interesting work measuring, monitoring and guaranteeing the savings of insulating products. If you can prove and guarantee the savings, it’s going to give people a lot more confidence to go ahead and buy it.
Andrew Brewin – Finance Director, Keystone Lintels: We’ve got the products. The Hi-therm lintel is much more energy efficient than the standard lintel. It’s showing people that there are energy efficiencies. Small changes they can make when they’re replacing windows when that time comes. Because there is a natural desire to keep improving your house. These small changes add up to a big effect for sustainability.
John Newcomb: There is a manifesto commitment to retrofit 2 million homes a year over the 5-year period. A national cross-party retrofit strategy is what’s needed, but we’re not good at cross-party commitments because when new government comes in, they scrap what’s been done or blame the previous government.
Andrew Brewin: The rental challenge is a good point because you’ve got the person who owns the house and the person who uses it and has the cost, you know? Europeans have a lot more rental accommodation than us, but they also have a lot more social housing as well, so we should look to that model to see how that works.
Ian Doherty: That’s going to be a big issue for local councils owning social housing; trying to retrofit with all the other demands on their finances. I don’t know of a council that’s not running a deficit.
Andy Simpson: Legislating landlords could be one option. The government could ask the banks to help with interest-free options. We helped them massively in the financial crisis in 2008. It’s time for them to tip up. Because the money can’t come from the government, can it? It can’t afford it.
It’s got to come from private householders or investors. Or companies supplying the materials can do good deals for retrofitting; they’re going to increase their business, aren’t they? There’s a business opportunity for a retrofitting business.
This write-up was first published in the Builders Merchants News.
