said Skidmore. “Rather than just talking about decarbonisation, which is intangible to a lot of people, we can talk about homes that don’t cost people anything for their electricity. These homes rarely come back onto the market because people enjoy a high quality of life [from living in them].” He added that it was equally important to be more ambitious about commercial properties and help companies improve their international reputation by being Net Zero ‘pioneers’. “How do we remove the barriers to those who want to go further and faster but are held back by bureaucracy?” he asked. “Why not ensure that companies that have worked
to reduce their emissions can go further through off -setting by insulating homes in their local area? (Rather than buying trees). We should take the enthusiasm that exists at the top and help it to trickle down.” Frise said energy effi ciency was “the cheap and easy prize for improving existing buildings, but it involves inconvenience and cost” so it needs to be made fi nancially attractive.
Newman added that measuring energy usage and Measuring building carbon emissions remains
a challenge and Skidmore pointed out that Energy Performance Certifi cates were an imperfect tool. “The EPC was never designed to judge carbon emissions but is being used as such. The government is willing to review that, but we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater.” The Future Buildings Standard, which comes into
force in 2025, will be an important lever but he said there was already no excuse for some of the ongoing bad practices in housebuilding. “There’s no reason why all new homes shouldn’t
have solar panels on them now,” he said. “It’s also unacceptable that we have built 1.3 million homes that will have to be retrofi tted by 2050. Hands up, it was government policy that allowed that to happen.” However, he said he was delighted that the
government had recommitted to the abolition of gas boilers by 2035. “The future is heat pumps and it’s useful to have a fi xed destination to aim for so people can work towards it.” Frise pointed out that the industry had made a similar change work before with the mass transition to gas condensing boilers, which “completely changed the market”. However, he said BESA members often
complained about lack of enforcement of existing regulations. The podcasters discussed how linking
Net Zero to the new more rigorous safety agenda driven by the Building Safety Act could improve compliance. “This should not just be an environment policy
framework,” agreed Skidmore. “We are the poor man of Europe when it comes to energy effi ciency so by improving that we can also improve quality of life for people.” Fahey added that it was important to “engage people in the heat pump journey” to avoid them feeling that decarbonisation was “being ‘done’ to them”. However, he said there had been signifi cant progress and heat pumps and net zero were now being discussed on breakfast TV. However, the conversation can often get bogged down on whether they are too noisy; how much they cost; and whether we have the skills needed to get installations right.
Double down
Skidmore said this was the kind of detail that he was keen to “double down” on and wanted to bring the building industry supply chain together to look closely at the practicalities of his report’s recommendations. He invited BESA members to get involved and give their views on the opportunities and barriers to net zero. “We need to look at how we campaign,”
carbon emissions in your own organisation was the best starting point for everyone. “We all need to look at our sphere of infl uence to see where we can make a diff erence but measuring everything is a great place to start,” he said. Reducing the price gap between electricity and gas should be a government priority, Skidmore said, as it was crucial to reduce the price of low carbon solutions like heat pumps. France is already 10 to 15 years ahead of us in that area, he explained. He also said the UK would have to redraft the rules around permitted development to make it easier to deploy heat pumps.
“If we get the transition right people hardly even
notice it happening around them because the price is coming down and the value is going up,” he added. The group identifi ed skills shortages as one of the biggest barriers to Net Zero and said the solution would require a combination of innovation, new technology and upskilling existing labour. Skidmore agreed there needed to be more focus
on reskilling and upskilling “because we can’t just be talking about a new generation, we need to use the existing workforce”. Creating regional retrofi t hubs was another of his review recommendations and this was an area where local authorities could play a part.
¡ To listen to the full podcast click here.
www.theBESA.com
DOWNLOAD THE HVR APP NOW
June 2023
9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36