Five takeaways from AJ Retrofit Live: ‘Net zero is here to stay’

The event, now in its second year, came in the wake of the recent government rollback on environmental commitments and the scrapping of an energy efficiency scheme for housing.

Conservative MP Chris Skidmore, who led the government’s net zero review just last year, admitted to members of the audience that while the government’s recent policy on net zero ‘does look like the UK is rowing back on its climate commitments’, there was still room for optimism – not least because of those sitting in the room.

Architects and professionals from across the industry also heard from Peter Barber, Annalie Riches, Jonathan Hagos of Freehaus, Archio’s Mellis Haward, WilkinsonEyre's head of sustainability Nuno Correia and a range of political and developer voices who discussed topics such as how to collaborate your way to retrofit, the social impact of reuse and how to reimagine the country’s half a million empty homes.

• The UK Climate Change Committee ‘won’t have confidence’ in government reaching net zero targets

Skidmore, a former energy minister who is leaving Parliament at the next election, told AJ Retrofit Live that the government’s own climate change committee ‘certainly won’t have confidence now’ in the UK’s ability to meet its climate commitments. The committee had previously warned that the nation was not on course for net zero by 2050.

But his comments, which come in the wake of No 10 backtracking on several green pledges this month, were tinged with optimism.

He said: ‘The events of last week were so unfortunate because the top line takeaway was a rollback on net zero. But I honestly feel that net zero is now here to stay.

‘No prime minister, no government, can turn back on the fact that 93 per cent of global GDP is committed to net zero and new net zero markets are emerging.

‘There are decisions being made in boardrooms today, around retrofit, around looking at how to decarbonise buildings, that are independent of government’.

• ‘Building beauty’ is a diversion from real issues like homelessness

Social housing champion Peter Barber told the audience that housing secretary Michael Gove's focus on 'building beauty' was a 'diversion' from other issues, including homelessness and the need to retrofit the country's ageing housing stock.

The principal of Peter Barber Architects said: ‘Let's be focused on the fact that there are 7,000 people in this city [London] living on the pavement at the moment in one of the richest cities the world has ever seen.

'So this is a diversion and we're all trying to make our buildings beautiful, but I'd much rather see them focusing on the more logical areas of policy which affect people's lives'.

Barber's speech also outlined his ambitious '8,000-mile island' idea to revitalise coastal communities throughout the UK through measures such as renewable energy, fishing, seagrass farming and retrofitting existing buildings.

• Labour would commit £6 billion to improving EPCs for 19 million homes

Rachel Blake, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the Cities of London & Westminster, set out her party's plan for retrofitting an estimated 19 million homes with EPC ratings of D or lower should it win the next election.

Blake said: 'The Labour Party's green prosperity plan recognises the importance of the transition to a net zero carbon economy and seizes the opportunity that transition presents to improve people's lives. Because unless the transition does just that, improve people's lives, it simply won't stick.'

She also set out how households would be supported with grants to retrofit their homes and called for a 'civic culture at all levels of government, which enables partnership with local people and organisations (to push forward retrofit).

• 40 per cent of the floor area in the developed world was built before 1980 (which could be retrofitted)

Thibault Nugue, partner and project director for architect practice Patriarche, set out his argument for why retrofitting both commercial and residential buildings needs to be done at scale to meet climate targets – and why there is a clear business case for doing so.

He told the room: 'If we want to reach a sustainable development scenario, we'd have to renovate 4 billion m² per year until 2070. I was not able to imagine what it looks like actually – it's the equivalent of the current floor area of France.'

Nugue continued: 'From the design perspective, and even the real estate or the industry perspective, we have to transform our way of thinking because 40 per cent of the carbon emissions during the lifetime of the building is due to the construction and 60 per cent is doing the operational phase.'

• ‘You would be an idiot to retrofit your house, financially speaking, but we should do it anyway‘

Doing retrofit impoverishes you’, announced Rufus Grantham, co-founder of social enterprise advisory firm Living Places, to his AJ Retrofit Live audience.

‘If you say to someone, do you want less toxic air quality for your kids? Do you want more comfortable homes with lower energy levels? The answer will be yes. Do you want to retrofit? No’, he said.

Grantham, who had a 23-year career in mainstream finance before co-founding Living Places, explained the need to change the narrative around the perception of retrofit benefits to focus on the added benefits of new jobs and economic stimulus, health outcomes, and educational attainment – as well as revolutionising the available funding options.‘

There is an economic rationale for doing this,’ he argued, highlighting the need for a standardised, government-funded system for retrofit with which developers and stakeholders can be familiar. This would be a place-based model with no requirement for upfront capital contribution from residents.

But Grantham issued some final sobering advice to the industry: if we are going to retrofit the UK’s housing, first we must ‘accept the scale of the cost’ we are dealing with.