The imperative to tackle climate change is more pressing than ever. A crucial step towards meeting this challenge is increasing energy efficiency in the built environment.¹ However, energy efficiency is not simply a climate issue: it can also boost GDP, improve energy independence, enable more efficient manufacturing, decrease emissions and place less strain on the public budget.
Increasing energy efficiency can help build a more prosperous, resilient and sustainable United Kingdom, by impacting positively on:
- Jobs - through investment in new, greener businesses, processes, products and services and the creation of new, green jobs.
- Communities - through energy-bill savings for each UK household – a step towards tackling the cost of living crisis.
- Health - through cleaner air and healthy temperatures, as well as mitigating mental health issues arising from excess cold in homes.
Unlocking these benefits will require a step change in action. Today, despite many policy interventions, the UK’s homes and buildings (the “built environment”) still represent about 17% of all carbon emissions.²
To deliver significant change, the UK will need to accelerate action. It won’t be easy: there are many barriers to overcome. Making the UK’s buildings more energy efficient means tackling low demand, insufficient and fragmented supply, misaligned incentives and standards, limited financial support for installation costs and skills shortages.
Combined public and private sector action is needed to deliver the energy efficiency prize. Strong signals from the public sector can enable the private sector to deliver change at scale, while greater ambition from the private sector can allow the public sector to implement regulations needed to ramp up energy efficiency. Communities should be at the heart of all such plans.
The insights in our new report can help move the built environment closer to net zero, achieving not only sustainability goals, but social goals, too. Read the report here: Accelerating energy efficiency in the built environment.
Andrew Gray, Managing Director of Commercial Mid-Market, NatWest Group
References:
1. Hu et al., “A systematic review of building energy sufficiency towards energy and climate targets,” ScienceDirect, 2023, Volume 181.
2. Progress in reducing emissions: 2023 report to Parliament, Climate Change Committee, June 2023. Government milestone.
