Trial / Demo
Last week, UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, delivered his much anticipated second budget. Understandably, support for vaccination programmes, test and trace, as well as ongoing schemes to protect the jobs and livelihoods of those suffering most as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic were the top items on the agenda. However, with so much talk globally around the need for countries to focus on Green Recovery strategies to simultaneously address the climate emergency and the economic fallout from the pandemic, many were also keen to see what Sunak had in store on the climate front.
Admittedly, some may have been disappointed by the relative lack of focus on climate change and net-zero targets in comparison to last year’s budget announcement. Carbon Brief reported that: “In contrast to last year’s offering, Sunak’s speech and budget “red book” gave much less space to climate change and the UK’s net-zero target. The red book uses the word “climate” only nine times, against 31 last year, with seven appearances for “net-zero”, down from 17.”
With COP26 on the horizon, it would have been reasonable to anticipate that net-zero investment might have held more prominence in the UK’s Budget plans. Particularly while, as the host nation, the UK attempts to set the stage for accelerated action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement ahead of the global summit in Glasgow this November.
That is not to say that the climate issue was absent entirely. Perhaps most significant was the announcement that the UK’s net-zero target has been made one of the government’s overarching economic policy objectives, placing it in the remit for the Bank of England’s monetary and financial policy committees. While the impact of this move is yet to be seen, one potential outcome that has been speculated is that this may force the bank to consider climate change risks as part of its emergency coronavirus response. Amongst other key climate announcements were the launch of a new National Infrastructure Bank, which will tackle climate change as one of two core objectives from its £22 billion financial capacity, as well as a separate pledge of £15 billion in UK Government green gilts to support net-zero.
However, one of the more disappointing outcomes, from a net-zero perspective, was the lack of consideration afforded to green building and retrofit initiatives. Despite the introduction in 2020 of a Green Homes Grant of £2 billion for home-efficiency upgrades (such as insulation or low-carbon heating) as well as £1 billion for improvements in public buildings, last year’s proposed investments already represented a significant downgrade from the Conservative’s 2019 election manifesto promise that £9.2bn would be be spent on energy efficiency.
Even more disheartening are the recent reports that the scheme has failed to deliver what it set out to do just last year. These reports state that only 6.3% of the Green Homes funding that was earmarked for households has actually been spent, and more discouraging still were the reports from the Financial Times that the government does not intend to roll over most of the unspent grants to the next financial year, quietly withdrawing £1 billion in funding in the process. Unsurprisingly, no mention of this, nor the scheme itself, was made in the latest budget.
So where does this leave us in our hope of securing a net-zero built environment before 2050?
While it is imperative that governments endeavour to address the pressing, near-time impacts of the pandemic to help those most affected, it is important that countries do not lose sight of the equally pressing, longer term threats posed by a changing climate. We’ve heard the projections that, if left unchecked, climate change could be five times as deadly as COVID-19 by 2100. It is going to take significant amounts of effort and investment across all levels of society, globally, to mobilise governments, industry, communities and citizens to all play a part in finding the solutions and making climate conscious decisions to make net-zero ambitions at all achievable.
It’s been said by us, and many others, thousands of time before, but that does not make it any less pertinent today: buildings account for almost 40% of annual greenhouse gas emissions globally each year and therefore present a huge opportunity for us to leverage the power of innovation to drive down global carbon emissions on a massive scale.
So while the latest budget may not be the drive for change we may have hoped for (from a built environment perspective at least) we can still use our understanding of the impacts our buildings and cities have on the climate, together with the tools that are at our disposal now, to start to make a real difference. Many communities are already reaping the rewards of investing in green building and community scale digital twin projects and technologies as they navigate the transition to net-zero and we can only hope that, as such projects continue to grow in momentum and share their impacts with the wider world, we can create the best chance of securing a cleaner, resource-efficient and healthier net-zero built environment for generations to come.
For more information on how IES and our digital twin technology can help you deliver on zero-carbon targets, visit: https://www.iesve.com/zero-carbon
