Set up a Retrofit Coordination and Intelligence ONE-STOP SHOP

A central coordination agency must be set up to enable acceleration and scaling of the retrofitting market to achieve the target emissions reduction from the buildings on a non-profit basis to avoid creaming of the market.

This organisation must use of the whole existing eco-system to avoid duplication of effort. It should be an independent entity working in collaboration with/participation of the government and all stakeholders (Finance/Supply Chain/Coops/ Existing players, etc) as a confederation.

A grant application (Named TRANSITION CATALYST) has been made to the Just Transition fund with this purpose.

Why the contribution is important

Emissions from the buildings is not going down quickly enough to achieve the required levels. The current systems and incentives are not working. The targeted reduction cannot happen without:

• Clarity and commitment on what needs to be done from the government to enable full engagement of the finance and supply chain.
• Simple access to a complete integrated holistic solution to reduce energy requirement/emissions of buildings (One-stop shop) including whole project financing
•Measuring performance, outcomes, gathering intelligence and rapidly learning across the whole ecosystem via a transparent trusted interface
• Provision of innovative financial instruments to cover the upfront costs without a burden on building owner and elimination of the hassle associated with retrofits.
• Integration of all stakeholders and coordination of the complete process as a confederation working to common and trusted standards.

A central one-stop shop will provide:

A) Tactically:
• all a building owner needs easily in one place
• coordination of the retrofitting projects for individual/ neighbourhoods/ communities
• access to established/trusted standards
• a complete holistic integrated solution fit for the lifecycle of the building
• total project financing with no upfront costs to the building owner
• delivery of the projects through existing coops or providers,

B) Strategically enable:
• capturing of data, measuring performance throughout process
• processing the information to enable forecasting/projections
• transparently sharing the resulting trusted intelligence with all players and government.
• identifying blockers and supporting the government for adjusting incentives /policy /regulations

by MKece on August 29, 2022 at 11:38AM

Current Rating

Average rating: 4.4
Based on: 7 votes

Comments

  • Posted by ErikDalhuijsen August 29, 2022 at 16:57

    The urgent and deep scaling required cannot be done without centralised coordination and intelligence sharing, and with only the traditional short-duration market incentives.

    This central retrofit coordination and intelligence "Catalyst" agency would be excellent and essential core infrastructure, and can pay its own way in a few years as retrofit costs drop as direct result of the learning outcomes and intelligence access of this agency.

    Things would really get moving, if in parallel there is then support for locally based retrofit cooperatives, community retrofit and energy projects, council housing scheme retrofits and energy conversions, training and skills development schemes, and all the other requirements and blockers this central agency will be able to highlight, analyse and suggest improvements for, all with a long time-line: government commitment is needed for the long term in order to create a true serious good quality supply chain and quality long-term jobs in support of full societal decarbonisation.

    The long term impacts of short-lived incentives for e.g. solar panels, loft insulation, heat-pumps or other partial-answers are well-known: they invite a creaming of the market, destruction the opportunity for deep-decarbonisation. The associated low skill jobs and companies and learnings all collapse as soon as such incentives are dropped.

    This agency can change the landscape to a proper long term high skill professional industry which eradicates fuel poverty, creates good long term jobs of all levels, decarbonises homes and buildings fully, builds distributed energy generation, and will remind us all of the value of and the need for not-for-profit interventions which can allow the market to do its thing.

    This would be a paradigm-changing effort.

    This approach is explicitly stated as absolutely essential by many, from Bankers without Boundaries, the APPG for finance with its Green Finance Initiative, a multitude of successful (but still struggling for want of scaling assistance) retrofit cooperatives in this space including RetrofitWorks, experts from universities (Edinburgh, Strathclyde, RGU), the Construction Leadership Council, and a range of others.

    Without such an approach the 2045 targets simply cannot be met.

  • Posted by RichardRaggett September 04, 2022 at 11:27

    I support this approach alongside community based retrofit hubs also suggested in the consultation.

    The Scottish Govt's target is to retrofit 1m homes by 2030, or thereabouts - say in the next 10 years. That is c200 homes a week. To all intents and purpose we are at close to a standing start - I think c1000 homes per month were tackled in the public sector in 2019/2020 (ie pre-pandemic).

    I like the idea of a central co-ordination effort linked to community hubs - anything to facilitate the enormous acceleration required to achieve the this desperately needed work. The two initiatives could be mutually supportive

  • Posted by Benny September 05, 2022 at 15:21

    Central co-ordination similar to what is proposed will be vital. I therefore support the proposal.

    Local and community based support will also be vital to a high level of adoption, and these two layers must be designed together.

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