Could finance be harnessed to meaningfully scale up decarbonisation in the built environment?
BwB is delighted to launch our latest report “Finance as an enabler to address the building decarbonisation challenge”, supported by the Laudes Foundation.
Decarbonising the European building stock by 2050 demands a 3% renovation rate per year, combined with an average energy efficiency improvement of 75%. However, current rates of retrofit across Europe remain low, with the residential renovation rate stalling at around 1% per year. Given this, there is a significant need to scale up retrofit across the region.
This report explores in detail the multi-faced challenges to scaling up building decarbonisation and identifies that social and financial barriers play the most critical role.
However, we believe that finance, if structured appropriately, can be harnessed as an enabler to help address the social challenges. Innovative financial solutions, such as blended finance mechanisms, can be utilised to channel private institutional capital into building renovation. This not only helps tackle the financial barriers head on, but results in additional incentives to engage communities.
Furthermore, considering retrofit as an investment for private institutions necessitates thinking about retrofit at scale, in an aggregated manner. This provides opportunities to think more holistically and to demonstrate broader societal co-benefits. In turn, if these benefits are measured and monitored appropriately, they could offer further innovative pathways to monetisation.
Finally, this report also highlights that collaboration has never been more important. Engaging the relevant stakeholder groups is crucial to bringing a trusted, comprehensive proposition to residents, who represent both the ultimate barrier and ultimate enabler to building decarbonisation.