Greg Barker interview: 'We've got to transform the built environment'

Greg Barker perches on his office sofa, poised to explain how the government is radically going to green the nation’s building stock. To his left is a cushion that says “Save our Planet”. To his right is a photo of him with David Cameron in the Arctic, where the two went to inspect the front line of climate change in 2006. In just 10 years Barker has transformed himself from head of investor relations at Roman Abramovich’s oil firm to a committed green. He only has 15 minutes before he needs to dash to the Commons
and vote on the Energy Bill on the last day before the parliamentary recess. Given the length of the list of questions the industry wants to throw at him about his Green Deal, it might not be enough.

We’ve got to completely transform the built environment in the UK

The idea could be the industry’s great green hope. Barker’s plan is to insulate Britain’s buildings at no upfront cost to their owners. They would then pay back investors in the deal through reduced energy bills. The government has said that up to quarter of a million jobs could be created if all 26 million homes are retrofitted. Big supermarkets, including Tesco and Marks & Spencer, are angling to become installers when the insulation drive begins in autumn 2012.

Yet if the grilling Barker was given at sustainability conference Ecobuild is anything to go by, there is confusion and more than a little scepticism in the industry over how it will actually work.

Softly spoken, yet leaning forward on his sofa, Barker describes what is possibly the toughest task in his in-tray. “We’ve got to refurbish 14 million homes by 2020, and potentially the whole housing stock, to meet our long-term carbon reduction commitments. Effectively, we’ve got to completely transform the built environment in the UK.” The long-term aim is to cut emissions from the built environment by 80% by the middle of the century, in line with targets for the country as a whole.

Yet businesses that want in on the Green Deal say they need harder figures, and the CBI has called for a tangible way to measure the success or failure of the plan. It wants to know how much carbon will be cut, not just how many homes will be affected. Barker’s answer includes one of many digs at Labour’s efforts. They set too many targets, he thinks, yet at the rate they were going the UK would have taken 82 years to retrofit its building stock.

We will know if we are succeeding by the number of homes that are retrofitted. But to say 20 million is success, and 19,999,999 failure, misses the point

“What government has been very good at doing in the past is setting targets and then failing to deliver them,” he argues. “What we’re about is not actually getting het up over individual targets that often have perverse consequences, and narrow the focus of people on the challenge.”

Barker, who has spent more than 10 years working in the City and has a personal fortune estimated at £3.9m, seems almost ideologically opposed to targets when asked how we will know if the Green Deal is flourishing or dying. “That’s a very New Labour sort of question. We will know if we are succeeding by the number of homes that are retrofitted. But to say 20 million is success, and 19,999,999 failure, kind of misses the point. We are unleashing resources from the private sector that will dwarf anything that’s been available before,” he says.

The other big question mark hanging over the Green Deal is which incentives and regulations Barker will brandish in the direction of homeowners. At Ecobuild in February, he practically ruled out minimum energy efficiency standards for homes.

“I want to start the Green Deal off by saying this is a huge opportunity, not standing there with a stick behind my back scowling,” he said to his critics.

There will be sweeteners, however, and at the time of going to press Wednesday’s Budget was expected to include stamp duty incentives for homeowners. Barker says changes in council tax could also be used to tempt homeowners to become part of the Green Deal. As with regulation, Barker hints that more measures could be rolled out in time, depending on take-up. “They don’t need to all be there on day one,” he says.

Just like Cameron’s Conservatives, Barker has gone from indifference to climate change a decade ago to the grand ambition today of being “the greenest government ever”. He was head of investor relations for Sibneft, a Russian oil firm owned by Abramovich between 1998 and 2000. Asked if this is a rather unusual career path for a future climate change minister, Barker momentarily halts. His response, fluent once again, might irk those who had been slaving over the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, for example. “We are going to remain reliant on hydrocarbons for decades to come,” he says. “We’ve got to use them safely and use them most efficiently. Certainly, from my background, I wasn’t aware of climate change in the nineties.” Asked why not, he replies: “I wasn’t in government in the nineties.”

Rolling hills and fields, rather than rising sea levels, turned Barker to the green side. “When I came into parliament in 2001, I had a nascent interest in environmental issues. I had a beautiful constituency down in East Sussex, nearly 80% of which is an area of outstanding natural beauty. I’ve long had an interest in rural and countryside issues,” he explains.

His formative experience was sitting on the Commons environmental audit select committee, where he was converted.”That really began my exploration and journey
in terms of understanding just how critically important climate change was. In 2003, in 2004, it really dawned on me, by reading up on the subject, how important this was,” he says.

A few years ago, a Conservative minister promising a “Green Deal” to cut the carbon emissions of every home in the country might well have been dismissed as an imposter and escorted out of Whitehall. The idea that the construction industry’s employment hopes might one day rest in large part on insulating homes might also have been met with blank faces. Times have changed. But to convince the industry that they will continue changing and that the Green Deal is going to work, Greg Barker still needs to fill in a lot of blanks.