Sustainability needs cash incentives

And that means we need to improve our existing buildings as well as build sustainable new ones.

So it’s got to be good news that ‘greening’ the existing stock is this year’s Big Thing, as anyone who attended the Think exhibition in London last month couldn’t fail to notice. Even Hilary Benn, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, acknowledged that improving existing stock was a priority.

The problem is that sustainability, or energy efficiency, is still a ‘nice to have’ not a ‘must have’. Tenants won’t pay more rent for sustainable offices. And try telling a householder struggling to make mortgage payments that investing in a PV panel or energy efficient boiler makes sense.

Commercial property owners are desperate to get measurement systems in place that will value the sustainability credentials of different types of building. And they are urging the government to give them some fiscal encouragement.

In the domestic sector, help is sorely needed. Speaking at Think, Benn suggested that raising public awareness would help address climate change. But others are calling for the government to offer grants for renewable energy supported by feed-in tariffs where homeowners are paid above market rates for any excess electricity produced by them which is fed into the grid.

If sustainable refurbishment is to move from encouraging case studies to mainstream practice in time to meet government carbon reduction targets, it will require more than just making people aware of what’s available.