Last month, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the UK Government on how to meet its legally binding emissions reduction targets, published its Seventh Carbon Budget. The Seventh Carbon Budget lays out what the CCC calls the “balanced pathway” – the most economically viable route to delivering the scale of emissions reductions needed by the period 2038-2042.

This is a very important document for those of us who care about delivering the future of the built environment, with the decarbonisation of both residential and non-residential buildings playing an important role in the balanced pathway. The report recommends a 66% reduction in emissions from residential buildings by 2040, and an even larger (87%) reduction from non-residential buildings (albeit from a lower base). The scale of the challenge is stark, but the CCC believes it is deliverable.

By coincidence, the publication of the Seventh Carbon Budget has come just as the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is reviewing their fuel poverty target and associated strategy. The current target is to “upgrade as many fuel poor households as is reasonably practicable to a minimum energy efficiency rating of Band C” by 2030. Government acknowledges that progress towards this target has largely stalled in recent years, hence the need for a review.

Here, then, are two fundamental drivers for improving the performance of the UK’s homes. And we might add a third. Damp, cold homes contribute to a range of health problems, including Asthma, respiratory conditions and heart attacks. The direct health costs of damp, cold homes are estimated at around £895 million per year, with wider societal costs estimated at £15.4 billion per year. Improving the quality of housing stock can therefore reduce demand for overstretched healthcare services and save public money to boot.

But without coordination, the very policies designed to address these priorities can undermine each other.

The core means by which the balanced pathway anticipates decarbonising homes and buildings is the electrification of heating, primarily through large-scale rollout of heat pumps (reducing emissions by around 50 MtCO2e against the baseline by 2050). The CCC sees only a small role for energy efficiency measures, saving around 5 MtCO2e, and while many homes are expected to roll out draught proofing and other “small” interventions, only around 5.5 million “large” interventions, such as loft and cavity wall insulation, are included in the pathway.

In other words, the CCC does not anticipate that substantial improvements in the fabric of most UK homes would be cost effective at a macro level. Which means that millions of families will continue to face poorly insulated, cold and damp homes. Even more perversely, because heat pumps work less efficiently in poorly insulated homes, energy bills for these homes could increase significantly, exacerbating poverty (even while potentially achieving an energy efficiency band C).

On the other hand, policy which prioritises fuel poverty in insolation is not guaranteed to reduce emissions. For example, the Energy Company Obligation scheme has been used to support 880,000 gas boiler replacements since 2013. The current consultation proposes restricting support for fossil fuel systems in these schemes going forward, but if policy support is limited to fuel poor households, it is unlikely that Government will achieve the scale of decarbonisation of domestic buildings needed to meet the UK’s net zero obligations. And if not paired with improved ventilation, improved insulation can exacerbate damp and mould, even while lowering heating costs.

So, how to square the circle?

It seems clear to me that what is needed is a rationalised, unified, and coordinated approach to delivering domestic property upgrades on the part of Government. An approach which recognises that like policy, buildings are complex systems, in which changing one attribute will have knock-on effects elsewhere that must be mitigated.

The intersection of the fuel poverty strategy review and the seventh carbon budget provides a golden opportunity to do just that. The new Warm Homes Plan is expected by the autumn. Government must set down their carbon budget for 2038-42 in legislation by June next year and must provide a credible plan for achieving it. A coordinated Government would seize the opportunity to align these strategies.

And what might such a scheme look like in practice?

It begins with a competent professional (such as a Chartered Architectural Technologist) making an independent, holistic assessment of the measures needed to improve the comfort, sustainability, and quality of a home, within a certain cost envelope. These measures could then be approved by whichever body manages the scheme, before a separate installer is appointed to carry out the works for the agreed fee. Finally, the assessor could come back to inspect the works and ensure they have been installed to an appropriate standard.

To maximise the benefits of such a scheme, access could be as broad as possible. That means making it straightforward to access support, through a single pathway and broadly defined criteria to qualify for financial support. Going further, Government could provide interest-free or income contingent loans to those households that do not qualify for grant support, maximising the environmental and health benefits. A scheme on this scale, delivered over the next 25 years, would give the market confidence, supporting an expansion in the workforce. And if financial support were modelled on student loans, the scheme could even appear as an asset on the Government balance sheet.

In March, I was lucky enough to attend the launch of the “Retrofit 25” exhibition, jointly hosted by the Building Centre and the National Retrofit Hub (and supported by, among others, CIAT). The theme of the exhibition this year is “What’s stopping us?”. I think the answer to that question is simple. We have the technology we need to deliver the sustainable, healthy and affordable built environment we all want. All we need is the political will to realise that vision.

Words by Jack Fleming, Policy & Public Affairs Executive, CIAT