Why our current approach to retrofit won’t work

Decarbonising the built environment is a necessary step to achieve net zero goals. But more importantly a decarbonised housing sector is also a cheaper to operate, more comfortable, and healthier housing sector with demonstrable economic and social value beyond carbon reduction.
Up until this point the "received-wisdom" funding model to encourage the decarbonisation of buildings is focused on financial debt products for individual building owners to borrow money to undertake the work in isolation, complemented by a range of often time-limited, technology-specific subsidies. This market-led approach is demonstrably not working according to Rufus Grantham, Co-Founder at not-for-profit community interest corporation Living Places.
Join this webinar to hear how Living Places has been developing a collective neighbourhood scheme which building occupiers sign-up for. This approach allows a professional design team to come in and design renovation solutions collectively and scope shared assets such as renewable energy generation. It allows retrofit to be delivered at a neighbourhood scale while reducing costs. The model is based on a ‘pay as you save’ mechanism, where the members of the scheme wouldn’t need to pay any money upfront but would pay off the retrofit monthly instead which would still leave them better off each month.
Rufus Grantham spent 25 years in “mainstream” finance in various guises (Accountant, Research Analyst, Equity Salesperson, Director of Research, tech start-up CFO). He is now focused on contributing to the huge transition required in response to climate change. In particular how capital can be better allocated to drive change whether in listed markets, private markets or into public projects. He is a Board level advisor to companies around sustainability, fundraising and strategy.