Image © Suki Dhanda, The Observer
Guest contributor Lucy Siegle on the shift needed to decarbonise our buildings.
In order to solve the climate and nature crisis, it turns out we do need some education and mindset shift (rather than ‘thought control’). The health of the planet is famously an existential issue and given this planet is our home, that means on paper – and increasingly on exam papers – there is no bigger issue.
Those in the business of designing, installing, selling, communicating electrification, retrofits and heat pumps shoulder a particularly large responsibility. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Committee on Climate Change is betting the house on the electrification of heat and use of heat pump systems in order to get us to net zero emissions by 2050. As we know this won’t happen without energy efficient buildings, but the UK’s housing stock is among the leakiest in Europe.
On the flipside let’s look at the wins of a ‘retrofit + electrification’ strategy: according to a 2020 paper on optimising retrofits authored by Joseph Lingard, from the University of Central Lancashire, “A whole house retrofit in-line with current Building Regulations reduces the heating demand and emissions by 65%, and lowers the input electrical demand for the heat pump to under 1 kW…..Measures that exceed building regulations are shown to lower heat demand and carbon emissions by almost 80%”.
That would be some outcome. You, in this field, could get this generation across the net zero finish line. Wow. Imagine that!
Retrofit realities
But before I get carried away and accept the Oscar on behalf of this sector, a few home truths: Professor David Glew, Director of the Leeds Sustainabillity Institute articulated the challenges very well in his recent piece, bringing in a sobering focus, “I can’t think of anything else that would be as challenging as encouraging people to use heat pumps and to retrofit, even if the technological solutions are there”. Due to the risks and unknown factor of installing new technology he explains that “Finding ways to sell the benefits beyond simple paybacks is essential”.
Trying to sell this revolution based on the usual metrics we employ to persuade people to shell out for one thing above another – low cost, low inconvenience and immediate value for money is unlikely to succeed. (You might be falling around laughing by now). If we could install our way out of this, we’d already be doing it. Rather than another brick in the wall, it’s a battle for hearts and minds.
Partly this is about connection and recognition. If you recognise a technology and can understand the context in how it relates to the climate and nature crisis then you are more likely to embrace part it. Every day, every region, every demographic needs to understand how net zero moves take the pressure off the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth and reverse us out of this existential crisis. In other words in order to grasp sustainable actions we need to know what’s in for the planet. But there’s a problem: many of us lack a grounding in how the biosphere (a posh word for nature) actually works.
It’s not our fault. The curriculum filled our brains with kings and queens of England but not how atmospheric gas concentrations affect the ice caps, or the carrying capacity of oceans. But there is good news; last year the Department of Education announced a new GCSE in natural history. The first schools to sign up will run the Natural History 2025. It means that the next generation will have the formal tools to connect sustainable actions to the biosphere.
Carbon literacy
Good for them. What about us? There are some excellent carbon literacy and wider sustainability courses around. But not everyone will get to them. In order to plug this gap, and because I love a quiz, I wrote a book, Be the Ultimate Friend of the Earth: 100 Questions to Boost Your Climate and Nature IQ. It was also written with a particular cohort in mind: the sustainability step ups! This is the group who have found sustainability added to their roles. And while you might know your onions in the job you trained for, you might not be entirely sure how to grow them in an escalating climate and nature crisis. My book offers the chance to get to grips with some of the core concepts. (Plus you can compete against your kids studying for their Natural History GCSE).
Recently Be the Ultimate Friend was translated into Korean. I was intrigued that the friendly image of planet Earth on the cover has been turned into 80s computer graphics for this market. The gamification of the quiz has been ramped up. That’s cool with me: gamification after all is about connection too.
Once you make the connection, you are empowered to take action. That’s the point. Sustainability is about being able to zoom out to this degree, but then to zoom in to individual lives, and homes and roofs and boilers and to somehow connect the two. It is this ability to be able to see the whole and the specific that is summed up by the slogan from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (the forerunner to today’s international climate and nature summits, known as COPs) ‘Think global, act local’.
This is summed up by one of the most iconic photographs of all time, the image of planet Earth taken on December 7, 1972, from a distance of around 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) by the Apollo 17 crew. Before this image we did not have this perspective, today we do. Our planet looks both majestic and vulnerable. This photograph allows us to see what we have and what we could lose. (There is a reason so many astronauts become sustainability advocates when they return to Earth). And here’s a spoiler quiz question from my book. What is the name of that photo? The answer……The Blue Marble. You can have that one for free!
Lucy Siegle is speaking at InstallerSHOW on 29th June. She will be conversation with Gary Neville about the need for affordable and sustainable homes, and then joining an NHIC panel on the retrofit journey.
Free registration: installershow.com
