The Green Finance Institute is recommending the establishment of UK Building Renovation Passports (BRPs).
The Green Finance Institute is recommending the establishment of UK Building Renovation Passports (BRPs).
The institute’s Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings (CEEB) has released a report titled ‘Building Renovation Passports: Creating the pathway to zero carbon homes’.
It lays out steps to establish a digital tool to help property owners access decision-useful information to retrofit their homes.
The UK Committee on Climate Change recommended the introduction of BRPs to play a key role in delivering information to individuals and businesses along the retrofit value chain.
Which it believes would accurately map the journey to a net-zero property and therefore help to unlock the level of finance that is needed to fund retrofits at scale.
BRPs contain a digital logbook with information about the property, its operational performance and historic renovations.
They also include a long-term renovation roadmap that identifies future retrofit measures, along with links to contractors and finance options.
The CEEB’s report presents the key recommendations for how to develop a standardised framework to support the introduction of BRPs in the UK.
It considers the data inputs and outputs required, roles and responsibilities in developing and deploying BRPs, and the cross-sectoral benefits that widespread adoption can unlock.
The CEEB’s report was produced in partnership with over 50 members from the retrofit energy, property and finance sectors and fields of data and academia, as well as local authorities and RSLs.
The contents of the report are in line with CEEB member Santander UK’s EnergyFact report, also launched today, in partnership with CountryWide Surveying Services.
The EnergyFact report analyses a property’s current energy use and helps customers to understand the steps they could take to reduce this, by altering their behaviour or retrofitting energy efficiency improvements in their home, and save themselves money.
It also links to tradespeople who could assist with any retrofitting improvements required.
Rhian-Mari Thomas, chief executive of the Green Finance Institute, said: “With a funding gap estimated to be as large as £65bn to decarbonise our homes, we need to ensure there is a way to gather and present accurate, current and granular information about all aspects of a property’s energy use and its roadmap to energy efficiency in one place, giving financial institutions the confidence to offer retrofit funding and the homeowner the knowledge to take it up.”
Brad Fordham, head of mortgages at Santander UK, added: “Helping homeowners and landlords to make more informed decisions about improving their own energy efficiency is a key first step towards the government’s target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
"We’re proud to be supporting this, both through our active role in the Green Finance Institute’s Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings, and through the launch of our own EnergyFact report today.”
