The Green Finance Institute has announced the formation of the Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings (CEEB), which aims to develop the market for financing net-zero carbon and climate-resilient buildings in the UK by accelerating the pace of financial innovation and scale-up.
RICS writes:
RICS is a founding partner of the coalition, formed of global experts from financial services, local and national government, energy and construction industries, academia and civil society, the CEEB will collaborate under the chairmanship of Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, chief executive, Green Finance Institute.
Speaking at the COP25 climate change conference in Madrid this week, Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, chief executive Green Finance Institute, said: “Financial markets need to play a leading role to meet the needs of our society, and to mobilise capital to address the climate emergency. The Green Finance Institute’s role is to convene innovators, sector specialists and policymakers to harness their creativity to identify and overcome the barriers to the deployment of green funding.
“The Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings brings together a breadth of experience behind a clear goal: to accelerate capital flows towards retrofitting and developing UK homes to net-zero carbon, resilient standards through the development of real-world finance solutions that appeal to home-owners, landlords and investors.”
Through focusing on launching a series of scalable demonstration projects of financial products and solutions. These will aim to deploy capital to address specific challenges that limit the uptake of energy-efficiency measures in the residential building market in the UK.
“RICS is proud to be a founding member of the Green Finance Institute’s Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings. It’s critical that we encourage more investment in energy efficient real estate and infrastructure, and RICS has a huge role to play given our global reach and expertise. Our leading international standards, trusted data and insight, and focus on professionalism will be critical to supporting this mission and we look forward to collaborating with our partners to help pioneer better places for future generations.” Sean Tompkins, chief executive, RICS.
Over the next 12 months, the CEEB will design, develop and launch a portfolio of scalable demonstrators of new financial solutions that unlock investment into the low-carbon and resilient building sectors. To ensure the demonstrators appeal across all residential building tenures, the CEEB will conduct a comprehensive review of the UK residential retrofit market identifying the barriers to widescale upgrading of existing housing stock.
The outcomes and recommendations of the Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings’ market review will be published in Spring 2020, while the portfolio of pilot ‘demonstrator’ projects will be presented at the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP26) in Glasgow, in December. In recognition that efforts to decarbonise buildings are global, the Coalition will also work with international partners to adopt and share best practices.
