We've been championing better retrofit for more than 10 years. Our strategy and operations director Emily Braham reflects on what we've learned – and why our mission remains the same, but our approach is shifting.
In 2015, a group of people stepped off a bus in the Netherlands excited to see a new retrofit approach that was taking the country by storm.
Made up of manufacturers, contractors, local authorities and landlords, the group was united by a shared mission: finding ways to tackle the huge barriers to scaling retrofit in the UK – from immature solutions and boom-and-bust grant funding to skills shortages.
I was one of them and, like the others, was bowled over by what I saw. The Energiesprong ("Energy Leap" in Dutch) model aimed to deliver deep retrofit 'in one go' using innovative solutions to create comfortable, desirable, net-zero homes that are financed by energy and maintenance savings.
Inspired by the ambition and simplicity of the model, as well as the scale that was already being achieved, some of the organisations on the visit founded Energiesprong UK shortly after.
It was formed as a collaborative vehicle, designed to explore how we could catalyse the change needed to unlock a similar approach in the UK that delivered high-quality, high-performance retrofit at scale. Our ultimate mission was to make the organisation obsolete.
So, 10 years later, are we hanging up our hard hats? Not quite…
We've had many successes while developing and testing our version of an 'Energy leap' in the UK. Our approach has worked well for some properties and has helped drive innovation, scale and collaboration. We've learned by doing, we've focused on pushing boundaries and we've built momentum and brought people and organisations together to champion high-quality retrofit with guaranteed performance.
But we’re still nowhere near the scale we need for our net zero targets – or for the millions of people who deserve better homes. And, ultimately, the industry faces the same challenges we did when I first stepped off that bus.
Part of what we've learned is that the UK is fundamentally a different place to the Netherlands and that not every home needs – or can – leap straight to net zero in one go. This is probably the biggest shift in the approach we are known for.
Poor stock condition, embodied carbon, and inconsistent funding can mean that – as our friend Rafe Bertram at Enfield Council puts it - sometimes a "hop, skip, and jump" rather than a full leap is what’s needed. We still believe in the importance of whole-house retrofit, especially for homes facing fuel poverty. But a strategic, long-term view that takes the right approach for different contexts will get us further, faster, toward our climate goals.
So, as we reflect on the last 10 years – including pioneering projects like the Mayor of London's Retrofit Accelerator Homes and our Innovate UK funded Transform-ER project to rethink retrofit – we're taking the opportunity to share what we've learned and how we're adjusting our approach.
We've realised the importance of being more flexible in our approach, so we are adapting, rethinking and refreshing our strategy – still with our original mission at heart: high-quality, high-performance retrofit that's desirable for householders and underpinned by a robust business case.
This two-part series shares our reflections on this journey, including the top 5 things we've learned - diving deep into insights from our work and that of our partners – and, critically, what we are already doing to put these into action!
Of course, we've learned many more things than this list. But we consider these the vital systemic interventions that can accelerate high-quality home retrofit:
1. Aggregating demand = scale and speed
2. Building data-led business cases = unlocking finance
3. Rethinking resident engagement = buy-in and better trust
4. Investing in modern methods = higher-quality solutions, sector-wide change
5. Bold contracting and risk approaches = truly collaborative partnerships.
Part 2 of this blog next week will dive deeper into the detail of these.
If you are familiar with the sector, you know that retrofit is highly complex. There is no silver bullet that will solve all our problems.
At times, the industry has been guilty of simplifying what needs to be done to achieve change. It's for understandable reasons – to make communication easier, to speed up projects, to garner the policy support we so desperately need. Or just because we want to believe that there is an easy fix, whether that's a model or a technology.
And we made this error ourselves when we first started to share the Dutch Energiesprong approach in the UK. Its simplicity was tantalising and garnered engagement quickly. But while it is a straightforward concept, implementing it successfully is not.
Oversimplification is a mistake. It hides some of the hard yards and hard truths we need to address.
For the sake of clarity, we have streamlined 5 lessons above, but you will see there is a great deal of nuance and overlap between them. And, at times, you may even think some of the insights contradict one another.
We are trying to help build a retrofit system where these tensions are acknowledged, addressed and can coexist – there is no 'one size fits all' approach, and engaging with that complexity honestly is what will get us to our mission.
At the heart of that honesty is possibly our most important lesson of all, and something we've heard time and time again recently: we must focus on increasing trust.
We hear it from landlords who need to trust that contractors can deliver projects on-time and to budget. We hear it from residents who need to trust that their interests are being truly considered. We hear it from the supply chain who need to trust that if they invest in creating a solution it will be used at scale.
Trust is essential to truly collaborative working, and it requires a level of openness I think we rarely achieve as a sector. We all need to be more honest about what works and what doesn't, so we can build on progress and nurture a culture where mistakes are learned from – not hidden. So, please accept these lessons in that spirit.
It's easy to get overwhelmed in the face of the retrofit challenge. But I genuinely believe that by focusing on working together as a sector, we too could welcome our own bus trips of hopeful organisations looking for answers in the not-too-distant future.
Stay tuned for Part 2 next week where we dive deep into our five biggest lessons. Sign up to our Retrofit, together - our refreshed Linkedin newsletter to stay up to date with our honest reflections on accelerating better retrofit.
