The Climate Bonds Initiative has been working all year on developing a sustainable and replicable residential eco-refurbishment solution that attracts commercial capital at a national scale.
> Download advance copy of Phase One Report - click here
Called LEEP (Local Energy Efficiency Project), it's a joint effort between the Climate Bonds Initiative and the (UK) Energy Saving Trust, the Ecofin Research Foundation and Marksman Consulting. In parallel, project partners Energy Saving Trust and Marksman Consulting have been working with Birmingham City Council on a new £100 million residential eco-refurbishment fund that allows us to implement some of the LEEP proposals.
The Phase 1 report of the project will be released at a project seminar at HSBC in London, on 21 September 2011. (Let me know if you want to join; there are still places available.)
The research aims to address three issues:
1. How to design programmes that will attract substantial capital markets financing.
2. How to dramatically increase household uptake, to both meet emission goals and to improve commercial viability of efforts?
3. How to ensure sustained emission reductions and energy savings?
There's been a lot of work on promoting energy efficiency measures for householders, but both investment levels and householder take-up rates have remained low. As an authoritative report from the US Regulatory Assistance Project said recently:
"No large jurisdiction can claim to have developed and demonstrated an approach to residential retrofits that is capable of averaging a market penetration of 5% per year. Indeed, no country or jurisdiction of any size is currently reaching even 2% of the housing stock annually through whole-house approaches."
This is troubling because at 2% p.a., let alone 5%, the UK will take too long to meet national household energy efficiency improvements needed to meet emission reduction targets. And that's an issue in all countries trying to tackle the issue.
The LEEP project uses Local Authorities as facilitators of comprehensive programmes designed to attract private sector commercial finance.
Work on Phase 2 of the project will begin next month, subject to securing funding. If your organisation works in the area and you'd like to get involved in developing solutions, let me know.
PS. If you haven't checked out the OECD report in yesterday's email, have another look. This is going to be a very influential report.
