A green rush, but is there gold?

Building low-carbon new housing and, more importantly, retrofitting the existing stock is a great opportunity for long-term profitable business. But, says Tina McGeachan of the South East Centre for the Built Environment (SECBE), companies - especially SMEs - could miss out if they don’t know their way through the green innovation minefield!

“Four homes need to be retrofitted every minute between now and 2050 if we are to meet the 2008 Climate Change Act demand that the UK will reduce its emissions by 80% by then. Housing generates around 27% of all carbon and, as 90% of houses which will be in place in 2050 have already been built, then there is a big, and profitable, job to be done.

This is a great opportunity, for every part of the construction sector; from architects and planners to builders, plumbers, heating engineers and electricians to be involved. Not surprisingly, people have piled in with green construction solutions for new build and retrofit, but does anyone really know which work and which don’t? How many times do we hear ‘greenwash’ claims like the alchemists of old who promised to turn anything to gold?

All this brings us a dilemma. We know there’s a market for a green built environment just as we know that, if we don’t stop the carbon leakage, we’ll be endangering future generations. But, and it’s a BIG but – how do we find the real solutions so we have the knowledge and skills to market and deliver low-carbon construction?

The good news is that there’s a lot of work going on to test the effectiveness of green designs and products. The UK’s national innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board, for instance, is leading a comprehensive evaluation programme which will sort out the wheat from the chaff.

So the knowledge is beginning to emerge but we need to get it to the right people at the sharp end of the industry, especially those thousands of smaller firms who will probably do much of the retrofit work.

That’s what the FLASH+ programme, led by the Institute for Sustainability, aims to do. Managed in the region by SECBE, FLASH+ is a knowledge-sharing programme to spread best practice support to smaller businesses in the sector so they can seize their share of a growing market with the potential of 40 years work.

Conferences, workshops and site visits are planned, as well as access to online case studies. And it’s all free! Find out more at: www.secbe.org.uk/flashplus