Miles Lewis, Director of Sustainability at Clarion Housing Group
Our Climate Transition Plan is the product of 18 months of baselining, stakeholder engagement and collaboration, writes Miles Lewis
In simple terms, our Climate Transition Plan outlines our pathway towards net zero carbon emissions by 2050, through a series of tangible steps.
Like many others, we set a target in 2021 to achieve net zero carbon as an organisation by 2050. This is our first comprehensive, company-wide plan which maps out how we’re tracking our progress on that journey. We’ve aligned it to other best practice frameworks in the market to ensure that it holds up to the highest level of rigour across different sectors. This was an important step to guide our business journey.
Climate change is affecting all of us. But for those living in social housing, the risks are far greater given the increased prevalence of chronic health conditions, disabilities and other vulnerabilities. Whilst our plan talks in carbon reduction terms, in line with best practice transition plan frameworks and guidance, it is ultimately focused on delivering healthier, warmer and lower cost homes for residents. If we do that successfully, we will also reduce emissions and deliver more climate resilient homes. Having this focus makes sure we are delivering on the aim of a just, fair and inclusive transition to net zero carbon.
Despite global politics and the rollback of net zero targets, this isn’t just about carbon and 2050. This is about future-proofing, reducing energy bills and making homes more comfortable. Temperatures are increasing, energy prices are volatile, and people are living for longer. With Clarion celebrating our 125th anniversary this year, we have a duty to look both forward and back at our history to ensure our homes meet the needs of our residents for years to come.
Our Climate Transition Plan is the product of 18 months of baselining, stakeholder engagement and collaboration. It outlines how we’ll scale up our programme of retrofitting existing homes and driving down embodied carbon in new developments. The plan ensures our operations align with net zero ambitions by reducing energy use in our heat networks, fleet and workplaces.
Our modelling is intentionally conservative, for example we use the National Energy System Operator ‘Counterfactual’ Future Energy Scenario. If the grid decarbonises faster, great, our modelling looks better, but we haven’t assumed that will happen.
We’ve been transparent about our approach and the emissions shortfall we’re facing, and it’s important that we’ve acknowledged it. We have an estimated gap of about 15-20% which is not a challenge we can solve alone. As a sector, we must come together to foster collaboration, innovation, and active engagement to develop new solutions which address this issue directly.
Residents are at the heart of everything we do, and we’re committed to ensuring no one is in a worse financial position due to decarbonisation initiatives. From our resident engagement – including surveys, focus groups and scrutiny panels – we know people are worried about the cost of the transition and concerned about new technology. Yet our retrofit programme, delivered over the past few years, has shown the multifaceted benefits to our residents. The crucial thing is to engage in meaningful ways with residents – to truly communicate the advantages in a way which resonates and to turn this strategic plan into a deliverable reality.
Our modelling is based on our long-term financial plans – our 30-year plan for maintaining and upgrading our homes, and our development pipeline of more than 20,000 homes over the next 10 years. Through this work we now know the expected cost of net zero for our business. Some of this cost we assume will be covered by grants – we’ve been successful in every wave of government funding for decarbonising social homes – and some will be covered by our own investment.
But, we know a portion of funding still needs to be realised and to do that we need innovative financing solutions. We’re already working with funders and partners to develop these, but we are always open to new ideas. We’re commencing some trials and pilots of these models to understand if we can scale them and to bridge that gap. We also expect that we can deliver some significant cost efficiencies in our processes, purchasing and technology costs – as we carry out these works over the next 25 years.
We’ve been clear throughout this process that we don’t have all the answers, and we’re content with that. If we waited until we had the perfect data and plan, we wouldn’t have time to deliver the results . As an early adopter of the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing and an active member of the ESG Working Group, we know how important collaboration and partnerships are.
We want other housing associations to take this plan and use it as a blueprint, but equally we want people to challenge us, share new ideas and to tell us where we could improve our approach. After presenting the plan to peers in the ESG Working Group ahead of its publication, it was clear that it was seen as a valuable resource to use for their own organisations too.
Decarbonising the country’s social housing is a huge task, and our Climate Transition Plan is a crucial first step in setting the direction we need to lead the way.
