The mood around net zero has shifted in ways that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago, says BESA’s director of technical Kevin Morrissey.
The confident inevitability driven by timebound national and international goals, has been superseded by something more contested, and what was once framed as a collective sprint towards a cleaner future now feels like a tug-of-war between ambition and anxiety.
Before the current geo-political uncertainty, governments were beginning to recalibrate times lines, businesses were reassessing risk and voters were increasingly asking harder questions about who pays and who benefits. The UK is no exception: the political tone has cooled, the rhetoric has sharpened, and transition has moved from a unifying mission to a battleground of competing priorities”.
Changing views around net zero were evident during the recent contribution to Radio 4’s Today programme by former Prime Minister, Theresa May, where we were reminded that it was her government that introduced the UK’s target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. A goal that has shaped much strategic thinking since then but is in stark contrast to the current leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, who is a self-declared “net zero sceptic”.
May reflected on this, considering it a mistake, saying “People talk about the cost of doing something – there’s a cost to not doing something as well.” She also explained that from its outset, the 2050 target was a means to drive innovation and still considered net zero as “the growth opportunity of the century”.
Whilst May anticipates opportunities for long-term growth, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, recently suggested that net zero policies are having a negative impact on the global economy and predicted a future that included the possibility of “climate-related economic shocks”. This is, in part, due to cost of electrification and levies on fossil fuels resulting in the high energy prices impacting industrial, commercial and domestic consumers across the UK.
For businesses the changing mood and commercial implications have led to ‘greenhushing’, when firms downplay or quietly shelve their climate pledges, as well as the opportunity for the large fossil fuel enterprises, such as BP and Shell, to scale back on their renewable programmes and revert to their traditional business models, even if this also comes at a cost.
For domestic consumers, it was encouraging to note that a YouGov survey (November 2025) reported that 60% of Britons remain supportive of the net zero targets, although less than 40% thought the Government were doing enough to support the transition to net zero and only 2% Britons think we will get there by 2050.
The latest Government announcements relating to the HNTAS consultation and Warm Homes Plan, described by Sir Kier Starmer as a “turning point”, may be a step in the right direction, but whether these are enough to maintain the level of public support in the face of the broader cost-of-living pressures and many homes living in fuel poverty remains to be seen.
The success of these initiatives also depends on not repeating mistakes of the past. Making homes more thermally efficient without dealing with ventilation is a recipe for poor indoor air quality, resulting in damp mould and the ensuing health and wellbeing issues. Currently the impact to UK health services, linked to poor homes and buildings, is reported to be in the region of £1.4bn per annum, but the impact on national productivity and personal attainment is considerably more.
So, what part should BESA members and their supply chains be playing?
Innovation
We should double down on Theresa May’s innovation challenge and maximise the opportunity that schemes like the Warm Homes Plan and HNTAS create. Whilst there have been some initial concerns about the focus on the thermal aspect of homes, with less emphasis on ventilation, competent designers and contractors understand the need to consider the internal environment holistically. Our industry continues to find new ways to meet climate goals and make the built environment more resilient, heathier, and future proof.
We have invested in renewable heating and cooling, considerably ramping up our deployment of heat pumps, for example, and following the current consultation, the implementation of HNTAS will see a renewed focus on tackling the poor performance of heat networks – a potentially game changing low carbon solution.
There’s no denying that progress has been much slower than we would have liked, but there is still a lot of low-hanging fruit to harvest – not least in the shape of retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency and wellbeing, which could have hugely positive economic and social implications.
Two years ago, we challenged the UK government to make 2024 the ‘Year of Retrofit’ and the corporate world seemed to agree. A detailed study backed by hundreds of international businesses and economic experts found that savings could reach a mind-boggling $2trillion a year with a range of relatively easy to achieve retrofit measures for their buildings.
The report, published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the financial consultant PwC, highlighted a range of "doable today" business actions that would slash demand for energy, boost profits and cut carbon. ‘Transforming Energy Demand’ was backed by over 120 CEOs of large global corporations and concluded that retrofitting buildings alone could cut global energy demand by 12%.
Buildings are responsible for 30% of the world’s energy usage and they also offer the greatest energy reduction potential of all economic sectors. WEF researchers calculated that energy intensity in buildings could be reduced by 38% using existing solutions.
The WEF also emphasised retrofit’s wider benefits including reduced staff absenteeism and improved productivity (because retrofitted facilities are higher quality) and the creation of 3.2 million jobs worldwide to deliver retrofit programmes.
It also estimated that retrofitting buildings would increase their asset value by 15%.
However, persistent inflation and an abrupt change of direction in the United Sates have shaken the business community’s confidence in renewables and the wider net zero target. We the US administration has distanced itself from global climate change bodies and retrenched its fossil fuel- based approach.
This so-called ‘business’ approach ignores the enormous economic potential of decarbonisation, and the significant fiscal impact better buildings have on health, well-being, and human aspiration.
The surge in AI is accompanied by billions of dollars of investment in data centres driven by the US and is, therefore, also completely dependent on finding efficient methods for running and cooling these increasingly energy hungry facilities. The amount of innovation going into new cooling solutions alone for data centres could have huge knock-on benefits for the built environment more generally.
Getting to grips with our ageing and poorly maintained building stock is a multi-faceted challenge, but it is a crucial one and could have positive impacts on our wider economy and communities.
Build, baby, build
In the UK, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) kicked off 2026 with a new year ‘to do’ list that included a pledge to “build, baby, build” which involves “speeding up the planning process” as part of its commitment to “end homelessness”.
It also wants to create “a fairer deal for leaseholders and restore pride in local communities” while also making more homes “safe and secure”. All backed by the government’s promise to build 1.5 million new dwellings before the end of this Parliament.
That’s an ambitious list for a single 12-month period, and totally impossible without a huge investment in new building engineering technologies and skills alongside modern methods of construction. BESA will continue to press that case to government, but we wholeheartedly welcome this implied ambition to deliver a higher quality, safer and more resilient built environment.
BESA members, and their supply chains, will also continue to play their part.
Our sector has adapted to big societal changes before and can do it again – the transition to condensing boilers being a case in point. We will be warmer and richer thanks to net zero – not poorer and colder as some in business seem to believe.
There is another massive opportunity to improve health conditions in homes thanks to the passing of Awaab’s Law late last year that mandates social landlords to respond quickly to damp and mould problems. Our Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation groups have been banging this drum for some years, and we are ready to support.
We will also continue to focus on the obvious link between net zero and the building safety agenda to drive compliance. The Building Safety Act is starting to get traction with 2026 set to be a transformational year as the new Regulator’s team get to grips with teething problems in the planning process.
That can be an enabler for wider corporate investment and innovation in quality building solutions – backed up by proper professional accreditation such as BESA’s Competence Assessment Standard (CAS) which is used to audit all BESA members.
However, as employers, we simply must do more to tackle the skills shortage this year. This is a major barrier to net zero and all our ambitions for a better built environment. The government’s policies have not been helpful but there are huge rewards available for those firms prepared to invest in upskilling their workforces – because as the construction industry starts to tick up again, only competent and compliant firms will thrive.
BESA members have everything to play for this year and those who have signed up to our Member Pledge have already shown their commitment – not only to positioning their own businesses to take advantage of market trends but helping their supply chain partners do the same by becoming BESA members so they can also prove their professional credentials to clients.
The Association will also continue to help government understand the detail of the pledges and targets it sets – and what it will take to achieve them. We are in the front line and can make targets meaningful and deliverable. It means we, like the world’s big corporations, have everything to play for.
There is an upfront cost, of course. There is with any business investment, but the bigger and more unimaginable cost is NOT doing this. However, the first step is making the best of what we already have. In other words, tackling the huge backlog of energy efficiency and ventilation retrofits needed to improve the performance of the vast majority of our buildings i.e. those that already exist.
We currently only replace buildings at a rate of around 1% per annum so we cannot build our way out of this. That’s the challenge and the biggest business opportunity.
So, let’s be more ambitious this time and aim to make 2026 the start of a new ‘Decade of Retrofit’…or even an ‘era’?