Green Finance Institute launches ‘Lender’s handbook on green home technologies’ – a comprehensive guide to inform financial institutions and industry about retrofit technologies and funding options

Unlocking the private finance needed to decarbonise the UK’s 29 million homes is dependent on financial institutions having sufficient, relevant, and up-to-date information on the green home technologies their customers are seeking to fund.

Today, the Green Finance Institute’s Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings (CEEB) releases the Lender’s handbook on green home technologies, a practical guide to help financial institutions and others understand the key energy efficiency, heating, microgeneration and resiliency technologies available to homeowners. The Handbook offers users a snapshot of each technology, including the current costs, carbon savings and benefits, as well as profiling the main funding options, quality assurances and guarantees to protect customers.

“By providing financial institutions with the latest information on the costs, risks and benefits of green home technologies, the Handbook informs and empowers the finance sector to fund retrofit projects and develop new financial solutions to support their customers’ net-zero ambitions,” says Emma Harvey, programme director at the Green Finance Institute.

David Postings, Chief Executive of UK Finance, said:

“Greening our housing stock is vital if we are to meet our climate change obligations and banks and finance providers are committed to helping achieve this goal and making sure consumers are not left behind. This handbook provides a helpful resource for lenders hoping to better understand current green retrofitting technologies, and will help them support customers in making their choices.”

Paul Broadhead, Head of Mortgages and Housing Policy at the Building Societies Association, said:

“We often hear phrases such as retrofit plans, or low-carbon technologies, without always knowing what these are or how they work in practice. This Handbook provides vital information for mortgage lenders looking to understand more about how to help customers decarbonise their homes, it fills an important knowledge gap. Looking forward we also need government to help educate the public and provide clarity on how they will support them to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.”

As part of the CEEB’s work to co-create the financial solutions and enabling tools to support investment into decarbonising UK homes, leading organisations from the retrofit and microgeneration sector were brought together to develop the Handbook including: Association for Decentralised Energy, Energy Saving Trust, MCS, Solar Energy UK, and the Renewable Energy Consumer Code. An expert group of organisations will review the Handbook annually to ensure the information remains relevant as the sector evolves.

Chris Hewett, Chief Executive, Solar Energy UK, said,

“We were delighted to contribute to this handbook. The UK needs to decarbonise 29 million homes to reach net zero, and lenders have a major role to play in this. The handbook provides a clear guide for banks and building societies on the benefits of low-carbon homes, and is testament to how different industries can work together. We look forward to working with the finance sector to deliver a new generation of smart solar homes – saving money for consumers, reducing risks for lenders, and cutting carbon emissions for the planet.”

Published: 06 October 2021