Legal & General Investment Management’s head of sustainability, Meryam Omi, head of real assets, Bill Hughes, and Kerrigan Procter, the chief executive of Legal & General Capital, have penned an open letter to the UK government, urging it to take urgent action to reduce emissions from the built environment.
The letter comes a week after prime minister Boris Johnson’s build, build, build mantra was criticised for largely ignoring climate change.
The letter says: “The UK government, which has committed to meeting net-zero emissions by 2050, recently announced a multibillion pound building and infrastructure package to fuel the country’s recovery following the pandemic.
“This ambition is welcome, particularly the introduction of measures such as the retrofit voucher scheme and investments to improve the energy efficiency of public buildings. But the recovery must be achieved without locking in high-emitting and inefficient buildings for decades to come. As the recovery gets under way, it is crucial that the opportunity to build back better is not lost.”
L&G has set out its own set of actions to address the challenge of reducing emissions from the built environment. This includes a target for all homes built by L&G to be capable of operating at net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 and for its LGIM real assets portfolio to be net zero by 2050.
It is now calling on government to urgently clear some of the existing policy barriers to enable the industry to meet its net zero targets and for the introduction of new regulation to provide a clear direction of travel for the industry
This should include:
- Reintroducing net-zero carbon standards for new homes;
- A national retrofit strategy to fund the upgrading of existing homes;
- Implementing embodied carbon targets for new public buildings, large public renovations and infrastructure – with a clear trajectory towards net zero standards in the longer term;
- Raising Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards for non-domestic lettings;
- Introducing urgent legislation to improve transparency on the operational energy performance for non-domestic buildings;
- Reducing the energy performance gap through transforming mainstream industry initiatives from design for compliance to a design for performance programme; and
- Incentivising businesses to support their transition towards net zero through the use of renewable energy on-site.
“As the UK looks beyond Covid-19, it is faced with a deep economic recession coupled with a longstanding housing crisis,” concludes the letter.
“While government may be focused on its ‘build, build, build’ agenda, it must not lose sight of how this – if not regulated appropriately – will have an irreversible impact on climate change.
“Due to the pandemic, global greenhouse gas emissions have hit a sudden plateau, and the world now has unexpected opportunity to continue to bend the curve. The UK’s net-zero target must be placed at the heart of the recovery.”
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