Climate targets lie in the dust unless construction can tap young talent

Receive free Environment updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Environment news every morning.

Good morning. Rows over climate policy keep on coming. MPs from all parties and peers are urging Grant Shapps to block drilling at Rosebank, the UK’s largest undeveloped oilfield. Meanwhile, a government-commissioned report today warns that the UK’s existing energy policies are “badly out of date”.

While Stephen’s in Cornwall, I’m here to dive into another climate challenge. As economics and science tell us, we need to retrofit our buildings — which account for a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions — to be greener and healthier. Once we get to the specifics though, things get complicated. Some thoughts on that and the routes forward.

One home every minute

Sheffield-based reader Martin had been struggling to find tradespeople to insulate a room in his Victorian terrace house when he emailed me in May. “The work should be fairly straightforward but we can’t get a quote.” He found getting the costs and necessary information a source of headache. “Then there is no guarantee as to how this would change the Energy Performance Certificate.”

To me, a young renter, these sorts of decisions feel financially far away. But it did get me thinking about just how ready the UK is for a retrofit movement. One lesser-covered aspect of that is the struggle of the rapidly ageing, Brexit-bruised construction industry to recruit fresh blood — meaning it may soon be scrambling to raise the army of specially skilled workers required to install energy efficiency measures.

That task is enormous; if we were to meet emissions targets by 2050, we would need to retrofit two homes every minute, the UK Green Building Council estimate. Just looking at heat pumps — the green alternative to gas-fired boilers — the UK has about 412 per 100,000 people, compared with a European average of 3,068. The government is targeting 600,000 yearly heat pump installations by 2028; we are currently hitting only one-ninth of that.

One industry estimate says 87,000 new recruits will be needed to meet this rollout target (there were 3,000 heat pump engineers in Britain last year). Today more than half of heating system installers are over 55 years old. Very few are willing to retrain.

“There is a dire need to bring young people into the industry,” says Linda Clarke, professor of European Industrial Relations at Westminster Business School, who thinks construction training infrastructure needs to be completely overhauled given the scale of reskilling needed. The workforce is made up of mostly small firms. Half are self-employed, often ill-equipped to provide for apprenticeship training. Many talk about the “administrative burden” involved. Given tradespeople are overwhelmingly male and white, there is a huge talent pool yet to be fully explored.

Knocked by an exodus of EU-born workers, in general the UK construction industry needs to plug a skills gap of 937,000 over the next decade to “meet demand”, according to the 2023 Trade Skills Index. Of those, 244,000 need to be qualified apprentices — the equivalent of 24,400 completing training every year. But the figures for England (light blue bars) suggest we are far off. 

“If you don’t create a pipeline from a young age — and inspire that generation — then you’ll have a bigger problem in later years,” says Check A Trade’s Melanie Waters, who will launch the company’s campaign “Get In” wooing 16-25 year-olds later this month. She wants ministers to reintroduce apprenticeship incentives and ease the hiring admin.

According to Clarke, aside from apprenticeships, training levels are at a historic low, and UK standards are behind most European neighbours. Most construction trainees in further education colleges qualify to level 2, whereas retrofit work requires level 3 (retrofit assessors, who visit your house and prescribe systematic fixes for energy loss, are at least a level 5), she adds. Getting the necessary on-site experience is also difficult.

Low energy construction is not mainstream in FE courses yet. Clarke says colleges are increasingly equipping themselves with the necessary facilities, such as heat pumps and mock houses to demonstrate air tightness. But the domestic electrician qualification (level 3), which features environmental elements, is only just coming on board and there is still no clear occupational standard for insulation.

Another general problem is the fact retrofit sounds dull to people, says engineer Ele George, who is planning a reality-show-style programme that follows a household through the retrofit process. “We need a Love Island but for retrofit,” she says.

There’s not much sexier than the guarantee of stable, well-paid work following training. One solution to that could be through councils partnering with FE colleges, readying trainees to be directly employed by council building departments, known as Direct Labour Organisations (DLOs). The in-house team can then retrofit council property on a large scale.

Here’s a success story: City Building Glasgow is a non-profit organisation, jointly owned by Glasgow City Council and the Wheatley Group Housing Association, and formed in 2006 from the DLO of Glasgow City Council. The four-year Scottish Vocational Qualifications Level 3 apprenticeship scheme, delivered at its own Queenslie Training Centre, arms learners with the energy literacy needed to upgrade social housing. The completion rate of its diverse annual intake of 250 trainees and 60 apprentices is 94 per cent. The vast majority stay on as permanent employees to work on projects including the 350-home Hillpark Drive estate, where the UK’s largest heat pump was fitted to replace inefficient electric storage heaters and curb fuel poverty.

What about private firms? In Manchester, construction firm B4Box trains workers from the local area — many of whom were long-term unemployed or excluded youngsters — in multiple trades, with the guarantee of employment afterwards. Since launching in 2008, it has refurbished thousands of council homes across the north and recently won a low carbon skills award.

Lack of incentives for Britons to retrofit has caged demand/investment in these jobs, creating a decarbonisation skills gap that could hamper action at a time of urgent need.

Rishi Sunak — who yesterday watched from California climate protesters scaling his house — appears unlikely to champion retrofit soon, and the government is backsliding on energy efficiency standards for landlords. But with polling this week on the government’s environmental efforts hitting a record low, a cool political draught heading his way could urge a rethink.

Now try this

I was at the Bush Theatre yesterday for A Playlist for the Revolution, a three hander between an unlikely couple and a university cleaner. It’s a romcom that feeds into a broader, darker tale of belonging and survival, as the onset of the 2019 Hong Kong protests upend their world. Music is the thread. 

As someone whose Vietnamese family’s refugee history runs through Hong Kong — and who loves Cantopop — I was warmed witnessing this survival journey on stage. Final shows are today and tomorrow. 

Top stories today

• ‘The plan is working’ | The Bank of England has raised interest rates 0.25 percentage points to 5.25 per cent and warned that borrowing costs are likely to remain elevated despite slowing inflation. The BoE forecasts contained some brighter news for Rishi Sunak, who promised to halve inflation to 5.4 per cent by the end of the year. The central bank said it could dip below 5 per cent in the fourth quarter.

• Turn to private sector | The NHS in England will be given the capacity to perform almost 750,000 more tests and checks a year through a number of new “one-stop shop” community diagnostic centres, more than half of them funded by private-sector capital.

• Cash for consent | Homeowners should get “generous” compensation in exchange for agreeing to have high-voltage power lines built nearby, a report aimed at speeding up the delivery of big transmission projects in the UK has recommended.

• Crack down on de-banking | Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has told Britain’s financial regulator to find out urgently how many bank customers have been blacklisted for their political views and to hit lenders with heavy fines if the practice is widespread.