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Accelerating innovation in building retrofit for a net zero future

Topics: Energy and Low-Carbon Futures, General, Impacts and adaptation, Mitigation
Type: Briefing paper
Publication date: September 2025

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Accelerating innovation in building retrofit for a net zero future [PDF]

Summary

This briefing paper has also been published as a webpage: Accelerating innovation in building retrofit for a net zero future

Author: Clare Lowe
Reviewers: Dr Richard Carmichael and Alyssa Gilbert
Editor: Cait Hewitt

Media enquiries: grantham.media@imperial.ac.uk
Policy enquiries: c.hewitt@imperial.ac.uk

Many UK homes and other buildings are poorly insulated, expensive to heat, and rely on fossil fuels for heating and cooking. Upgrades through retrofit can help deliver comfortable, climate-resilient, low-carbon dwellings, but challenges such as the scale of disruption and limited options for suitable products put many people off.

This background briefing, which shares insights from the Better Futures Retrofit Accelerator programme, showcases some of the ways in which innovation in the building retrofit sector can help overcome these challenges and how targeted support for innovators can help get these products to market, benefitting households and helping to build a thriving UK retrofit sector.

Headlines

Innovation in the materials, technologies and planning tools to support building retrofit can help deliver new buildings that are fit for the future. It represents both an economic opportunity and a means to deliver comfortable, climate-resilient, low-carbon homes.
Opportunities for collaboration and creative thinking between industry and innovators are rare but support the acceleration of retrofit delivery and provide a valuable faster route to market for effective, impactful new products. The Better Futures Retrofit Accelerator helped to fill a gap in innovator support by facilitating these collaborations.
In considering what support should be provided in future, the lens through which such programmes are assessed should be widened, to capture not only the financial success of innovations but also their broader impacts in supporting the industry transformation needed to achieve rapid decarbonisation along with employment and economic benefits.