No other sector of the economy has the potential to accelerate the Net Zero ambition and create the same volume of high-quality jobs as the decarbonisation of our homes.

Based on a 40-hour working week, we will need to decarbonise around eight homes every minute for the next 29 years to help the UK achieve its ambition of Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050. This will mean substantial growth and change within the supply chain to meet this challenge of quality, scale and complexity within a relatively short time frame.

However, the educational system and the wider sector is underprepared for this retrofit revolution. Higher Education and Further Education curricula focus almost entirely on new build and fossil-fuel burning technologies, to the detriment of retrofit and low carbon technologies. This challenge must be addressed collaboratively, building on existing best practice, identifying gaps and bringing together different elements of the supply chain to create joined up solutions that will work for customers and businesses alike.

In June 2021 a report was commissioned by the Gatsby Foundation, as part of a project undertaken by Energy Systems Catapult to map existing skills provision, highlighting gaps and skills requirements for the future retrofit marketplace. Its purpose is to provide a steer towards addressing training and skills needs for future retrofit programmes.

Key points

The research identified three key challenges that the sector must address to develop the market, stimulate demand, and increase capacity and skills provision across the supply chain:

• Consumer Confidence and Trust
• Quality and Governance
• Integration

In addition to highlighting several skills gaps in the retrofit sector, the research also identified the need for wider activities to address structural issues:

• Improving quality assurance and monitoring of installs to drive improvements in installation and training, as well as increasing customer confidence in the supply chain
• Focusing on customer care and experience, in particular provision of good-quality advice and information to customers to enable them to make decisions confidently
• Making better use of data to provide more detailed and meaningful property assessments, and to highlight performance gaps after installation has taken place
• Identifying ways of integrating a fragmented supply chain better, increasing knowledge sharing and collaboration to help promote good practice and develop offers that customers will find attractive.