COP29 comment: Households need clarity and support to retrofit

As COP29 begins, Chief Executive Josiah Lockhart reflects on how Changeworks is working to scale climate action in Scotland, helping individuals and communities overcome barriers to decarbonisation.

This week the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) will attempt to agree on plans for addressing the climate crisis. The 29th summit of its kind, delegates will measure the progress that has been made on limiting global warming to two degrees above industrial levels.

Whilst international agreement is crucial to keep global warming within safe planetary limits, I find it difficult to feel much enthusiasm for COP. Last year’s Conference ended with an unsatisfying call for a “transition away” from fossil fuels, falling short of any actual commitments or timelines for such a move.

Given scepticism over COP’s ability to deliver serious change, it might seem sensible to focus on what we as individuals can do to cut carbon emissions.

At Changeworks our aim is to help people decarbonise their homes. Achieving net zero will require almost everyone across Scotland to retrofit their properties. However, we know that there are significant barriers preventing people from making these changes, and that it’s not quite as straightforward as everyone just needing to “do their bit”.

According to Consumer Scotland, the public faces barriers of “clarity, convenience and cost”. Or, to put it another way, people are either not sure what they need to do, find doing it challenging, or simply cannot afford to do it.

Changeworks has been developing services that try to remove each of those obstacles. We deliver the Scottish Government’s Home Energy Scotland service in the Southeast and Highlands and Islands, helping people understand how to improve home energy efficiency and finding funding options for them to do so.

We also recently launched our Green Energy Helpline, aimed specifically at supporting people at risk of being left behind in Scotland’s transition to net zero. Our team give advice on sustainable technologies – such as smart meters or time of use tariffs, as well as solar panels and heat pumps – which support decarbonisation.

We’ve also expanded our EcoCosi retrofit service to the Lothians, and the service is now available for retrofitting flats as well as houses. The EcoCosi team is continually working to strengthen the supply chain in Scotland. This is vital for improving the convenience of a retrofit, reducing both waiting times and the time the retrofit itself takes.

In February 2025 we’ll be holding our Changeworks Connects Conference, with an aim to further reducing the barriers to retrofit.

Whilst each of these services is doing great work, empowering individuals to organise their own retrofits and supporting people who may be left behind, the fact remains that much more could be done if government policy matched the scale of the task. Without a robust policy framework, obstacles (particularly cost and convenience) will continue to delay action.

It’s interesting that COP29 has been nicknamed “the finance COP”. This reflects the Conference’s focus on grant funding for lower-income countries to transition to low-carbon economies. What will come out of this remains to be seen, but at the very least it highlights what also needs to happen in Scotland: those who cannot afford to retrofit their homes need help.

That could be achieved by setting clear timeframes for decarbonisation, which would encourage healthy competition within the retrofit space, thus bringing down costs for homeowners. It could also be supported by expanding the existing schemes that help the most vulnerable improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

As ever, at Changeworks we advocate for meaningful change at the international, national and local level. In the meantime, we carry on, doing our best to innovate to decarbonise Scotland’s homes.