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BuildingLife Campaign

The Other Side of the Climate Coin: Making Climate Resilience Investible

Climate damage is projected to reach 3.3% of UK GDP by 2050, and 5.5 million properties in England are already at risk of flooding. Simon McWhirter, CEO of UKGBC and Chris Skidmore OBE, Former UK Energy and Clean Growth Minister and UKGBC #BuildingLife Ambassador, explain why cutting carbon and building resilience are one agenda, and how policy and finance can make resilience investible ahead of COP31.

Climate conferences have a habit of describing every decade as the decisive one. It has been said so often that it risks sounding like habit rather than conviction, and yet we arrive at COP31 more certain than ever that the choices made in the built environment over the next few years will shape how well the world holds together under a changing climate. Between us we have spent a good part of the last decade arguing for net zero, and what we have learned in that time is how much becomes possible when industry, finance and government agree a direction and move towards it together.

That lesson matters because we are living through a polycrisis in which climate, nature and inequality compound one another, and no part of the economy can answer it alone. Cutting the carbon in the buildings we construct and retrofit, and preparing those same buildings and places for heat, flooding and water stress, are two sides of one coin. A just transition needs both, and it needs policy and finance to treat them as a single task.

Learning from the road towards net zero

Our progress on decarbonisation is a useful guide. UKGBC has worked with members across the industry to make whole life carbon (which covers the emissions from operating a building as well as those embodied in its materials and construction) something that can be measured, reported and ultimately limited. What that work has shown is that progress comes fastest when clear policy direction meets a willing market, and when lenders, investors, designers and builders can agree a common way of describing the problem. It is a model of what collaboration can deliver, and we think resilience deserves the same approach.

Our Climate Resilience Roadmap sets out more than thirty policies for governments, from an Office for Resilience at the centre of government to building standards that take overheating and flooding seriously. Alongside it, we are developing work on finance, value and risk, which begins by asking how far resilience is reflected in the way buildings are insured, valued and financed, a picture that is still taking shape. 

 

That is a shared challenge. Insurers, valuers, lenders, investors, owners and designers each hold a piece of the picture, and they need common data, models and language before they can price adaptation with confidence. Our members in finance and insurance bring deep expertise in physical climate risk, and we want to open up space for them, alongside the wider industry, to work out how best to collaborate. We do not claim to have the answers, but we do believe the conversation requires convening and that UKGBC is well placed to host it. 

The roles we need to play

The built environment industry holds evidence of how buildings and places perform in heat, flood and drought, along with the case studies that show adaptation paying back. Finance brings capital, risk expertise and a long view of value. Government can bring the policy certainty and standards that let both act with confidence. None can deliver this alone, and each becomes more powerful in combination, which is why we see policy and finance as enablers and drivers of a response that cuts carbon and builds resilience together, rather than as separate programmes competing for the same capital.

An opportunity for the UK to lead

The UK has led before. We were the first major economy to legislate for net zero, one of us signed the order that made it law in June 2019, and the Mission Zero review that followed set out what delivering it would take, and that work is now into the detail. Government is turning its attention to more detailed planning, and to how to make it investable, through sector transition plans for the built environment, among others. One of us co-chairs the UK Net Zero Council’s sector transition plan programme, and we are clear that now is the time to ensure resilience is mainstreamed into these plans. 

The stakes here are plain. Climate damage is projected to rise from 1.1% of UK GDP today to 3.3% by 2050, and 5.5 million properties in England are already at risk of flooding. With Flood Re – the joint government and insurance sector flood reinsurance scheme in the UK – due to end in 2039, the market will then have to price that risk for itself. That opportunity has yet to be seized, and it will take leadership from the UK Government to create a Roadmap-aligned national framework that investors, insurers and industry can rely on. A country that integrates resilience and decarbonisation into its economy and society, with the policy certainty and market signals to match, becomes the reference point for every nation weighing the same choices. The UK has the evidence, the institutions and the track record to be that country, but what remains is the decision to lead.

We arrive in Antalya with a simple message that cutting carbon and building resilience are one agenda, and that the built environment, finance and policy have most to gain by pursuing it together. Tomorrow, 10th November we will convene leaders from real estate, finance, insurance and policy, alongside Green Building Councils from around the world, to explore what would change decisions in practice, from shared resilience metrics to physical risk disclosure, and lending terms that recognise adaptation. To build on the insights from this event, as well as our BuildingLife ambassador campaign that culminates at COP31, we invite members from across the industry to help shape what comes next, because the best answers will come from the people who must make them work. If you share that ambition, we would like to hear from you. 

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