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Lack of government incentives puts brakes on energy efficiency

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Mat Lown

Mat is TFT's Chief ESG & Knowledge Officer. He's a chartered building surveyor and a chartered project management surveyor with more than 25 years of working with many leading property companies, investors and asset managers.

Over the last 10 years, Mat’s focus has shifted towards sustainability and in 2007 he founded TFT’s sustainability consultancy. Mat and his team help TFT’s clients to understand the specific sustainability risks and opportunities when making property investment and development decisions. Ultimately, he would like to see sustainability becoming part of what constitutes best practice.

Mat’s passionate about sustainability and finds that writing and lecturing regularly for RICS and for other organisations is a means of expressing and sharing this enthusiasm. Mat’s articles regularly appear in Construction News, Estates Gazette, RICS and Property Week, and he is a lead author of the RICS Guidance Note, ‘Sustainability – improving performance in existing buildings’. Also of note is Mat’s thesis, ‘Building a Greener Future’, which was published by the CIOB in 1991. He is a member of several sustainability committees including the British Property Federation, British Council for Offices, CIC and Revo.

Mat is interested in how great buildings and places can create delight and he particularly enjoys the creative re-use of existing buildings. The South Bank is a great example of how a place can be rejuvenated by considered new interventions and careful restoration of the original building fabric.

80% of commercial property landlords claim a lack of government incentives is the single biggest barrier to widespread energy efficiency measures being introduced across UK commercial real estate, according to TFT, the leading property and construction consultancy, in the TFT Energy Survey 2016 published today.With a confusing array of disconnected, individual energy regulations, a further 75% have said that the current regulatory framework is too complex to navigate. This comes even though an overwhelming majority of respondents to TFT’s first annual survey (92%) say that attitudes to energy efficiency have improved since the last recession.Similarly, 90% are clear that energy efficiency is a higher priority in their portfolios than it was before 2008. However, only 35% of investors have introduced a formal energy management system or implemented energy efficiency improvements.TFT Energy Survey 2016 is TFT’s first annual survey into the current barriers to delivering truly energy efficient real estate. Specifically targeting property investors and managers, it explores a range of key issues including whether energy efficiency has become a higher priority.

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