Be Like Water
What do Bruce Lee, Soviet war fighting and retrofit have in common?
What do Bruce Lee, Soviet war fighting and retrofit have in common?
What does Bruce Lee, Soviet war fighting and retrofit activism have in common? The path to enlightenment is not an easy one, but the mastery of adapting to situations is common to any philosophy of survival and winning.
Happily, retrofit and sustainable energy solutions are bypassing the obstructions being placed in their way by populist and GHG funded lobbying groups partly because they are working in tandem with the needs, wants and desires of Jarvis Cocker's 'Common People' but probably just as much, bi-partisan support for 'green policies' was in place before the crap shoot of US politics took over all our news feeds.
Bruce Lee said "Be like water", soviet battlefield doctrine used the idea of deep operations and the retrofit sector has adopted a grass roots approach to community retrofit which is not only gaining traction, it's subverting the narrative of the greenlash.
Why weaponising the Greenlash isn't working
Scholarly and media analyses use greenlash to describe organised resistance or political pushback against environmental or climate policies when affected groups perceive those policies as costly, imposed, or unfair. Greenlash can be catalysed by distributional grievances (who pays vs who benefits), distrust of political or scientific elites, or local impacts (e.g., landscape change, perceived house-price effects). These dynamics have been linked to support gains for right-wing populist parties across Europe when climate actions are seen as top-down mandates that ignore everyday economic pressures.
In the current UK debate, British populist figures have actively challenged net-zero policies, highlighting (and arguably amplifying) cost anxieties; now, senior Conservative voices have joined in questioning net-zero trajectories, signalling an attempt to mobilise scepticism and convert it into political capital.
Economic threat narratives are central: analysis warns that rolling back green commitments, as floated by Richard Tice, could undermine investment, jobs, and long-term bill savings yet the short-term “cost to households” frame is repeatedly deployed to stir opposition.
What UK households are signalling in 2025: strong, price-driven appetite for energy savings & retrofit support
Recent UK data show very high levels of public attention to saving energy at home, sustained even after the 2022-23 price shocks: in Spring 2025, 83% reported paying “a lot” or “a fair amount” of attention to energy saving; large majorities report taking practical actions (wash at 30°C, heat fewer rooms) to cut bills.
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
Public interest in making upgrades is broad but cost-sensitive. A June 2025 nationally representative Citizens Advice survey of >10k homeowners found 72% interested in at least one energy-efficiency or low-carbon improvement within five years, yet cost was the top barrier (66% concerned), with many unsure upgrades would really cut bills. Trust in contractors and redress mechanisms were additional worries.
A companion Citizens Advice report (Apr 2025) estimated 19 million homeowners interested in upgrades but again flagged affordability gaps: typical packages to reach EPC C plus a heat pump (~£15.5k) are beyond many households; low-interest finance and grants are recommended.
Experience with current schemes (ECO4, GBIS) shows they can deliver “life-changing” bill and comfort benefits when people access them but awareness is uneven and many need personalised, trusted support to navigate the process.
The DESNZ Heat & Energy Use in the Home 2025 statistics reinforce that high energy costs and fuel-poverty risks remain core motivators; many households face affordability pressures and need clearer, trusted advice pathways to undertake low-carbon heating transitions. (GOV.UK Assets)
Why community-scale diversification is a strategic antidote to greenlash
Greenlash thrives on perceptions of unfair cost imposition, democratic deficit, and remote elites. Community-led, distributed retrofit programmes directly counter each driver:
Shifting the narrative from imposed cost to local savings & comfort you can see
When retrofit is organised through trusted local intermediaries - parish or town groups, community energy co-ops, neighbourhood hubs - residents encounter peers who have already cut their bills and improved comfort, making benefits concrete and social rather than abstract and technocratic.
The National Retrofit Hub’s community retrofit initiative stresses working “at the intersection of energy, people and place,” prioritising fairness, access and local impact; this place-based framing helps people connect retrofit actions to everyday well-being, not distant carbon targets.
Because cost worries dominate homeowner decision-making, programmes that aggregate demand, broker grants/low-cost finance, and provide impartial advice can lower individual risk and up-front expense which directly addresses the leading barriers identified in 2025 polling.
Building trustworthy advice chains that overcome scepticism & past scheme failures
Greenlash feeds on low trust in “experts” and memories of poor installations. Community hubs can vet installers, coordinate quality assurance, and provide aftercare - roles highlighted as missing in national schemes and called for by Citizens Advice and parliamentary scrutiny of retrofit policy.
Local face-to-face support reduces fear of being “ripped off,” a key deterrent in survey data, and helps translate complex eligibility or technical standards into plain language.
It's easy to share the story of a job done badly, but when these stories are countered by real time, local evidence of relatable peers who've had there home improved, opposition to improvements (who turns down lower bills?) can evaporate. The truth is, we always tend towards trusting those we know rather than voices from afar.
Distributing economic benefits locally - visible jobs inoculate against “costly net zero” attacks
Populist critiques often claim green policy exports jobs or wastes subsidies. By spreading retrofit delivery across many community-scale projects, each drawing on local trades, supply chains, and new skills programmes, the economic upside is anchored in constituencies that might otherwise be receptive to anti-green messaging.
Analyses warning that scrapping green support would jeopardise tens of thousands of UK jobs underscores how retaining and localising that work can blunt populist narratives.
There is wider work to be done to redistribute the allocation of work out to local SME's and widen the attraction of re-skilling and up skilling in the diminishing trades disciplines. Right now, there just isn't enough tradespeople doing retrofit.
Lowering political salience of contentious national mandates
Research on green backlash finds that when policy costs are concentrated and benefits diffuse, opposition spikes; participatory design and compensatory measures reduce backlash intensity. Let's unpick that.
In simple terms. Put the pots of cash out to regional authorities, not in central government.
Community-driven retrofit allows tailoring to local housing archetypes, income mixes, and co-funding models, transforming a one-size national rule into a menu shaped by local consent. This kind of participatory embedding is highlighted in comparative greenlash scholarship as key to political durability.
Reframing “net zero” around health, warmth, and cost relief rather than culture-war symbols
Populist actors frequently bundle climate policy with broader identity politics. Community retrofit narratives—“warmer homes,” “lower bills,” “neighbour-to-neighbour skills”—shift salience away from contested ideological labels; this is especially potent given UK polling that support for local clean energy rises sharply when framed as bill-reducing.
Specific mechanisms: how diversifying into small groups reduces backlash risk
| Backlash driver | Community-retrofit countermeasure | Why it matters politically | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perceived high up-front costs | Group procurement, grant brokerage, local loan schemes; phased “no-regrets” packages | Converts “cost burden” into savings narrative; dilutes headline figures exploited by populists. | (Citizens Advice, Citizens Advice, GOV.UK Assets) |
| Distrust / fear of poor workmanship | Local advice, installer vetting, aftercare, neighbour testimonials | Rebuilds trust; reduces scandal-fuel that feeds anti-green stories. | (Citizens Advice, Citizens Advice, UK Parliament) |
| “Elites forcing change” rhetoric | Community governance, co-design workshops, local data on cold homes | Demonstrates democratic ownership; hard for national actors to paint as elite imposition. | (nationalretrofithub.org.uk, Centre for Sustainable Energy) |
| Job-loss scare stories | Training local trades; linking to Warm Homes Plan funding; reporting local spend | Turns green policy into local employment and pride issue; reduces resonance of rollback pledges. | (New Economics Foundation, Financial Times, The Guardian) |
| Abstract carbon targets feel remote | Bill comparisons, comfort metrics, health testimonials post-retrofit | Personalises benefits; sustains engagement beyond news cycles that drive greenlash headlines. | (Citizens Advice, GOV.UK, nationalretrofithub.org.uk) |
How the Community Retrofit / National Retrofit Hub approach maps onto anti-greenlash design principles
Place-based partnership: The Hub’s model explicitly centres “people and place,” with co-leads like the Centre for Sustainable Energy bringing decades of community capacity-building and fuel-poverty expertise. This embeds retrofit in existing trusted local networks—exactly the participatory architecture recommended in the green backlash literature to sustain support.
Fairness & access focus: Emphasis on ensuring retrofit “works for the people and places who need it most” resonates with polling that lower-income and fuel-poor households remain highly motivated by affordability but poorly served by fragmented national schemes. Targeting these groups first converts potential grievance (a rich-area subsidy story populists might seize) into a fairness narrative.
Community advice infrastructure: By convening local advice routes (signposting grants, technical options, sequencing works), the Hub addresses the trust and navigation gaps flagged by Citizens Advice’s large-sample research. Reducing “process pain” removes tinder for stories of government waste or consumer rip-offs that drive backlash cycles.
Scaled through replication, not mandate: Diversifying into many small groups means failure in one locality does not delegitimise the whole national effort; learning spreads horizontally. Political opponents thus find fewer high-profile single points of failure to amplify. Distributed, iterative scaling is recommended in parliamentary evidence as government looks to reach millions of homes while maintaining consumer confidence.
Policy & communication moves to maximise the anti-greenlash dividend
- Lead with bills, not carbon. All outreach materials from local groups should headline “potential £X/year savings” ranges validated by impartial bodies, because cost savings most strongly shift support in polling.
- Bundle trusted finance pathways. Pair community advice with locally branded access to Warm Homes Plan grants / low-interest loans; emphasise staged upgrades so households aren’t forced into full packages at once-key to overcoming affordability concerns.
- Quality & redress guarantees. Create a simple “community retrofit assurance” kite-mark conveying vetted installers, warranties, and aftercare, addressing top trust barriers in homeowner surveys and parliamentary findings on fragmented protections.
- Local jobs dashboard. Publicly track apprenticeships, contractor spend, and retained energy-bill savings per neighbourhood to visualise economic value-undercutting national narratives that green policy destroys jobs or wastes subsidies.
- Cross-partisan local champions. Recruit respected community figures across political lines (including conservatives sceptical of national mandates) to front programmes; research on green backlash shows participatory, trusted messengers dampen anti-elite sentiment.
- Target fuel-poverty hotspots first. Visible wins in cold homes build moral legitimacy and media stories of “warmth, health, and lower NHS costs,” shifting the frame from culture war to social justice and fiscal prudence.
Bringing it together
Populist parties gain traction when people feel done to, ripped off, or ignored. Community-scale retrofit flips those feelings: it is done by us, saves us money, and responds to local need. In a UK electorate where attention to energy saving remains high and millions want affordable upgrades but fear cost and complexity, this decentralised, fairness-first approach aligns with the expressed will of voters and blunts the emotive wedges populists seek to drive between “ordinary people” and “green elites.”