The financing will support universities to invest in energy-efficiency upgrades and low-carbon heating across university campuses, helping to reduce emissions, lower long-term energy costs and modernise hundreds of buildings for staff, students and researchers.  

Through the agreement, Lloyds Banking Group will provide up to £500 million of lending to UK universities, enabled by up to £350m of financial guarantees provided by the National Wealth Fund, which will help modernise up to 300 campus buildings. The guarantee allows Lloyds to offer longer-tenors and more flexible financing that helps make retrofit projects viable, accelerating energy-efficiency upgrades and heat decarbonisation across the higher education estate. These upgrades also help grow the UK’s retrofit capability – from local contractors to specialist engineers – supporting up to 4000 jobs and strengthening the supply chain as universities upgrade complex estates.  

Universities represent a hard-to-abate part of the built environment, facing an estimated decarbonisation cost of £8.8 billion associated with their built environment. Many institutions are responsible for large, diverse estates that include older and specialist buildings, making retrofit particularly challenging without access to long-term, affordable finance.  

Today’s announcement builds on the National Wealth Fund and Lloyds Banking Group’s existing social housing retrofit partnership where the bank has committed lending up to £500m to support registered providers with the retrofit of social homes. This is supported by up to £400m of financial guarantees provided by the National Wealth Fund. Following today’s announcement, the National Wealth Fund has provided more than £1.6 billion in financial guarantees to accelerate the rollout of retrofit across the built environment. This financing is enabling projects to be delivered at scale, helping to stimulate UK retrofit supply chains and supporting progress towards the UK’s net zero ambitions.

Further information is available here