Hypothesis: the Perseus (for SME) programme could be extended to address domestic sustainable/transition finance and support delivery of the Warm Homes Plan. To test this hypothesis, we seek expression of interest.

Overview

The UK is committing £15 billion of public and government-backed finance to decarbonising its homes through the Warm Homes Plan, with the main lending window opening in April 2027.

Lenders, government, and households are, however, generally working from modelled EPC estimates rather than real performance data. Perseus, the UK’s leading cross-sector Smart Data Scheme (convened by IB1), already enables smart meter data to flow through to carbon accounting providers, and on to lenders, with permission. Designed for scale, Perseus has indicated there is a £5-10B addressable market with over one million UK SMEs addressable. P4D could extend the same mechanism to twenty million homes.

We seek expressions of interest to explore convening a coalition that spans market actors including, but not limited to: banks, energy (and related) data providers, consent and identity infrastructure providers (e.g. RECCo’s Consumer Consent Solution), property data bodies (e.g. Open Property Data Association), carbon accounting providers, retrofit and low carbon technology installers, local authorities, and government departments. The coalition will design and deliver P4D as trusted Smart Data infrastructure for domestic energy transition finance.

The proposed programme is aligned with the UK’s Smart Data Strategy for 2035, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, GDPR, and Ofgem’s Consumer Consent Solution, which launches for domestic smart meter data in 2027.

The challenge

The Warm Homes Plan targets decarbonising the UK’s domestic building stock. The challenge is large and complex, spanning installation of low carbon technologies and smart control systems, building fabric and insulation retrofit, and group interventions such as street-level decarbonisation, district heating, and community energy. While the Warm Homes Plan provides a significant finance intervention, gaps remain. For example, even where households are eligible for direct funding, there are often additional costs which exceed the grant (e.g. plumbing, radiator, and electrical work accompanying a heat pump installation). Additionally, avenues to finance for middle income households and group-scale interventions remain patchy. 

Closing these gaps requires private finance at scale, delivered by multiple lenders competing on better terms, evidenced in business-relevant timeframes. The data infrastructure to support this does not yet exist for the domestic market.

How P4D could work

Perseus has already proven the mechanism for SMEs. P4D could add two components for the domestic market:

1) trusted, assurable consumer data access and consent management; and,

2) a property data layer that links meter data to the building, its characteristics, and its retrofit history.

Building upon the existing Perseus framework, this could create a complete chain from a household’s actual energy performance to a lender’s underwriting decision that is robustly permissioned, assurable, and aligned with the Consumer Consent Solution.

What it could deliver

Lenders would gain a verified underwriting signal, portfolio-level PCAF-aligned reporting, and lower-friction origination through a regulatory-aligned infrastructure.

The Warm Homes Agency and the departments backing the Plan would gain ‘relevant-time’ visibility of carbon impact across funded and unfunded measures, the ability to steer the programme on evidence rather than on lagging survey data, and an auditable link between public investment and outcomes.

Consumers would gain a verified picture of their home performance, simpler access to better-priced finance, control and transparency over their data, and recognition of impact from behavioural change, smart tariff uptake, and privately funded improvements alongside subsidised installations.

How to participate

IB1 operates as a neutral, not-for-profit orchestrator for data sharing. Any Scheme rules are co-designed with participants through its established governance process, and all outputs are published under open, reusable licences. Organisations can engage as design partners shaping the Scheme rules, choices of data standards, as pilot participants in live data flows and consent programmes, or as observers of the evidence outputs and open specifications.

Submit your expression of interest or contact partners@ib1.org