There is no easy solution to make UK properties greener, as high costs and a high turnover of ownership present particular challenges in this market, according to the guests on the FTAdviser In Focus podcast.
The problem was the long time it takes to pay back the cost of green home improvements, which is often way longer than a typical ownership term, they said.
They also broadly agreed efficiency measures did not add value to the home per se but might help to give the seller the price they are looking for as opposed to a down valuation, in the current market.
But Andreas Thorsheim, chief executive and founder of European solar marketplace Otovo, said green technology such as solar panels were getting "better and cheaper every day" and he predicted that within 10 years' time most people would be generating renewable energy, have heat pumps and drive e-cars.
For Justin Moy, mortgage adviser at Essex Home Finance, it is a matter of "bad timing" amid the cost of living crisis and interest rates going up.
"It's what people want, but can they afford it?" he mused. "And even if there is a government grant or some form of finance from lenders to actually pay for these things, the reality is, is it a priority at the moment or is it something that we can put off for a couple of years while interest rates are high, while people are actually still trying to work out whether they can still keep the house that they've got at the moment, however inefficient it may be from an energy perspective.
"Certainly for the majority of my clients they will kind of kick it down the road for two or three years time when interest rates are perhaps a bit cheaper."
He also said the incentives put together by lenders for green home improvements were "so, so small", amounting to as little as £110 a year on a typical £200,000 mortgage (65 per cent LTV).
"What you can't have is a government very positively pushing a lot of cost to the common person but there is no incentive. [If it takes] 34 years to make your money back from an investment, how often will that property be sold in 34 years? So why would I pay out £21k, say, to improve a property I might sell in three years' time.
"I don't think our economy and the way perhaps we as consumers buy and sell our properties lends itself to an easy solution that perhaps in other parts of Europe, that stability and that property ownership model, is much much different."
Property development consultant Joe Garner said the dangling the carrot approach did not work, change had to be driven through regulation.
