MCFly reader X* asks – Is it the biggest home improvement scheme since the second world war? Massive white Elephant? Dead in the Water?
If this topic interests you, see also this interview about GM domestic retrofit…

The Government, and especially the Department for the Environment and Climate Change, have high hopes for it. They hope to have all 25 odd million domestic properties renovated to high environmental standards by 2030. With the hope that this will carve 30% from their collective carbon emissions. Launched in early 2013, (already 3 months later than first planned) it was announced with all the fanfare of a very quiet kazoo. Since then it has been beset with problems, software problems, supply chain problems, but most importantly, take-up problems.

Because, although the concept is a good one – that home-owners don’t have to pay for expensive carbon saving measures upfront and instead pay for them with the savings that they make – the mechanism which delivers the money is complicated. First an assessor assesses how much carbon a measures will save, then a provider works out how much money that will generate and therefore how much money can be borrowed. Then an installer installs it. That’s a lot of people who want their piece of the carbon saving pie.

I got involved because I thought the concept was a great way of improving a home’s energy efficiency that avoids the massive upfront cost that some measures cost. I’ve been going into people houses in recent years and been asked to install a new boiler, when in reality the best thing to do would be insulate internal walls or clad the outside. But because it is easier and cheaper to install a boiler that’s what they want, even though keeping the old boiler and insulating would save them more money.

The Green Deal should provide a mechanism that gets the most energy saving measure in first and then the glory projects (PV, Solar Thermal) in at the end.

Along side the Green Deal is the Energy Company Obligation scheme (ECO), which again is a great concept (for the Government). We are tied into the Kyoto agreement we have to reduce our emissions by 80% on 1990 levels by 2050, if we don’t the Government gets fined. How does the government deal with these potential fines? It passes them onto the big 6 energy companies.

On the way to 2050 there are a few milestones, 21% reduction by 2008 (already met), 34% by 2020. The big 6 have been told, sorry forced, to make these savings on the governments behalf. If they don’t meet these targets in the time-scales already set, they get fined, and they’re massive. 10% of global turnover.

Needless to say the big 6 are working hard to meet the targets.

There’s a whole industry grown up around ECO in just 9 short months. Basically the ECO scheme targets the fuel poor, pensioners, and those on certain welfare benefits. And rightly so, it is this area of the populace that normally live in the worst-performing homes. They have high energy bills, use payment cards (the most expensive way to pay for energy) and have little money to change their circumstances.

Because of the delays in the Green Deal most of the companies set up to “Green Deal with it” have gone head-first into the ECO scheme as a way of making money. You might have heard that the level of insulation installations has dropped by 97% since last year. I know of companies renowned for loft and cavity wall insulations mothballing their installation vans and employing teams and teams of boiler installers. Why is this? It’s because it’s easy. It’s easy to calculate the carbon saving, it’s easy to get installers to throw them in, it’s easy; Rip out an oldish boiler, throw in a high efficiency condensing boiler, get the carbon saving, meet your target, don’t get fined, everyone’s happy.

Except the people living in the substandard homes get a poor quality boiler and none of the other measures get installed. It is true that some loft and cavity walls are still being done. But the hard-to-treat properties, those with solid walls or narrow cavities are still leaking heat like sieves do water. And now they have boilers that will break down within a few years and need to be replaced (probable on the next ECO scheme. There’s that much demand for boilers on the ECO scheme that the installation time and payment for doing it is so low it would be impossible to make good job of it.

When the Green Deal was first announced it was not going to be a boiler installation exercise, Insulate, A-Rate, generate. That was the mantra; then the big 6 got involved. Why on earth would they want people to use less energy? That’s a ridiculous idea, burn less gas, are you mad?

And so, its a boiler installation exercise.

Things will change. Things have to change otherwise the Green Deal is dead in the water, and what chance will we have in lower our emissions.

In my opinion the government will tweak the finance mechanism to make it more palatable for home-owners. They will more than likely increase the cash-back amount per measure, they will increase the pressure on the big 6 to fund hard to treat properties and get them up to scratch to.

They will do this because otherwise we’ll miss our Kyoto targets of reduced carbon emissions, and where would we be then?

MCFly reader X is not Jonathan Atkinson. If you want to discuss any of the issues raised with him/her, please get in touch via mcmonthly@gmail.com and I will put you in touch with Michael O’Doh…. sorry, “MCFly reader X”