The Green Deal – summary of Greg Barker speech at Ecobuild

Climate Change Minister Greg Barker had plenty to say about the Green Deal in his speech at the Ecobuild conference in London yesterday. The full text of the speech is available on the The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) website.

My summary is:

  • Confirmation that the Deal will be launched this autumn.
  • Not only aimed at ‘a whole range of home improvements beyond insulation’

    The Green Deal will act as a catalyst to stimulate innovation so that more and more energy savings products come to the market.

  • Interesting statistics:

    The UK building stock was responsible for 43% of total UK emissions in 2009.
    We estimate that this year up to 4.1m households will be in fuel poverty in England alone.

  • The Green Deal varies from previous schemes in the breadth of the measures that should be eligible for it:

    The Green Deal has been designed to finance the installation of a broad range of measures across the energy efficiency market. Our goal is to enable the property to benefit from all the improvements that can create savings.

    The heating, glazing, lighting and Microgeneration industries will all be able to use this innovative financing mechanism.

    Less we-known measures which improve energy efficiency, such as flue gas heat recovery and waste water recovery systems will also be eligible for finance under the Green Deal.

    The key is for measures to be self-financing – able pay for themselves over their lifetime. However, even partially self-financing measures can still be part-financed under the scheme as part of a package of improvements.

  • The Renewable Heat Incentive and the Green Deal will operate side-by-side. Some technologies covered by the RHI will be eligible under the Green Deal as well. Work will be undertaken to further integrate the two schemes and how they are marketed.
  • A new Green Deal advice service goes live on 2nd April
  • Some of the hurdles to entry for providers have been removed or diluted. The requirements for Green Deal providers to have a surety bond in place prior to authorisation, for them to provide an independent conciliation service and to hold warranties for the length of the plan have been removed. Instead of the independent conciliation service “we are procuring a bespoke Green Deal Ombudsman to deal with any Green Deal complaints” – whatever that means!
  • The British Standards Institution recently published a new set of standards for Green Deal installers. Companies wishing to install measures under the Green Deal must be certified to this new standard.
  • There’s also mention of the Big Society (cringe!). With a expectation of collaborations within communities delivering change.

No mention of delays in launching the Green Deal, although DECC officials have recently been speaking of a phased launch or a slow start to the scheme.


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