The United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change says it will make revisions to its Green Deal program, which has not had as much uptake in its first year as expected.
The DECC announced on Monday
that it will make the Green Deal easier for consumers and the companies
that operate in the market. The program is intended to help homeowners
and businesses with energy efficiency improvements up to £10,000 ($16,500) with no upfront costs.
Despite
the promise of money, which is paid back on utility bills over long
period of times, only a small handful of the roughly 71,000 audited
homes have moved forward with loans. There are about 13,000 homes per
month entering the process.
One of the problems is that setting up
the financing company that will dish out loans has taken longer than
expected, according to The Guardian. Greg Barker, a minister at the DECC, told The Guardian
that 80 percent of the households receiving assessments are planning on
carrying out at least one energy efficiency improvement.
The
improvements will introduce an online tool that will give consumers
straightforward advice on how to take energy-efficient steps in their
household. The DECC will also improve the reports households are given
to be clearer about what the audit means and how the government can help
make improvements. The government will also improve its website to
point consumers to the companies that can provide the services that are
needed.
Companies that are approved as part of the Green Deal,
which is mostly about improving the building envelope of Britain’s old
housing stock, are also receiving some boosts. The DECC will open up its
Energy Performance Certificate data so companies can identify
properties that would benefit most from upgrades.
The government
is also expanding what’s included in the Green Deal, while also working
on ways to reduce the cost of insurance requirements attached to Green
Deal projects. The scale of the public-private program, the equivalent of $21.5 billion over a decade,
had many in the energy efficiency industry salivating when it was
announced. The utilities collect the money, but it is a consortium of
banks that are putting up the money with the assumption that they will
receive a steady payback through the Green Deal.
But the program
proves what many in the industry know: it is not necessarily readily
available capital that limits home energy-efficiency retrofits. Many
of the efforts to streamline the program revolve around making upgrades
easier. One improvement will be streamlining the assessments, work and
inspections. The Green Deal has also found that many people want to do
an online assessment and then move straight to an installation.
Many utilities in the U.S. have found that despite residential energy efficiency programs,
the individual consumer tends to be fickle. Many don’t care much about
the utility bill, but they do care about comfort. As winter rolls into
Britain, many supporters of the Green Deal hope that colder months will
boost interest in weatherizing homes. The DECC is also trying to find
ways to entice multifamily buildings
to take advantage of Green Deal, a segment that has historically been
difficult for utilities to tackle in terms of improving energy
efficiency.
Some analysts in the U.K. are skeptical that the Green Deal will take off, even with the changes. "The
demand forecasts [for the Green Deal] had been hopelessly optimistic,"
Ben Warren, environmental finance leader at consultants Ernst &
Young, told The Guardian. "This is down to the complexity of the scheme, but also the cost of borrowing."
If
the complexities can be minimized and the program can take off,
however, it could provide important lessons for other on-bill financing
programs and public-private partnerships designed to unlock energy
efficiency across the long tail of small business and residential
building stock.
http://theenergycollective.com/katherinetweed/313446/dogged-slow-uptake-uk-attempts-streamline-its-home-efficiency-program
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