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An additional £100m funding for the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF) has been announced by Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Glasgow.
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Phase one of the GDHIF scheme proved popular and the first round of funding was used up within a few weeks earlier in the year, following which the government received considerable criticism.The new funding will be offered on the same terms as the first phase of funding, allowing domestic energy customers to claim £6,000 for installing solid wall insulation and £1,000 to install two sponsored energy efficiency measures. The incentive scheme was designed to drive take up of the Green Deal, which has struggled to gain momentum since it was launched at the beginning of 2013.
The British Property Federation welcomed the news but did sound a note of caution over the fact that once the fund has been exhausted, the scheme will no longer exist. It would like to see the government move towards more sustainable energy efficiency initiatives which will last for several years.
Ian Fletcher, Director of Policy, commented: “While the funding is obviously a positive and will undoubtedly prove popular we are concerned at the seemingly sporadic boom and bust cycle of energy efficiency policies. There is a real need for a long term policy for retrofit to provide certainty, reward behavioural change and to reduce emissions. The BPF continues to recognise that a pay-as-you-save model is ultimately the most effective for delivering large scale improvements in a sustainable fashion and efforts should be made to build on the recommendations of the Energy and Climate Change Committee to make the Green Deal more attractive to consumers.”
Speaking to ITV this morning, Ed Davey said: “We’re managing to show that you can go green and you can have low energy bills. The announcement that I’m making today of £100m to help people cut energy emissions and have warmer homes, and indeed cut carbon emissions I think will be really welcome.
“People want to have permanently lower energy bills and the fact that through our Green Deal and the Green Deal investment fund, that will help people make their homes warmer and greener and cheaper.”
John Alker, director of policy and communications at the UK Green Building Council, warned the additional funding was only a “temporary solution” to encouraging home energy efficiency.
He said: “As temperatures start to drop and households turn up their heating, this additional funding is a timely - but ultimately temporary - solution to encouraging energy efficiency. There’s no doubt that the Lib Dems understand the importance of home retrofit, and Ed Davey should be applauded for securing the cash from Treasury. But we need to move beyond stop-start incentives which damage business confidence.
“This funding could see us through to the General Election, but what happens after that? All parties must recognise that home energy efficiency is an infrastructure priority, with public investment needed to support the most vulnerable and to create the confidence for the private sector to scale up investment over the long term.”
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