Green Deal Fit for the future

The Autumn issue of Sustainable Housing went to press last night. It is set to be a cracker, overflowing with essential reading for anyone with an interest in all things sustainable: exclusive news on what the Energy Company Obligation will look like, an interview with the outspoken Jonathon Porritt, early lessons from the Technology Strategy Board’s Retrofit for the Future programme, a look at the eco-credentials of prefab development, and how to get tenants on board the green deal.

My production editor was flitting through and remarked: ‘the green deal has had a bit of a rough ride in this issue’. In retrospect, I suppose it has. The green deal is the common theme in nearly all the articles because it is one of the most important policy areas in housing. As a result, we have given it something of a constructive grilling. And right now, there are some major hurdles emerging to overcome.

FutureFit
The most interesting recent example of this were flagged up in Affinity Sutton’s£1.2 million FutureFit retrofit pilot results which Inside Housing exclusively revealed on Friday. The implications of these findings for the social housing sector are huge. Effectively the report shows that for social housing the green deal will fail to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

The report identified a 26 per cent ‘carbon black hole’ in the green deal. It also flagged up a massive funding gap of around £3,000 per home between the net cost of the works and the value of the energy savings. This means that just under half of the savings in social homes will need to be subsidised and plugged by Energy Company Obligation funding – and if the green deal ‘low package’ of £6,500 was rolled out across Affinity Sutton’s 56,000 homes, would equate to a minimum funding gap of £130 million for the housing association. Ouch.

Another major problem – one that is perhaps more worrying for the government and would be green deal providers in the private sector – is the very low initial take-up rate. Just 4.8 per cent of the 800 residents approached showed initial interest. This is even worse than the findings of the Pay As You Save pilot carried out by BioRegional, B&Q and Sutton Council which saw 126 homes receive a home energy audit – yet only 67 eventually went ahead with the measures. If social landlords struggle to give away free energy efficiency works to tenants then the private sector is in for a rude awakening when it tries the same thing.

The findings from both schemes show that the government’s market-led assumption that residents will take up the green deal on the rational of potential bills savings alone may be somewhat flawed as residents appear to motivated as much by the prospect of increased warmth as they are financial benefits. That said, with massive bill hikes anticipated from energy companies, this may well change over time.

for further information please see the following link http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6517623

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