PowerSwitch

The new Energy Bill has just been released, including the Green Deal where houses get insulated at no up front cost to the owner, who pays for it with higher energy bills. I wondered what everyone thinks about it.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/l ... _bill.aspx

Here's the summary of the Green Deal
http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/legi ... posals.pdf

My Transition Housing Group are starting by looking at what we can do with old solid wall houses. Should we start working on them, or wait until this comes in? There will be extra support for problem houses like this.

Theoretically you will pay for it through savings on their energy bills so the idea is that bills go down overall:

The core principle is “The Golden Rule”, meaning that the instalment payment for the energy saving measures should not exceed the projected associated cost savings on an average bill for the duration of the Green Deal Finance arrangement, which could be for as long as 25 years.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/legi ... n-deal.pdf

It's two years away still but I think it'll be worth starting to think about what packages of measures people in your community could adopt. The scheme is going to be have accredited assessors who will be making recommendations so I don't know how much flexibility there will be.

You'll also probably need to top up the £6,000 with some extra if you're going to be doing external wall insulation on a whole house.

I say tackle all of the remaining low and medium cost measures now, especially draughts and then wait and see how GD develops before going for solid wall insulation.

I think the idea that people are put off by the £200 upfront cost is wrong, so the policy doesnt address a real issue.

The Deal does start to address the issue of people in poorly insulated rented accommodation so it has some merit.

But mostly it seems to be a job creation scheme for 'box tickers', something that we can't afford and is not sustainable.

They talk about supporting small and medium businesses, and keeping out the cowboys. My experience with the Clear Skies grants a few years ago, was that they did encourage small business startups (I was involved in one of them), and the real cowboys were the big companies we were competing with.

I got out as Clear Skies was ending, but I get the impression that since then the system has done its best to drive away the small businesses and encourage the big ones.

One of my immediate thoughts was that as Transition encourages starting local businesses, we should be working towards doing this. The more I read, and thought about it though, I started to have my doubts, as don't have good feelings about this plan. I can't see an alternative to dealing with most of the 26 million homes in this country though.

Its a problem with all government initiatives, its just not possible working with 10,000 sole traders, so they only work with big companies, who charge more, and just sub contract the work out.

DominicJ wrote:Its a problem with all government initiatives, its just not possible working with 10,000 sole traders, so they only work with big companies, who charge more, and just sub contract the work out.

Not possible at all? Or not possible with systems devised and run by people who don't know what they're doing?

Government incentives shaped by political lobbying will always favour big business.

JohnB wrote:

DominicJ wrote:Its a problem with all government initiatives, its just not possible working with 10,000 sole traders, so they only work with big companies, who charge more, and just sub contract the work out.

Not possible at all? Or not possible with systems devised and run by people who don't know what they're doing?

Not possible for a government department.
Its exactly what the big contractor does, and makes a killing doing.

DominicJ wrote:Not possible for a government department.

Why? Maybe not as they're (dis)organised now though, where the words pissup and brewery spring to mind!