Green Deal or No Deal?
12th January 2013
It?s nearly here, the much talked about major change in how we can insulate our homes, make them warmer and reduce our carbon emissions, all for no cost to us the home occupier ? the government?s Green Deal. What, never heard of it or maybe sort of heard of it but you have no idea what it?s about, welcome to the club!
For the best part of 20 years successive governments have been trying to reduce the number of homes that are in fuel poverty. Fuel poverty is where a household spends more than 10% of its income on their fuel bills. There have been many government initiatives over the years, the last one being Warm Front where if you were in receipt of benefits you could have your loft insulated, the wall cavities filled and your draughts eliminated, all for free. You could even have your heating system changed to a more efficient system or if you didn?t have one, a new system installed. All sectors of the energy efficiency industry claimed the process was working, in that fuel consumption was going down in these homes. The problem was the cost of fuel was going up but incomes were staying still, so no sooner did a home escape fuel poverty than prices dragged them back in again.
One of the first things the present coalition government said when they came into power was they would have none of this spending malarkey, instead they would have a new deal, a Green Deal, where you could have your home insulated and more efficiently heated and it would be paid for by the savings you made in your energy bills. Brilliant, but might someone be living in cloud cuckoo land here. As home owner who has done all of these measures in the past, I can say the house is warmer but there wasn?t a great saving in energy usage. Maybe we should have carried on living in a cold home and saved money.
Over the last 30 months the wise heads of the government and energy industry have devised a cunning plan, the energy companies will pay for the works and put a special meter on your supply to ensure you carry on paying for energy at your pre-insulated rate and they take the surplus money over what you now pay to what you should be paying, to pay for the works. There will be a special Green Deal Advisor at the outset that will assess what saving you can make by installing the various measures and they will then tie you into a contract with that energy supplier to the point where the advisor?s initial calculations say you have paid off the bill. This will be a Credit Agreement tied to the house.
The surveying profession has looked at the Green Deal Advisor role and said it doesn?t want to get involved. Why, the level of training required is considered to be inadequate for the job to be done correctly, instead it will be the completion of a tick box exercise that has little relevance to an individual house and most of all, the occupier. Secondly the Advisor will be attached to a supplier of the measures, so little if any independence instead there might be pressure to only buy that company?s products rather than the best for your house. Think double glazing sales force changing to Green Deal advisors.
Next, what happens when you come to sell the house? There is a credit agreement with an energy supplier that is tied to the house and unless you buy it out from the supplier, it will go to the new owner. Not something a new owner will wish to be saddled with I guess and buying out a credit agreement with many years to run isn?t cheap.
I?m sorry Mr Coalition Government, this doesn?t look good. The original launch date of autumn 2012 was deferred until the end of this month so they do have a couple of weeks to put this right, but I doubt they will. Looks like another spectacular flop, just like the Home Improvement Packs or even worse, tales of gullible home owners being ripped off by slick sales people, sorry Green Deal Advisors.
Source: http://peterfall.com/articles/energy-efficiency/green-deal-or-no-deal/
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