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'Alarming omissions and inconsistencies' in Green Deal consultation
By editor | 18 Jan, 2012
The Green Deal has been criticised by the Committee on Climate Change as being unlikely to deliver its objectives, with the government’s own impact assessment also confirming that the rate of energy-efficiency improvement will be less than 25% than is currently being achieved – in other words the proposed policy change will reduce policy effectiveness, not improve it.
The UKERC response, compiled by Dr. Nick Eyre (University of Oxford), Jan Rosenow (University of Oxford), Joanne Wade (independent researcher) and Dr. Charlie Wilson (University of East Anglia), welcomes the proposal within the Green Deal to stimulate the use of solid wall insulation, and praises the detailed consultation on some of the proposals. But it raises concerns that the rationale for some decisions has not been sufficiently well covered, and that key issues – such as how to prevent the “Big 6” energy companies from dominating the market, or overcome the barriers preventing local authorities from engaging in local partnerships – have not been addressed.
UKERC would welcome greater clarification as to how the Green Deal will fit with, and complement other reforms and initiatives being proposed, such as the Renewable Heat Incentive, and Feed-in Tariffs. The team calls for more to be done to use the existing evidence base in designing the Green Deal proposals. It says the consultation document fails to make any significant reference to the Pay As You Save (PAYS) pilots, or to publish their full results, despite these having been set up specifically to test some of the Green Deal mechanisms.
Dr. Nick Eyre commented: “We support the underlying idea behind the Green Deal – it’s a good idea to bring new sources of finance into low-energy refurbishment of buildings and pay for the costs from reduced energy bills. But the detail of the proposals is very worrying – it will reduce rates of insulation and have a detrimental impact on the ability of the UK to meet its carbon targets. Subsidising energy supply, but not energy efficiency improvement makes no sense.”
The full version of UKERC’s response to the Green Deal Consultation is available to download here.
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