The Green Deal

 “The Green Deal is a hugely ambitious 20 year plus framework for a long term solution to improving energy efficiency ...  the largest and most ambitious home improvement programme our country has seen since the second world war.”

This was Greg Barker, Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change back in June 2011. And here is how Decc itself describes the Green Deal on its website, and here is a video Decc made about it on YouTube.

What is certain is that the Green Deal changes significantly the domestic energy efficiency retrofitting landscape. What's less certain is how this will work in practice for those directly involved: building and heating companies, energy firms, retailers, local authorities and others.

But no one should doubt that low carbon refurbishment can transform lives. This audio clip from BBC Somerset features Steve, a customer of CSE’s Freedom from Fuel Poverty project in rural North East Somerset, explaining how solid wall insulation transformed the lives of his family for the better.

CSE Green Deal conference, 13 October 2011

CSE ran an event in October, jointly organised with Severn Wye Energy Agency, to "explore opportunities to create viable, locally beneficial provision of the Green Deal". More about this conference, including downloads of the presentation, can be found here.

Analysis of hard-to-treat housing in England

We have also undertaken an analysis of English Housing Survey (EHS, 2007-08) data to understand a little more about the nature, geography, occupancy and general characteristics of the country's hard-to-treat housing stock. This will prove invaluable for organisations like ourselves (or councils, building firms and energy companies) who are seeking to do some marketing of the Green Deal to consumers.

It's an 'internal' document and quite specialist, but we're happy to share, and you can download the analysis here.

The Green Deal incubator

CSE is continuing to work on ways to deliver Green Deal and low carbon housing refurbishment at a local level for local benefit. With our friends at Severn Wye Energy Agency we are exploring the potential for a new social enterprise that we’re calling the Green Deal Local Incubator.

This proposed initiative would seek to make the forthcoming Green Deal (a) better for local economies by involving local businesses and (b) more focused on community engagement.

“The idea is still on the drawing board,” says CSE’s Phillip Morris, “and we don’t yet know if it is viable. But what we’re looking at is supporting local community groups, builders and councils to participate successfully in the Green Deal through a shared facility that looks after the finance, accreditation, procurement, quality control and back-office functions.”

Refurbishing the UK’s housing stock to meet low-carbon standards is a major challenge, particularly for homes with solid walls and very low thermal performance. The Green Deal is designed to meet this challenge by creating a quality-controlled framework for mass-market low-carbon housing refurbishment which meets the costs out of future fuel bill savings.
 

CSE is keen for the Green Deal to be an opportunity for small local building firms, not just the big players

Just for the big boys?

“What worries us is that this Government scheme, with its heavy regulatory framework, extensive accreditation systems and innovative financing mechanism, is designed to suit the big players: the energy utilities, major retailers and large insulation and property service companies.

“In so doing it ignores the contribution of small local building and heating companies which deliver most of the housing refurbishment activity in the UK,” added Phillip.

It also risks overlooking the fact that the take-up of the Green Deal is likely to depend on how far householders identify low-carbon refurbishment as ‘what we do round here’ (i.e. having friends and neighbours doing similar works). This will require neighbourhood-based initiatives involving trusted organisations which share experience, reinforce low-carbon behaviours and create new social norms. The ‘big company’ set-up of the Green Deal is likely to conflict with the social goals and make such community-oriented initiatives less successful than they could be.

We are exploring the Green Deal Local Incubator and testing its viability to see that it works for smaller local companies, for local councils, and for community-driven neighbourhood schemes.

Our response to the Government's Green Deal consulation (January 2012) can be downloaded here.

For more on the Green Deal Local Incubator contact Phillip Morris.

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