Just 132 households signed on to Green Deal

These figures were released in DECC’s second set of quarterly statistics on the progress of the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation (ECO).

Launched in January, the Government’s flagship scheme designed to decarbonise UK building stock is supposed to have as many as 10,000 GD Plans agreed by the end of this year. However, as of the end of July only one household had gone live, meaning the energy efficiency measures were installed in the property and repayment via the electricity bill had been confirmed.

132 households are in the ‘pending’ stage. This means they have agreed to a GD Plan and progress is being made to install the measures. A further 286 were in the initial stages, having indicated they wished to proceed with a GD Plan but not yet signed up.

Climate Change Minister Greg Barker has acknowledged that the GD got off to a slow start, but he expects numbers to rise.

"This ambitious long-term programme is still in its initial months,” says Mr Barker, “but over 58,000 Green Deal assessments shows genuine consumer interest and we expect continued steady growth as we go into the winter.”

Shadow Minister Luciana Berger MP disagrees, saying that only 1% of the 58,124 households who have had a Green Deal assessment have opted to take out a Green Deal plan.

“These figures show the scheme is still struggling to get off the ground. The fact that over 99% of people who had a Green Deal assessment didn’t want to take out a package should be a wake-up call for the Government. It is not good enough for Ministers to shrug their shoulders and dismiss this as a slow start.”

DECC’s quarterly report also revealed that 4256 Cashback vouchers had been paid, valued at some £1.1million. This scheme gives domestic customers money back when they install energy efficiency measures following an Assessment, regardless of their decision to sign a GD Plan. Most of the vouchers (97%) were applied to cost of replacement boilers.

Also part of DECC’s latest statistical release was a progress report on the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). This scheme runs unitl the end of March 2015 and aims to provide free energy efficiency measures for households that can’t afford them.

Provisional figures show there were 149,681 measures installed under ECO up to the end of June. The majority of all measures installed under ECO were for loft insulation (45%), cavity wall insulation (33%) and boiler upgrades (18%).

Separate figures released last week revealed that the Government has so far spent more than £16m on rolling out and marketing the Green Deal.

Government has also launched a £20 million Green Deal Communities scheme to help local authorities drive street-by-street delivery of the Green Deal.