Re-energising the green agenda

Authors of ‘Re-energising the Green Deal’ recommend a review of the Coalition’s flagship energy efficiency policy to make retrofit more financially attractive and a consultation on a new Green Deal for social landlords.

The concern is that the new policies of the Green Deal and ECO will deliver fewer carbon emissions reductions than the policies they replaced. As an example, the authors point out that insulation numbers have dropped dramatically since the Green Deal was announced.

The Green Construction Board should also be given more teeth and an Existing Homes Hub, similar to the Zero Carbon Homes Hub, should be established to help industry and Government deal with the Green Deal and wider retrofit issues.

The report also states: “We believe that now would be the right time to review and simplify the Green Deal. Our view is that there needs to be a stronger focus on local initiatives.

"We welcome the £20m extra funding for local authorities to take a street by street approach, which was announced by DECC in July, but this will not be enough. Even on Germany’s rate of progress it would take us 130 years to upgrade 26 million homes.”

John Alker, Director of Policy and Communications, who sat on the group, says: “This report adds yet more weight to the calls for additional incentives to get Green Deal off the ground. With the housing market on the up, Stamp Duty is surely an obvious policy lever for Government to pull.”

“The strength of this report is that it is cross-party, and is a measured response to a policy that has disappointed so far, but is not beyond rescue.”