THE WARREN REPORT
10.20 Andrew Warren is chairman of the British Energy Efficiency Federation
This drive must go beyond six months With the Green Homes Grant about to launch, the Government must come up with a longer-term strategy on energy saving if it wants to create thousands of new jobs
T
he biggest governmentfunded drive to improve the energy efficiency of English homes in thirty years gets underway this month. A measure of its priority is that, just before it launched, the Prime Minister used part of his five-minute address to a United Nations Heads of Government meeting in New York, to laud the key role of massively improving energy efficiency in combating the threat of climate change. As part of the UK’s commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, he described a “huge”, a “very, very ambitious” programme, “retrofitting our homes, and our commercial premises.” We would, the PM promised, “be changing the windows, changing the boilers, changing the lagging.” With an enormous giggle, Boris Johnson re-emphasised to the (virtually) assembled dignitaries: “We will never be lagging on lagging.” Agreed, that is far from a new joke. I can recall Classic FM presenter, David Mellor, producing precisely the same line almost 40 years ago when a youthful junior energy minister. But there is no question of the serious intent behind its latest enunciation. Back in July, Chancellor Rishi Sunak set out a £2bn Green Homes grant scheme, part of a wider “over £3bn” plan to upgrade homes and public buildings. When first announced, the plan was set to improve 600,000 existing homes and sustain 100,000 jobs. Last month Treasury Minister Kemi Badenoch announced that, by including an extra 50,000 public sector buildings improvements, this initiative “could
support 140,000 green jobs.” The grants on offer are worth up to £10,000 per home for lowincome households in fuel poverty, and £5,000 for anybody else. All installers must be accredited with TrustMark. Initially, national newspaper and websites were told that permitted measures would be very wide-ranging. As well as insulation and heat pumps, these would include double, triple and secondary glazing of doors and windows, appliance thermostats and smart heating controls, modern lighting systems and high-efficiency condensing boilers. However, a final definitive eligible product list has been published on the relevant government website: “Simple Energy Advice”. It identifies primary and secondary energy-saving measures. This list entirely excludes any assistance for the installation of both lighting systems or new gas boilers of any kind. Both of these energy-saving options have considerable numbers of trained and skilled installers already available. All of these people can now play no part in the process.
Three categories of primary measures for heating There are three categories of “primary” measures on the heating side. These are low-carbon heat, predominantly air source and ground source heat pumps. Last year just 44,000 heat pumps were installed in homes in Britain – including new homes. Plus 600 biomass pellet boilers. In contrast, around 1.6m condensing gas boilers were put in, with very different training required. It is reckoned that there are still at least 5m elderly gas boilers still in use, mostly around 50 per cent rather than 95 per cent efficient. This grant scheme ignores them. While the Government website states clearly that “for lowcarbon heating to be installed, households will need to have adequate insulation,” it is unclear how this requirement - seldom currently promoted by heat pump manufacturers - is to be enforced. Then there are those in the glazing and heating controls industries, again including thousands of trained, experienced operatives. They are only permitted to install “secondary measures.” Such measures qualify for funding only if at least one of the primary measures has already been commissioned. And, crucially, “secondary measures” can only be “subsidised up to the cash amount of subsidy provided for a primary measure.”
‘The final Green Homes Grant product list excludes help for the installation of lighting systems or new gas boilers’
So, even though grants may be available worth up to £5,000 per home, if a household receives just £1,000 to pay for primary measures, they are blocked from claiming a penny more than a maximum of £1,000 towards any “secondary measures.” In all cases, the householder must pay at least one-third of the costs. All of which leaves “lagging”- or as it is more usually called, insulation – to deliver the big numbers. The vast majority of English homes remain seriously underinsulated. But, while only a very small percentage are fully insulated, most have at least got some insulation. The last national government scheme, operating in the 1970s and 1980s, concentrated entirely upon loft insulation. Much of it was installed on a DIY basis. It isn’t very thick. And most such insulation will have moved around subsequently, leaving large gaps through which the heat escapes. Symptomatic of this relative unprofessionalism is the fact that, until this January, there was no nationally recognised loft insulation guarantee. And the Green Homes grant scheme is entirely about creating jobs, not DIY. What about cavity wall insulation? Eight years ago, over half a million existing homes had it installed. Last year, the total was just 43,000. Solid wall insulation numbers are trickier, somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 homes were reckoned to have been improved in that way last year. To expand both these and other markets will undoubtedly be possible. But to reach those official numbers of 140,000 new jobs and improve 650,000 buildings, it will require an awful lot of hiring and an awful lot of training. All for a scheme currently set to conclude on March 31. For businesses to be able confidently to respond to this ambitious programme, Government needs to set out details of a longer-term energy efficiency strategy within a few weeks. In the 2019-2024 Conservative manifesto, a minimum £9.3bn of relevant expenditure was committed. Confirming its go-ahead should ensure that industry can properly invest. And the Prime Minister will be then permitted to repeat his commitment not to lag on lagging. OCTOBER 2020 | ENERGY IN BUILDINGS & INDUSTRY | 09
EIBI_1020_09_(M).indd 1
01/10/2020 17:17
