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The Guardian has published an article explaining how the Green Deal will significantly fail to meet up to the targets set by the Government.
They claim that out of the 14 million households in need of upgrades, the scheme will only actually reach 2-3 million homes. It get’s worse for the Government, as the CCC (Committee on Climate Change), the Government’s own body, are the authors of the report!
The reason they give is thus: currently, energy companies have an obligation to homeowners to allow them to improve their energy efficiency. The Green Deal will actually take this obligation away. The ‘Golden Rule’ of the scheme is that the cost of the upgrades will be outweighed by the savings made, therefore more than paying for itself. However, by taking the obligation away from energy companies, the whole scheme is then left to the devices of the market.
The worry the CCC has is that if energy bills continue to rise at a very high and regular rate, any savings to be made are going to become harder to garner, dragging out the repayment of the loan given to pay for the upgrades in the first place! Of course it’s not guaranteed that energy bills will continue on it’s steep rising path, but who honestly believes that bills are going to level out or even decrease? I certainly don’t.
The Guardian also points out that people may not actually want the hassle of having a whole raft of upgrades being done in their home. Not everyone wants to have windows replaced! People are also going to be worried about cowboys and poor installations.
So, for all the hype and wishful thinking, the Government really needs to get to grips with the real-life details and figure out how to make this scheme work, or risk a lot of hard work culminating in nothing.
They claim that out of the 14 million households in need of upgrades, the scheme will only actually reach 2-3 million homes. It get’s worse for the Government, as the CCC (Committee on Climate Change), the Government’s own body, are the authors of the report!
The reason they give is thus: currently, energy companies have an obligation to homeowners to allow them to improve their energy efficiency. The Green Deal will actually take this obligation away. The ‘Golden Rule’ of the scheme is that the cost of the upgrades will be outweighed by the savings made, therefore more than paying for itself. However, by taking the obligation away from energy companies, the whole scheme is then left to the devices of the market.
The worry the CCC has is that if energy bills continue to rise at a very high and regular rate, any savings to be made are going to become harder to garner, dragging out the repayment of the loan given to pay for the upgrades in the first place! Of course it’s not guaranteed that energy bills will continue on it’s steep rising path, but who honestly believes that bills are going to level out or even decrease? I certainly don’t.
The Guardian also points out that people may not actually want the hassle of having a whole raft of upgrades being done in their home. Not everyone wants to have windows replaced! People are also going to be worried about cowboys and poor installations.
So, for all the hype and wishful thinking, the Government really needs to get to grips with the real-life details and figure out how to make this scheme work, or risk a lot of hard work culminating in nothing.