Green Deal consultation documents published

[Kate de S]

The government has finally published its extremely lenghty consultation documents for the Green Deal and associated Energy Company Obligation.

I am hoping to get a 'some things to look out for' companion to the consultation onto aecb.net during next week, but just in case anyone can't wait to start on all 238 pages (plus 298 page impact assessment plus, plus...) they can be found here:

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/green_deal/green_deal.aspx#ia

And of course if anyone wants to comment, please post here!

Kate de S

[Nigel Rose]

There is a fundamental problem with the whole of the Green Deal and that is the so called Golden Rule, the idea that savings should outweigh the costs. There are many many issues with the Golden Rule but a simple example will suffice. A high energy using household obtains a loan, and has improvements made to their house, and benefits because their energy bills are overall lower than they would have paid before, indeed the more wasteful they are to begin with and following the improvements the better off they will be. A low energy household then moves in to the same house and has to pay higher energy bills than they would have had to if they had been no improvements. The Golden Rule works best for high energy using households, who one might presume are also least likely to apply for the loan in the first place, and penalises low energy using households.

[Kate de S]

Thanks Nigel, you're right, a number of people have commented on the uneasy relationship between what a building 'needs', what might be best for particular occupants, and who should pay (as well as Green Deal loans, some grants will be available, but only to certain households in certain circumstances). When you look at the situation of people in fuel poverty (which you may be hinting at too?) it gets even trickier to square the circle.

I must say my initial impression is that DECC have really struggled with this, and are aware its almost impossible to arrive at a 'right answer'. There is certainly a lot of criticism out there of the answers they have come up with to date, but to some extent they do admit they may not have cracked it; so perhaps its up to everyone to pitch in?

We're hoping to get at least some commentary on the consultation up on the AECB news pages by the end of the week, and when its is up there, I'll add a link here too.

Thanks again,

Kate de S

[Kate de S]

A general introduction to the Green Deal is now on the AECB news pages here:

http://aecb.net/news/2011/12/the-government-consultation-on-the-green-deal-and-the-associated-energy-company-obligation-eco-has-now-been-published-2/#more-2259

No downloads yet, sorry, there should be some available from early next week.

Kate

[Emma Furniss]

One download now available - Assessment, Advice, Measures.

[Emma Furniss]

Second download available - Who's who in the Green Deal.

[Kate de S]

I enjoyed this short video featuring Peter Rickaby and Mark Elton - making a good case for architects to get stuck in to low energy retrofit, and suggesting the possible scaling up of carefully worked-out solutions (which is something I think will be crucial).

Here's the link (also on RIBA sustainability hub)
http://vimeo.com/30381286
tip - if it stops & starts, just let it play through by itself once, while you go and do something else, then play it again!

Kate de S

[Kate de S]

Lots of excellent questions about the Green Deal and ECO  on this DECC web chat, and a few answers too - hopefully this page will be viewable for a while, though it dose make slightly disjointed reading (questions and answers separated by long time intervals!) but DECC promise a more organised version at some point soon.

Update on 10th Jan:
DECC have now put this webchat into a pdf with the questions and answers next to each other - a great deal easier to follow.

download from here http://www.decc.gov.uk/publications/basket.aspx?filetype=4&filepath=11%2ftackling-climate-change%2fgreen-deal%2f4041-decc-green-deal-and-eco-consultation-webchat-thur.pdf&minwidth=true#basket

[Kate de S]

You can now download all of AECB's 4-part guide to what's proposed in the Green Deal & ECO - we've tried to dig down into the detail for at least some of it, and make it more readable than the DECC original!

The four sections are:

• Who’s who in the Green Deal
  
  Assessment-Advice-Measures
  
  Customers – Who Will Get What?
  
  Who will be doing the work?

And they can all be downloaded from http://aecb.net/news/2011/12/the-government-consultation-on-the-green-deal-and-the-associated-energy-company-obligation-eco-has-now-been-published-2/#more-2259

Hopefully they offer a digestible guide to what is proposed, so you can work out what DECC needs to change, and also understand a bit better if and how it might be relevant to your own work.

[Piers Sadler]

Hi
I've been analysing the costs and savings of retrofit works over recent months based on real jobs for individual households.  I have developed rates per metre squared for a range of measures.  It is clear (nothing new here) that the Golden Rule will only be met by cavities and uninsulated lofts (not even top up).  So the Green Deal seems to have taken away existing subsidies eg CERT and replaced them with a market based mechanism and a dodgy financial plan.
The ECO is aimed at hard to treat (probably solid wall only) buildings.  This leaves a gap of unsupported measures (roofs, floors, windows etc).
There are about 6.6million solid walled houses in the UK.  The ECO is targetting these with roughly 1billion/yr - enough to treat 50,000 properties per year. That's >100yrs to complete the job if anyone signs up.

I presented my analysis to the Green Register a couple of weeks ago.  It can be found here:
http://www.piers-sadler.co.uk/news/2011/12/9/eco-refurbishment-costs.html

along with costs for difficult, typical and easy installations for a range of measures.    I'm collecting and publishing more on costs so please let me have any real cost data for professional installations (I'm not dealing with DIY at the moment). 

[David Porter]

In the AECB's notes on the consultation, you raise concerns about whether this is a viable market for SMEs given the need for accreditation, warranties and insurance. (ref: http://aecb.net/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Who-will-be-doing-the-work.pdf).

The market could be structured in such a way as to allow SMEs to pay into a single, central pool of indemnity insurance that is regulated. This would  allow the costs associated with insurance to be vastly lowered for SMEs.

A similar situation exists for small tour operators who are able to set up and grow their businesses in part due their ability to maintain an ATOL license.

[P Sherring]

Nigel, presumably the issue you raise (about the measures working for a high-user family, but not for a lower-user family who succeeds them) would be dealt with through the price of the house - i.e. the low-user family would know about the Green Deal charge and would take that into account when they made an offer. At least it would in an ideal world, in reality I'm not sure how much people think about energy bills when they buy a house.

The biggest problem with the scheme seems to me that it just won't deliver. The fundamental idea was that this was going to unlock a huge new market for retrofit, but the research seems to indicate that people don't want a long-term financial obligation, so the only measures that will be taken up are the ones with quite fast pay-back. Meanwhile, there are extra costs being added in for the assessor and the finance, which mean the pay-back has to be even quicker.

[Paul Buckingham]

I think one potentially major issue of delivering the Green Deal will be the installers. Building in energy efficiency is highly dependent on detailing within the building and taking care that insulation, as one example, is detailed to get maximum performance from the material. I have worked on a few buildings where insulation is seen as just something you have to put in rather than an essential integral part of a building.
If installers fit Green Deal measures with the same lack of care and understanding of what they are trying to achieve that is very often displayed currently then they are not going to achieve the potential energy savings that they should. The same goes for micro renewables/ generation, there are many stories around of installations not achieving what they were predicted to due to poor installation or unsuitability of installation.
Should assessors and project managers be involved independently to the installers to ensure all works are carried out to the necessary standard required? Many builders are more concerned with getting the job done quickly and looking good at the end rather than the unseen details hidden beneath.
I also have a concern that the involvement of companies like Tesco as Green Deal providers could potentially have detrimental effects. Are the providers going to say "this is what you can have and this is how much it is going to cost", as they have basically done with the agricultural industry, resulting in installers having to work for unreasonably low rates and having to complete the jobs more quickly (cutting corners) to enable them to move on to the next so that they can earn a reasonable wage.

Paul. 

[Andy Simmonds]

So what are the fundamental tests of 'fitness for purpose' to gauge the GD against?

1. a GHG reduction target and deadline for this sector?
2. Risk - assess risk level that GD wont achieve this target for UK stock?
3. Risk - of unintended consequences - what are the top 10?
4. any more?!

What a complex scheme, that relies sadly on 'the market' alone to deliver.

Obviously we dont have 1 above and the risk in 2 has to be 100% (?), 3 we can manage some of these risks to a degree - but what is the point if we can't achieve 1? If we cant achieve 1 what does that mean for UK energy security, warmth and health.

What do we suggest as the alternative apporach that works at scale to a 2050ish deadline?

or lets just agree to be cold and in fuel poverty (I wont be as I'm already in an EnerPHit home)

We can demand that those aecb members with the ability, be supported in doing a good job at small - medium scale retrofit (ripple effect, exemplars, best practice, shared learning, models to follow etc) but we obviously need to say 'the emporer has no clothes' yet suggest an alternative that works for the UK on a large scale.

I will try and articulate this with David Olvier and get up here on the forum, also finding yoru comments below useful, keep em coming.

Tell me if I am avoiding the detail of the GD and should be engaging more with it, rather than moving straight to the big picture stuff....

[Paul Buckingham]

I think the big picture stuff is very relevant, the GD is really only offering an idea of what could be achieved if everyone takes on the scheme and all who work on it really know what they are aiming to achieve! The big picture is that we all need to do something now (apart from Andy who's already done it! ) if we want to live in warm comfortable homes in the future without having to rely on loads of energy.
I very much doubt that the GD is the definitive answer and it will probably be replaced in due course with something else that will also achieve very little. The main driver for energy efficient refurb en-mass in the future will not start to kick in until we start to run out of energy, experience power cuts and gas shortages and energy bills need delivering by lorry. We only start to make changes when we actually have to (when it starts to hurt) not when we are told to or can by choice.

Paul.