Another update from the hugely informative Somerset Community Energy Forum organized by the Centre for Sustainable Energy – http://www.cse.org.uk .

“The Green Deal is a hugely ambitious 20 year plus framework for a long term solution to improving energy efficiency …  the largest and most ambitious home improvement programme our country has seen since the second world war.”

Greg Barker, Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change

You might have heard about the Green Deal that the government is championing.  It is a scheme to help finance the insulation of hard to treat homes like those with solid walls and in the south-west this is vitally important; over 91% of our homes in the south-west are band D or below (read about energy performance indicators here – http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/BuyingAndSellingYourHome/Energyperformancecertificates/DG_177026)

So how does this happen.

If you chose to insulate your solid walls or draughty floorboards you would ‘take out a loan’ to pay for the insulation.  Instead of incurring the debt personally and losing the benefit if you sell the idea is that the loan is taking out on your electric meter and you would pay back the ‘loan’ in your energy bill.  If you sell then the contract is taking up by the buyers.  So say your energy bill is £800 per year and you insulated your walls as part of this scheme then the money you are saving on energy is ploughed back into cost of the insulation through your energy bills.  The loan repayment would be shown in the energy bill and there will be a liability imposed on energy companies to collect this money.

The process for the green deal on your domestic property and for business is:

• Assessment from an approved body (they must be independent of the installers). It looks as though this might be an extension of the job for HIPs assessors though this has not been finalized. British Gas have already said they would do this for free but it is difficult to see how they can operate a totally independent team of assessors.
• Finance – again this would be a body who have been approved.
• Installation by a green deal installer who is accredited.
• Repayments and follow-up.

This has been touted as a scheme that local businesses and community groups can be apart of and CSE are piloting a green deal local incubator to enable local builders and the whole supply chain to compete with the ‘big boys’.

Read more about the Green Deal local incubator  here – http://www.cse.org.uk/pages/information/local-authorities/the-green-deal and here for Simon Robert’s, Chief Executive of CSE, presentation on the green deal – http://www.cse.org.uk/downloads/file/scef_green_deal_introduction.ppt

If you cannot wait for the Green Deal to start up you might be eligible for the Somerset West Hard-To-Treat Homes schemes which offers 25% of your costs paid for and low income households can get a loan on the remaining 75% and very reasonable rates.  Find out from the CSE post – http://www.cse.org.uk/projects/view/1154