Responding to news on the Green Deal today Eric Lounsbury,
Strategy Manager at the Carbon Trust said:
"The Green Deal could help overcome one of the key obstacles to
improving the energy efficiency of homes and non-domestic buildings
by providing upfront finance. However households and organisations
need to be more strongly incentivised to take up the Green Deal
offer. Among the options the Government should consider are
discounts on business rates for improved energy efficiency,
extending the proposed ban on F and G-rated buildings to cover
owner-occupiers, and extending Display Energy Certificates to all
large commercial properties in order to create transparency of
building energy efficiency. Incentives such as these will be
essential if the Green Deal is to realise its full potential."
Myles McCarthy, Managing Director at Carbon Trust Implementation
services, added:
"We welcome the Government's plans to make UK business more
energy efficient. However, businesses do not need to wait until the
Green Deal is finalised in autumn 2012 to improve energy efficiency
and slash their energy costs. We recently launched a new service
with no upfront cost for organisations looking to install new green
equipment to help them reduce their energy spend, and improve
efficiencies. Businesses that invest and replace old, energy
wasting equipment with new energy efficient kit can achieve good
paybacks, often within one to three years."
Background
The Green Deal has the potential to help households and small
organisations, its key focus markets, to overcome one of the main
obstacles to improving energy efficiency - the need for upfront
finance.
However, finance has only ever been one of many obstacles to the
take-up of energy efficiency measures. Even when home insulation
has been given away, many households have not been interested. To
ensure that the Green Deal is a success, households and
organisations need stronger incentives that will stimulate their
interest in implementing energy efficiency measures and taking up
the Green Deal offer.
We welcome the fact that the Government is considering
incentives such as discounts on Council Tax and Stamp Duty for
households that improve the energy performance of their homes, as
well as a ban on private landlords renting out homes and commercial
properties below an E Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating
from 2018. Further measures are needed, however, and among the
options the Government should consider are the following:
- Discounts on business rates or empty property tax waivers for
organisations that improve the energy efficiency of their
properties
- Extend the ban on F- and G-rated buildings to cover
owner-occupied properties, which make up the majority of UK
households and a significant share of non-domestic buildings. To
successfully enact this policy, carefully designed exemptions need
to be developed to ensure that the ban treats properties that have
taken action to improve energy efficiency fairly while also
maintaining the strength of the policy.
- We have long supported an extension of Display Energy
Certificates (DECs) to all large commercial buildings, a policy
that would make the energy and carbon performance of non-domestic
buildings transparent across the market. This policy has broad
industry support but has not been taken up in the recent Energy
Bill.