OPINION: GOODBYE GREEN HOMES GRANT
Energy-efficiency expert Tim Pullen reviews what went wrong and the current state of play
Energy-efficiency expert Tim Pullen bids farewell to the ill-fated retrofit Grant
Aside from being a Covid-related job creation scheme, the point of the Green Homes Grant was to fund homeowners to improve thermal efficiency. When it was launched in September 2020, it was heralded as a great idea. It would raise awareness, reduce homeowners’ energy bills, create jobs, stimulate the industry and give homeowners £5,000 towards reducing their carbon footprint. But, if a camel is a horse designed by committee then what could have been a racehorse turned out to be a three-legged yak.
Why did it fail?
The problems with the scheme were evident from the outset. Cheap, easy fixes such as draughtproofing and heating controls were classified as ‘secondary measures’, which the homeowner had to qualify for by installing at least one ‘primary measure’ such as installing insulation, solar thermal panels, or a low-carbon heating option (a heat pump or biomass system).
Secondly, only scheme-registered and Trustmark accredited installers could be used. An unofficial poll carried out in October by Martin Lewis of www.moneysavingexpert.com found that 84% of the people that applied for the grant could not find a suitable installer. The result was that in February 2021 just 6.3% of the budget allocated for the scheme had been used (according to www.financialreporter.co.uk).
It may be argued that this was all due diligence for a publicly funded scheme and therefore quite right and proper. However, the scheme was only ever intended to last for six months, so was that much control really necessary? Simply allowing homeowners to use any installer registered with a nationally recognised body would have completely changed the outcome.
A good scheme, badly executed
The scheme was a really good idea, really badly executed. So badly executed that it might appear the government was simply waving a flag with no intention of ever planting it in the ground.
The Green Homes Grant is not the first green homes failure from recent years. It can be easily compared to the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which was introduced in November 2011.The unofficial target of the RHI was to have 500,000 accredited installations in the first five years. It was touted as being a game-changer, unique in the world. The government recognised that 19% of the total UK CO2 emissions came from home heating, and that RHI would help deal with that. We needed to kick-start the renewable heating industries in the same way that the Feed-in Tariff scheme did for the renewable electricity industry.
One of the official targets for the scheme was for 600,000 heat pumps to be installed by 2028. Ofgem tells us that as of March 2021 there are just 85,504 accredited domestic installations. Closure of the RHI scheme has now been put back to March 2022, but if that extension brings in even another 10,000 installations it will be a surprise.
Perhaps the RHI failed for the same reasons as the Green Homes Grant scheme did — it was too bureaucratic and insufficiently persuasive. While the RHI is set to be replaced by the Clean Heat Grant, there is no replacement for the Green Homes Grant. As such, there is no incentive, no support and no encouragement for most homeowners to introduce energy-efficiency measures.
There have been calls from the industry for the government to reduce VAT on work to retrofit existing homes, but these have yet to be answered.
What the scheme really offered was hope. Hope that the government finally understood that there are millions of homes in this green and pleasant land that need their energy-efficiency improving. Most of those homeowners will need serious persuading to make the change, and nothing persuades quite as readily as cash.
“If a camel is a horse designed by committee then what could have been a racehorse turned out to be a three-legged yak”