Joint letter on the Green Deal to Ed Davey MP

 

Rt. Hon. Ed Davey MP

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

Department for Energy and Climate Change

3 Whitehall Place

London

SW1A 2AW

 

2nd July 2012

 

Dear Secretary of State

We all agree that investment in energy efficiency is vitally important and we were encouraged by the commitment to action in this area from both you and the Prime Minister. It helps people to cut their energy bills, tackles fuel poverty, reduces carbon emissions and stimulates growth and employment.  However, in its current form, we believe that the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO) risks not delivering for consumers, the economy or the environment.

The Impact Assessment for the Green Deal predicts a significant fall in uptake of loft and cavity wall insulation, and that job losses in this sector are likely. This means that you propose forging ahead with a policy that could have a devastating impact, not only on consumers’ ability to cut their energy bills, but also on the home insulation industry, while seriously undermining attempts to cut carbon emissions.

We therefore urge you to extend support for low-cost, high-impact measures – such as loft and cavity wall insulation – even further, particularly during the transitional period. Millions of homes still need loft and cavity wall insulation, which are among the most cost effective ways of cutting energy bills and delivering carbon savings.

We also believe the reduction in funding for energy efficiency support for the fuel poor is also a matter of considerable concern so we want to see a greater share of ECO funding explicitly targeted towards tackling fuel poverty.

Finally, we urge you to invest in large-scale pilot programmes and innovation to ensure that a sound basis is provided to allow the solid wall insulation market to develop over time.

There is still time to save the Green Deal from failing to achieve its positive and ambitious aims.  But if improvements are not made now, the Green Deal could fail on all fronts.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Richard Lloyd

Executive Director, Which?

 

Nick Molho

Head of Energy Policy, WWF

 

John Sauven

Executive Director, GreenpeaceUK

 

John Sinfield

Managing Director, Knauf Insulation

 

Dot Gibson

General Secretary, National Pensioners Convention

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