The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is in the process of consulting on the Green Deal, to inform the secondary legislation which will specify how the scheme – designed to improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s homes and businesses at no upfront cost – will work.
SummitSkills is encouraging stakeholders and organisations within the BSE sector, with an interest in operating within the Green Deal framework, to make sure they take part in the DECC online consultation. They can do this either by going to www.econsultation.decc.gov.uk/decc-policy/green_deal_eco or by completing the SummitSkills’ version of the consultation document, which picks out the relevant questions for the BSE sector in a shorter questionnaire. This is so that the sector skills council can feed back the sector’s views to government, as well as gathering information to inform its future work programme.
Nigel Hollett, head of environmental technologies at SummitSkills, commented: “SummitSkills wants to help the workforce to engage with this growing market and make sure it has a voice as the Government prepares the details of how its scheme will work. Green Deal is now becoming a reality and the use of environmental technologies is becoming more and more important as the UK works hard to meet its commitments in making energy efficient improvements to homes and businesses. Skilled BSE engineers will play a leading role in ensuring this ambitious scheme’s success.
“With the help of our new apprenticeship frameworks, funding to help provide Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) accredited qualifications and the continuing work of the Green Deal Skills Alliance (GDSA), the BSE sector will be able to expand its traditional skills to embrace these environmental technologies.”
The DECC Consultation closes on 18 January 2012 and for more information about the Green Deal see www.decc.gov.uk/greendeal. The shorter version of the questionnaire is available at www.summitskills.org.uk (link to website and then on website link to survey monkey questionnaire).
The Energy Act 2011 made provision for the development of a Green Deal and a new Energy Company Obligation (ECO) to replace the existing Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) and the Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP), which will both expire in 2012.