ECA head of energy solutions Bill Wright responds to the news that an additional £30m worth of funding has been made available to consumers under the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF).
“This additional boost to the GDHIF will make a number of homes in the UK more energy efficient and mean that many more people will have the opportunity to save on their energy bills. However, it’s disappointing to see the Government hasn’t taken this opportunity to review the Green Deal and include Feed-in-Tariffs under the ‘golden rule’. Doing this would have opened up the solar market to an entirely different type of customer and boosted businesses working in this field at a crucial point in the financial year.
“There are fundamental problems with the Green Deal that need to be resolved – lack of long-term incentives, excessive interest rates on the loans and a poor public perception about energy efficiency as an investment. Short term incentives like this are very welcome, but until we fix the issues at the heart of the Green Deal it won’t be the game changer it promised to be.”