Green deal

[Eco Deal]

do you think small sme can make a living from green deal?

 

[Greenday]

As a renewables company I would like to think we could benefit from the Green Deal-------but who knows at the moment----certaintly the training companies will benefit!!

I still hope for an early announcement of where we are going with the RHI

Whats your view MEP?

 

[Worcester]

do you think small sme can make a living from green deal?

Nope, I reckon the compliance overheads will be a cost killer.

One man band may as a subbied installer for one of the big firms.

Big firms, Mark Group etc will do just fine thanks.

 

[TedM]

Barker said on Monday:

I am also pleased to confirm that we are on track to launch the Domestic RHI consultation in September.

Strange, as I thought there had already been a consultation on this very same subject about 2 years ago.

 

[Worcester]

Me too! Though they have been having real problems over metering / measurement.

 

[SRE]

It seems that Green Deal plans can't be approved until January so no-one is expecting installations before Feb at the earliest, including the utility companies who are of course providing the funding through ECO.

One of the key providers (not mark group) commented today that converting householders is going to be very difficult, they are hoping to get 1 in 10 conversion rate. They are experienced project managers and so far have spoken the most sense outside this forum. They ran a Green Deal pilot and found surprise surprise that a lot of properties just weren't suitable. They gave an example of an 80's house with cavity and wall insulation but an older boiler and controls. Yes they would benefit from a newer boiler and controls but they couldn't get the savings to meet the golden rule. In their words - "I wish householders would get a move on and get their lofts topped up for free while they can. By the time GD comes in they will be paying £1,000 for a £350 job because of all the associated costs."

There's still a lot to resolve regarding payment for the GDA's, one firm is offering £75 - guess what type of firm that is! There's an interesting parallel in Atlanta where they charge the customer $380 and the utility company refunds 50% if the customer goes ahead. Their conversion rate is much greater because there's a greater commitment from the customer in the first place.

Meanwhile the bull**** bandits have already moved in and are boasting about producing 1,000 leads a day once GD has started.

Of course whatever happens the government will be able to claim victory because of all of the social housing providers who have huge retrofit rolling programmes that they find it very difficult to fund. Green Deal is a gift for them and they are ready to go - low hanging fruit but government gets to claim success.

MEP - :nonod:

 

[JulianC]

I have steered clear of the Green Deal since I first decided it was a White Elephant a couple of months back. However, on revisiting it in the last couple of days to see if anything has changed, I find it has got even more preposterous. So for that reason aaahm oot. See you again in a couple more months....

The only people that will do well will be the training companies and the financiers (assuming they can find customers, which as far as I can see is the big stumbling block when you look past social housing).

 

[Worcester]

Thinking this through
(And reading these: BBC News - Green home improvements proposals 'dropped' and BBC News - Green Deal 'means 1.5m homes lose insulation subsidy' - notice they are under politics and business not environment!!)

Perhaps we should scrap all the green deal finance programme, and simply appoint ECO assesors to do the same role as the Green Deal Assesors, and get them to identify the ECO grant value and let people then choose how to spend it - loft insulation, cavity wall, EWI etc, that removes the big sales push from Mark Group etc and puts the decision in the hands of the householder how they want to spend the ECO... After all the energy companies still have to contribute to it so everyone is paying anyway.. The householder then uses the eco or aranages a top up loan at rates they choose to pay - they could even add it to the mortgage..


The one where it's all going wrong http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18074650 is under Environment!

 

[TedM]

ECO is supposed to be ring-fenced for difficult to treat homes (e.g. low income and solid wall EWI) but I will not be too surprised if that fence turns out to be made of elastic and gets stretched a bit.

 

[Worcester]

@TedM, I know the political drive and the mechanims here are clearly two different things.

However with what you've just said, on ECO, that confirms my appproach above - I should have expanded it a bit ' Mrs Bloggins wants EWI - that has an ECO grant of x, so will cost you y, - here's how you could pay for it ' and a criteria would be that the value of the ECO is to make sure it fits a (new) Golden Rule, else no ECO grant/subsidy i.e just beacuse I don't want to finance it via the Green Deal Loan, doesn't mean I can't get the ECO element.

Of course, seeing as you will (I believe this is one of the rules) be able to pay off your Green Deal loan at any time without penalty, perhaps we are going to see a lot of smart re-financing and a lot of 'missold' green deal claiming companies springing up to help people get out of it. I just can't see REAL doing a good enough job on this and being able to manage it let alone police it properly.

 

[SRE]

Does anyone know much is going to be available for ECO EWI and what will the criteria be? I understand the difficult to treat and low income bit, but what sort of allowance is there going to be??

 

[SRE]

Latest green Deal musings - £45 - £65 per Green Deal Assessment. I'm beginning to think someone has a serious sense of humour.

 

[TedM]

ECO is supposed to be £1.3 billion a year. I haven't seen anything that indicates what the per property figure would be.

 

[SRE]

Ted, I'm disappointed - you've let me down ;-) You're supposed to be the font of all knowledge :yes:

 

[TedM]

Well what I'm saying is that I don't think there is a real per property figure. There is £1.3 billion a year and there may be a target number of houses to benefit from ECO per year. And I'm sure I have even seen indicative figures from DECC for EWI in the £10-20k per property region. But I don't think DECC have said that there is any specific limit of how much ECO can be allowed per property. I would expect ECO benefit to be decided on a case by case basis. If all the £1.3 billion gets spent half-way through a year then ECO would have to be suspended until the start of the next year, I think.