UK to extend current home efficiency schemes ahead of mass green revamp

In addition to unveiling wide-reaching plans to provide green refurbishment loans and services for every home in the UK, the government yesterday announced it was to expand its current home efficiency schemes to help accelerate the rollout of energy efficient technologies prior to the introduction of the new nationwide initiatives.

Speaking at the launch of the Heat and Energy Saving strategy, energy and climate change strategy Ed Miliband said the government was also proposing changes to its Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) requiring energy companies to provide insulation and efficiency services, and the introduction of a new Community Energy Savings Programme (CESP) that will see energy companies invest £350m in providing whole-house green refurbishments to 90,000 homes in low-income areas.

Miliband said that under the proposals, which are now open for consultation, the CERT scheme would be extended until 2012. He added that extending the scheme should ensure there is no gap between the end of current home energy efficiency initiatives and the introduction of the financing schemes proposed under the new strategy, which the government hopes to have in place by early 2013 at the latest.

The technologies covered by the CERT scheme would also be expanded so that energy companies can also offer new real-time energy meters alongside subsidised loft and cavity wall insulation and low-energy light bulbs.

The changes would see the cost of the scheme increase by 20 per cent, an expansion that will be covered by the extra investment in energy efficiency measures promised by the Big Six energy suppliers last year in an attempt to head off calls for a windfall tax.

Miliband also said the government was investigating fears that the phasing out later this year of parts of the Low Carbon Building Programme (LCBP) grant scheme for installing microgeneration technologies would create a funding black hole for the sector that would not be plugged until the new feed-in tariff scheme is introduced in April 2010.

Responding to a question from Philip Wolfe, director general of the Renewable Energy Association, which has been lobbying for the LCBP to be refinanced and extended until the new FIT is in place, Miliband said that he "did not want to raise expectations" of a possible extension, but added that the government was "looking at concerns [about] the Low Carbon Building Programme".