Energy and Climate change secretary Ed Davey this week defended the government’s Green Deal plans, but revealed that the bulk of a £200m funding pot to kick-start the programme would only come online in 2013-14.
Speaking to the Energy and Climate Change Committee, Davey argued that the 7-7.5 % interest rate consumers can expect to pay on their Green Deal plans is “extremely competitive for unsecured lending”, according to a report in Inside Housing.
But when the scrutinising MPs asked how the £200m fund would be allocated, Davey could not provide details and said that only £30m would be available this financial year. The scheme is due to launch in October, although consumers will only be able to take out Green Deal loans from January 2013.
The committee session came in the same week that the Green Deal came under attack from insulation company Knauf, consumer group Which?, Greenpeace, WWF and the National Pensioners’ Convention, who co-wrote a letter to Davey warning the Green Deal was set for “failure” unless it was urgently re-focused.
According to the website BusinessGreen.com, the letter called for more support for low-cost measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation, and a greater focus on tackling fuel poverty.
BusinessGreen also reported on Labour’s calculations showing that the level of commercial interest charged on the Green Deal loans could mean that a household taking out a Green Deal financing package of £10,000 would have to pay back around £22,000 over 25 years, and requiring households to deliver energy-efficiency savings of £900 a year to cover the cost of annual loan repayments.
Supermarket goes geothermal
Sainsbury’s has announced plans to tap into geothermal power at 100 supermarkets, BusinessGreen reports. The supermarket chain has signing a deal with E.on and Geothermal International that will involve drilling boreholes in the car parks of 100 of its larger stores. The geothermal power will contribute to the stores’ heating, hot water and cooling.
