NAO: “The Green Deal has not been value for money”

Green Deal energy-saving programme cost taxpayers £17,000 for each home, a watchdog has found.

According to the National Audit Office, the Green Deal – the government’s flagship energy-saving programme, cost taxpayers £17,000 for each home that was improved.

The NAO concluded that “the Green Deal has not therefore been value for money”, with the Department of Energy and Climate Chance (DECC) spending £240M on the programme which ran between 2013 and July 2015.

The scheme encouraged householders to take out loans to pay for measures such as insulation or double-glazing, with a total of 14,000 households taking up the offer. Well below expectations, the collapse of the scheme is said to have left a big hole in government policies on fuel poverty and climate change.

The DECC did not test it with consumers beforehand, with the scheme saving “negligible” amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2).

The NAO report said the parallel Energy Company Obligation (ECO) programme also increased costs for energy suppliers, and so put up household bills.

Amyas Morse, Head of the NAO said: “The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s ambitious aim to encourage households to pay for measures looked good on paper, as it would have reduced the financial burden of improvements on all energy consumers.

“But in practice, its Green Deal design not only failed to deliver any meaningful benefit, it increased suppliers’ costs – and therefore energy bills – in meeting their obligations through the ECO scheme.”

Campaigners are urging the government to replace the Green Deal with a better scheme.

DECC have say they are now designing a new scheme to replace the ECO programme, which will run from 2017-2022 and reduce the amount that households have to contribute by £30 a year. They have also set up an enquiry to examine standards, consumer protection and enforcement of its energy efficient schemes.

A spokesperson for the DECC said: “As the NAO itself has said, government schemes will deliver over £6 billion of energy bill savings to the most vulnerable and have already helped make more than one million British homes warmer.”

 

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