Clean Energy

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has launched a set of proposals on changes to the Building Regulations regime, which could boost the uptake of Green Deal measures. Under the new requirements, building owners carrying out extensions or conversions could be forced to add energy efficiency improvements worth 10 percent of the value of the improvements.

In its Green Deal consultation submission, sent to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) before the January 18 deadline, Worcester Bosch warned Government that commission-based assessors might be tempted to inaccurately sell Green Deal finance packages.

The Property and Energy Professionals Association (PEPA), a trade body representing business engaged in the provision of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and Display Energy Certificates (DECs), has urged Government to reconsider its plans to fully introduce the Green Deal in October this year.

Greg Barker, the Climate Change Minister, has defended the Government’s flagship green policy: the Green Deal. In recent weeks, the policy has come under mounting criticism from interested parties, with the consultation period set to draw to a close today.

According to the Government’s own figures, the number of cavity wall and loft insulation installations will fall dramatically under the Government’s flagship green policy: the Green Deal.

With just months to go before Government’s flagship Green Deal policy kicks off, Climate Change Minister Greg Barker has launched a partnership to ensure the UK has the skills required for an effective rollout of the scheme.

According to a report published today by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the UK has no hope of reaching its binding 2050 target for CO2 reductions without a serious shake-up of the way homes are heated. The publication, Heat: degrees of comfort, finds that even with the most modern gas boilers and state-of-the art insulation, we cannot continue to heat so many homes by natural gas and still achieve an 80 percent cut in emissions as laid down in the Climate Change Act 2008.

As each and every one of you is painfully aware, on October 31 this year the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced Phase 1 of its consultation on feed-in tariffs, which revealed a 50 percent reduction to the current incentive rates for solar photovoltaics. While most of the post-consultation coverage focused on these cuts, a lot of our readers have also expressed concern over the new potential EPC requirements.