Inquiry calls for overhaul of commercial Green Deal

The government should overhaul the Green Deal for commercial properties, spend millions on marketing it and increase fines for commercial landlords that don’t meet their energy monitoring duties,a report has concluded.

The report is the result of an inquiry chaired by Labour peer Larry Witty and Conservative MP Oliver Colvile into how to reduce energy demand from commercial buildings.

Published by Westminster Sustainable Business Forum and think tank Carbon Connect, the report recommends that the government gets tough on firms that didn’t meet their energy monitoring requirements and overhauls the Green Deal (see box).

Colvile said there was a need to “increase the resilience of our businesses against the threat of climate change”

He added: “The obvious cost savings, coupled with improved productivity that can be realised from energy efficiency, makes it quite clear that now is the time to invest on a large scale.

“To do that requires government intervention – to raise awareness, guarantee low cost loans, stimulate the market and incentivise the landlords.”

The report said that commercial buildings were responsible for 10% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and that rising energy prices and taxes were a threat to the UK’s profitability.

It said that the commercial sector was currently “failing to link business growth to energy costs”.

The report said the Green Deal represented an excellent opportunity to improve the existing commercial building stock but awareness of the scheme was low.

It said: “A renewed focus on the Green Deal will require a funding boost and this can be provided either through funding from central government or via a short-term raise of the Local Authority borrowing cap.”

It added that the government should match its marketing spend on the Green Deal to date, £3.74m, on marketing the scheme in the non-domestic sector.

The report also said there were “split incentives” for energy efficiency in the commercial sector because tenants and landlords did not always have the same amount to gain from improving a building’s energy efficiency.