Number of signed Green Deals tops 100

The number of signed Green Deal plans has risen to 132, up from 36 last month, official figures revealed this week.

The latest Green Deal statistics, published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) also showed that as of the end of July one Green Deal plan was now live – meaning the customer is now ready to pay back the cost of the loan through their energy bill.

There are now a further 286 Green Deal plans in the pipeline bringing the total number of Green Deal plans that have been prepared to 419 through to the end of July.

The figures showed 13,645 assessments were conducted in July - a similar level to previous months - with the total number conducted since January rising to 58,124.

DECC’s stats also showed a continued growth in the number of Green Deal providers (79 - up from 66 last month), installer organisations (1,457 - up from 1,234) and assessor organisations (248 - up from 226).

Energy minister Greg Barker said the figures showed “genuine consumer interest” in the scheme.

He added: “We expect continued steady growth as we go into the winter. Already, over 130,000 homes will be cosier this winter after getting energy efficiency measures installed under ECO.”

But Labour’s shadow energy minister Luciana Berger said the scheme was “struggling to get off the ground”.

She added: “The fact that over 99% of people who had a Green Deal assessment didn’t want to take out a package should be a wake-up call for the government.”

David Symons, director at consultant WSP, said he had calculated it would take 160 years to assess every one of the 25 million homes in the UK at the current assessment rate.

He said: “We all want the Green Deal to be a success so government needs to think hard about how to up the assessment rate by a factor of ten.”

Over £1m of the government’s £125m cash back scheme, designed to drive Green Deal take-up, has now been paid out with 4,256 vouchers issued.

The vast majority (97%) of the cash-back vouchers went towards funding boiler replacements.

Figures for the Green Deal’s sister scheme the Energy Company Obligation were also released showing that a total of 149,681 measures have been installed under the scheme.

The ECO scheme has remained focused on loft insulation which now makes up 45% of measures installed to date, down from 50% last month.

Cavity wall insulation made up 33% of installations, down from 34% at the end of June and boiler replacements now total 18% of measures installed, up from 14% at the end of June.

The ECO scheme has recently come in for harsh criticism from the industry.

Last week, Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, said it was “complicated” and “expensive to administer”.

He said: “We want to sit down with the government and see whether this is actually the most cost-effective way of reducing customers’ carbon emissions [and] whether it can be changed to bring down costs.”

Earlier this week, John Sinfield, managing director of Knauf Insulation Northern Europe, said the government needed to “take a long hard look at the Green Deal and ECO and question whether they really are delivering what is required”.

The ECO scheme has remained focused on loft insulation which now makes up 45% of measures installed to date, down from 50% last month.

Cavity wall insulation made up 33% of installations, down from 34% at the end of June and boiler replacements now total 18% of measures installed, up from 14% at the end of June.

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