Generous new scheme or ‘insulation greenwashing’?
Households will need to contact their energy supplier or council to see if they are participating.
“It is time to stop scamming us, and to get our insulation programmes back on track. We need to be insulating over 2 million homes a year, like we were in 2012.”
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There’s a new scheme just out – with the government promising grants from next year:
Households could save around £310 a year through an expanded scheme to insulate Britain’s draughtiest homes, the government has said. It will spend £1bn from next spring on grants for homes that have low energy efficiency ratings and are in lower council tax bands. Households will need to contact their energy supplier or council to see if they are participating, it said.
But shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC the measures were “so late when we should have been doing so much more for so many years previously”.
Adam Scorer, chief executive of National Energy Action, said the “scheme is not designed to reach the most vulnerable, it’s designed to reach people who haven’t been able to benefit from previous schemes. We believe government focus should be on the worst first, helping people in the greatest risk, the greatest jeopardy, more of this money should be going to help them.”
Insulation: Households could save £300 in new insulation scheme – BBC News
With more from the official site here:
Government joins with households to help millions reduce their energy bills – GOV.UK
The situation is a little confusing when it comes to who qualifies for the grant:
This is part of a bigger package announced earlier by the Chancellor – but it isn’t really considered enough:
Darren Price, director at ADAM Architecture, questioned whether Hunt’s ambitions were ambitious enough, considering the government’s legal commitment to making the UK net zero by 2050. He also pointed out that buildings and construction contribute 40 per cent of all emissions globally. He said: ‘We fully support this but also ask whether this is ambitious enough. Energy efficiency for the individual household or business is good in terms of cost saving and climate change, but there is a much greater challenge in terms of response to the climate emergency that requires our committed and far greater response.’
Hunt commits £6bn to insulation – but RIBA calls for ‘accelerated’ retrofit program
Moreover, the ‘bigger package’ and the ‘new money’ promised are actually not that big or new – according to piece just out from the Independent:
Putting aside my anger at how this insulation greenwashing by Sunak affords him fraudulent positive headlines in the media, it has hugely destructive financial, health and climate implications for the country at large. In 2012, the UK insulated 2,250,000 million cavity walls and lofts. By 2021, under Sunak as chancellor, this had fallen to a truly pathetic 72,000!
The heroes from Insulation Britain who put their lives and their freedom on the line to highlight the colossal failure by the UK government on this crucial issue, deserve more respect and truth than these repeated scams. Their protests generated massive public awareness and political support for action on insulation, but some of them remain in jail as I write this column.
The Tories need to wake up. It is time to stop scamming us, and to get our insulation programmes back on track. We need to be insulating over 2 million homes a year, like we were in 2012. More importantly, our right-wing media need to stop regurgitating Tory government press releases without querying the greenwashing facts behind them. With 19 million homes needing upgrading, the health, climate and economic crises all demand real insulation action now; not in 2030.
The government is scamming us on insulation | The Independent
Meanwhile, the District Council already runs various schemes: