Climate change surprisingly got top billing this week. Over in the US that is, when Barack Obama said that tackling the problem would be one of his most pressing issues in his second term in office, writes Denise Chevin.
Of course, it’s easy to say, far less easy to do, as the coalition is finding here in the UK. Fire-fighting on the economy, dealing with the ever-increasing demands of the health service, renegotiating our agreement in the EU – these are all higher in the political pecking order, which is probably where most voters would have them. Let’s be honest about that.
But in failing to make a noise about its green commitments, is the coalition undermining the green policies it does have? To say that green is off the agenda is not altogether true. There are a raft of rules and regulations that have emanated from the UK and the EU that the industry is getting to grips with. There’s certainly no turning back on that. And on Monday its flagship policy finally goes live, when households and businesses become eligible to take out a Green Deal loan – a scheme designed to make 26 million households in the UK more energy efficient.
As an initiative it has seemed a lifetime in the making and, for most of that time, has been deluged with criticism – to the extent that at times you’d think most people in the media, and to some extent in the sector, were willing it to fail. But no matter how optimistic you want to be about the Green Deal, logic kicks in. We’re all agreed it is a good idea. It can potentially kick-start construction and with it the economy. And there are certainly pockets of enthusiasm and real drive – Birmingham and Newcastle are two major hubs that are determined to drive it forward.
Reading, too, was chirping about its plans this week. Reading Borough Council is spending a £280,000 government grant to persuade people to invest in insulation and energy efficiency measures to save money. The council will organise a short-term marketing and advisory service to launch the Green Deal. Good for Reading.
Meanwhile there’s now 24 companies signed up as providers, 517 to be installers, and 41 assessors – the firms that employ advisers.
But the reason for the persistent mist of pessimism enclosing the Green Deal is that it’s missing a few key ingredients:
- A low loan rate which makes it financially viable. The government is saying that it will be below 7%. Better than thought, but still on the high side to make the Golden Rule – that money spent should not exceed savings made in energy – stack up.
- Confidence that energy saving measures actually save energy. Worryingly, there’s a lot of research just now showing a big performance gap.
- The public needs to be aware of it.
- The public’s imagination needs to be captured by it.
Not all these things are in the government’s immediate gift – but certainly the last two are. The government has reined in its advertising spend, and closed its Central Office of Information, ad campaigns are off the agenda generally (with dire consequences – take the elections for the Police and Crime Commissioners). The Green Deal needs some welly! It needs more than a piddly £2.5m – peanuts in ad terms – to reach out to millions of consumers.
And it needs some noise and swagger. The Green Deal should be the government’s Big Deal. At the moment it all seems rather half-hearted. Is this low key approach because the government has lost confidence in its Big Green idea? You have to wonder.
Denise Chevin is associate editor of Construction Manager
