Andrew Eagles
In 2013, the UK was ranked the lowest out of 13 western countries in terms of its performance on reducing fuel poverty, writes Andrew Eagles.
The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) was established to fund improvements to solid walls and hard-to-treat cavities, some of the areas that can yield the largest benefits in reducing fuel bills. But energy companies are now under strong scrutiny – particularly from a select committee of MPs – about rising energy prices. In response, Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition, proposed freezing energy bills for at least 18 months if he is elected.
Following this, in November the prime minister made the following statement in parliament: “We need to roll back some of the green regulations and charges that are putting up bills.”
We work with many housing providers across England and Wales who were alarmed by this. They have been working hard to reduce fuel poverty. They do not accept that measures such as ECO are the cause of increasing energy bills.
We wrote to the prime minister noting that ECO was one of the main mechanisms for effectively tackling fuel poverty. The latest World Health Organisation research indicates that up to 40% of excess winter deaths can be attributed to fuel poverty, amounting to 7,800 deaths in the UK each year.
We noted that “supported by ECO, social landlords were taking action. They are responsible for thousands of projects to improve homes across the country and in some of our most impoverished communities. As well as reducing household energy bills by hundreds of pounds each year, this is generating tens of thousands of jobs and improving the quality of homes. One recent study by Nottingham City Homes and Nottingham Trent University concluded that every £1 pound spent on retrofitting generates a social value of £4.76. Research by Cambridge Econometrics shows that up to 130,000 jobs are likely to result from continued significant investment in retrofitting homes.”
More than 140 organisations supported the letter, including social landlords, district councils, academics, contractors and NGOs such as Greenpeace.
In a subsequent letter we called on the prime minister to set specific targets to provide certainty to the sector. These included:
- An annual minimum of 100,000 solid wall installs through the Carbon Emissions Reducation Obligation (CERO)
- Creation of a maximum number of “easy” cavity wall insulation (CWI) interventions through CERO. The problem is that most fuel-poor households have had, or will get, easy-to-treat cavity insulation via other programmes, such as Warmfront/CERT/CESP HHCRO/CSCO or Decent Homes. If easy cavities are funded under CERO unchecked this has the potential to erode the impact of the CERO to improve hard-to-treat properties. Therefore a maximum number of easy CWI should be set.
- Setting out the transition between ECO 1 and ECO 1.2. This needs to be agreed now and needs to include similar annual targets as set out above. This will ensure stable delivery.
We asked the prime minister to take urgent action to execute the above and provide our sector with certainty and invited him to visit a project to see the impact these works are having in lifting people out of poverty and providing local skilled jobs.
It is really hard work campaigning on issues. It takes a large amount of time to pull people together, gain a coherent message and get that across. But this is an important issue.
Somehow, the only part of the Energy Bill that is doing some use, the part that is permanently lifting people out of fuel poverty, is under threat. That is worth fighting for.
To support the campaign either tweet “Call on @Number10gov for solid wall insulation targets. Support warmth. Support ECO. RT today http://owl.li/rbKYe” or add your name to the online petition at www.morethanajumper.co.uk
Andrew Eagles is managing director of Sustainable Homes, which has provided training and advice on how to retrofit or build homes sustainably since 1997
