23 May 2013

Green Deal – how do we know if it’s working?

Government select committee slam MP's for setting up the Green Deal project without targets. If we don't know what it's for, how do we know if it's working?

That's not us asking – that's the Government Energy and Climate Change Select Committee acting in their role monitor the scheme. As the scheme has been set up without any performance targets, it makes it rather difficult to tell whether it's being a success or not.

Indeed, in their 1st "watching brief” report, the Select Committee said:

"In order to provide effective scrutiny, we need to understand what the Government is hoping to achieve through the Green Deal and ECO, but there is some confusion about exactly what outcomes DECC is expecting to see. We were disappointed that the Minister was not able to give us a clear idea of what success would look like. We believe this is problematic because without this information, it will be impossible to tell whether delivery is happening according to plan, exceeding expectations or whether improvements are required.”

The committee have helpfully indicated 7 key areas where they believe scrutiny would be beneficial:

• public awareness and communications
• take-up levels
• energy and carbon savings
• financial savings and value for money
• access to the Green Deal and ECO
• customer satisfaction
• supply chain and job creation

Apparently some 19,000 Green Deal assessments had been carried out by the end of April. We look forward to the next report when we might find out how many of these have resulted in improvement work being undertaken within the scheme.

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