On the 30th June MPs spent more than six hours debating energy efficiency issues in the House of Commons and the Green Deal featured heavily as part of the debate.  The full transcript of the debate can be read here but we've put together a summary of the highlights of the debate, relating to low carbon home refurbishment:

Greg Barker opened the debate with a speech about what the coalition intend to do.  As expected this was strongly focused around the Green Deal, and how they are determined to make insulation sexy (using Obama’s choice of words).  He was very keen to stress again and again that the Green Deal was not a loan – people kept interrupting to ask how it would be appealing to those on low incomes.  Greg also assured Zac Goldsmith that the Green Deal would be available to the commercial sector, especially SMEs.

CERT was discussed as length.  Greg Barker explained that it is the gov’s intention to extend CERT to 2012 and to refocus it so that 2/3 of it must be supplied through insulation (i.e. not CFLs). And as reassurance for the insulation industry he said he hoped to have the regulations in place before the house rises for the summer.

He also explained the creation of a super priority group within CERT, representing 15% of the scheme, and covering pensioners, low-income families with children, and the disabled.  However it was unclear whether this was on top of or within the current 40% priority group.  And when Alan Whitehead asked him how he intended to indentify those in the priority group he simply said that “data sharing is a challenge”.

Several Labour MPs questioned how financing energy efficiency improvements could fit in to a background of savage budget cuts.  And Caroline Lucas repeatedly suggested levying a windfall tax on energy companies.  But Greg Barker said that the Green Deal will cope, because as he repeated “the green deal is a real game changer”. Others, Lib Dem Martin Horwood among them, were concerned how to meet the skills gap now that colleges were suffering from budget cuts too.  Charles Hendry responded that “the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are considering whether colleges should be able to self-accredit”.

With relation to the FiT, Greg Barker confirmed that microgeneration would be excluded from the Green Deal because it’s in FiT instead. And he added that while microgeneration was important, energy efficiency was a priority as microgeneration in inefficient houses makes no sense.  At this point he also mentioned that he might consider increasing the £6,500 limit.

Joan Ruddock was very vocal on the topic of continuing schemes that were started under Labour and pointed out that no mention had been made to match Labour’s targets to reduce CO2 25% relative to part L of building regs; or to have zero carbon new homes by 2016, and zero-carbon non-dom by 2019.  She insisted that we cannot just be left with CERT.

With relation to the Private Rented Sector several people (including Joan Ruddock, Caroline Lucas) were insistent that it landlords needed to be regulated.  But Greg Barker claimed that due to the Green Deal “There will now be a real incentive and no financial disincentive for landlords to upgrade their properties”.  Charles Hendry followed this up with “…to incentivise private landlords to improve their energy efficiency… we are absolutely determined to secure that through the green deal.” I’m not so sure.

As for Warm Front, Greg gave a distinctly vague answer as to why it wasn’t included in the budget “On Warm Front, let me assure the hon. Gentleman that more than £300 million is available for a programme of work through this year and the winter to March 2011. That stands, and no long-term decisions have yet been made about Warm Front. As I have said, we recognise that there will always be a need for special arrangements for the most vulnerable people and hard-to-treat homes, and that we cannot just depend on pay-as-you-save schemes. Obviously, Warm Front will be subject to the comprehensive spending review this autumn, as all other Government programmes will be.”

Outside of these, the overwhelming themes were Labour anger at the cuts to public spending, and a lengthy debate on whether nuclear was a good solution, and several of the tories who stood up to speak mentioned how fixing the market would naturally lead to improving energy efficiency without the need for regulation.  And in terms of plugging technologies from their constituencies, Luciana Berger asked for a window-scrappage scheme, and Meg Munn called for the FiT threshold to be moved up from 2kW to 3kW.

We were particularly pleased to see the following key commitments from Chris Huhne on the details to be expected in the forthcoming Energy Bill due to be published later this year:

Dr Whitehead: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Chris Huhne: I will happily give way to my neighbour in Hampshire.

Dr Whitehead: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He envisages that his green deal will involve insulating and raising the energy rating of 14 million homes in the UK. The previous low-carbon transition plan envisaged that that would be done through the provision of subsidised loft, cavity-wall and other forms of insulation. Has he succeeded in defending the money set aside in his Department for subsidising that, or will he rely on Tesco to do the job instead?

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Chris Huhne: I certainly do not believe that we can rely on achieving the sort of comprehensive approach that I am talking about merely through introducing pay-as-you-save measures. The reality is that there will have to be cross-subsidy, as there already is, but particularly to the fuel poor and to those in homes that are hard to heat and which need solid-wall insulation and so forth. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the final proposals in the Bill, but I very much agree that we need a comprehensive set of proposals to deal with the whole of the residential housing sector. Those proposals must cover homes owned by owner-occupiers but also the private rental sector, where many of the worst offenders when it comes to energy inefficiency are to be found. I hope that that is what he will see.

Lotte Blair
Parliamentary Campaigner for the Association for the Conservation of Energy. 

ACE aims to encourage a positive national awareness of the need for and benefits of energy conservation, to help establish a sensible and consistent national policy and programme, and to increase investment in all appropriate energy saving measures.