On another thread the subject of the Green Home Grant scheme has been raised.

I did not want to distract from the original thread, so open this one.

 

As I understand it this was an utter waste of money, which went to some consultants, and of opportunity, with little help to the public or the nation.

 

Also it follows a trail of similar schemes that never got going, eg the Green Deal.

There were others, but it is all a green blur of wasted words.

RHI may have been more successful, I don't know.

 

First the cynical bit, then some questions.

1. 

I recall there being lots of seminars and lectures on the Green Deal, and Renewable energy subsidy schemes.  Many consultants had themselves trained up on it, and quite a few contractors were signed up. Then it all fizzled out, with the funds unspent, and sustainability upgrades not achieved..

I don't know if the governments deliberately let these fail, to save money, or it has just been a shambles. The former would allow announcements of green intent, without much spending.

The latter perhaps more likely.

 

And when there have been such schemes reach operation, my experience was that the consultants and contractors who did the installations, charged so much that the grants effectively all went to them. Some of the 'specialists' didn't know a lot, when tested.

 

Obviously  MPs and Civil servants know little about science and technology.  Their training and instinct is not generally in that direction. Then they set up quangos to run it for them, and they run out of time or have spent the money, and it is wound up....until the next scheme.

 

2. Is this too cynical? Have there been successes?

Are there any grants that are

a) currently  in existence and making grants 

b) worth applying for due to the extra charge by approved installers? 

 

And especially (and selfishly) do they apply to conversions?

> Is this too cynical? Have there been successes?

 

Success depends on by what measure. most people assume that these schemes exist purely to subsidise installation to increase uptake of installs. I think various loft insulation schemes do fall into that category now, and are fairly successful at it. (They shoved responsibility for promoting them onto the gas suppliers, which has perhaps helped? perhaps not. I don't know)

 

However for the more leading edge technologies (e.g. for solar PV, ASHP etc) the primary goal was actually to create the network of installers and maintainers for these systems. They rightly realise that overtime people will have an ongoing need to keep these systems running, as well as massive need to install them in first place, and with zero installers they'd never make targets. So a lot of the requirements on the schemes (training courses, trusted trader ratings, insurance backed guarantees) are there to try and get higher quality of workmanship (vs a completely untrained cowboy install) and increase customer confidence in the technology and ability to get support for it. 

In this regard, I _think_ we can say the Solar PV feed-in tariff was reasonably successful. Certainly, there's lots more installers in our area, and they do achieve good ongoing uptake. (Also prices came down significantly, but that's more due to global economics than anything UK govmt did)

For RHI on ASHP the jury is still out. The regressive payment plan (reducing payments the better insulated you make your home) is perverse.  Lets see in a few years, but right now the availability of installers is pretty dire. This was not helped by the Green Home Grant, which was basically a disaster. I don't think they really knew what they were trying to achieve over and above RHI, and made a real dogs dinner of doing it that made everyone's life harder.

 

I'm convinced the single biggest intervention they could make is reduce or remove VAT on sustainability measures, and also align the "new build" VAT incentive to higher levels of sustainability too  (to remove the incentive to knock down and rebuild purely to save on VAT) but looks like that is not going to happen

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/treasury_reluctant_to_reduce_vat_on_green_products_including_solar

 

 

Not sure if this is relevant but my ex lives in one of my houses rent free and I applied for one of these government grants to do IWI under her name as she claims one of the relevant benefits,     It’s taken years…… to actually get a company out having applied 3 times with different companies. Every time they look at the job and mostly the remote location they find a technical reason why they will not do the work….. anyway yet another surveyor turned up and I told him that I wanted 70mm minimum rigid insulation + plaster board ( it comes as insulated plaster board they were reluctant but eventually agreed and the lads turned up and did four very short days and then left saying that plasterer would be along in a few weeks to skim the whole lot. The quality of the work undertaken was absolutely abysmal and It has taken me the last 3 weeks to rectify all the problems in anticipation of the plasterer arriving (luckily delayed ) had I not done all this work I expect the plasterer would have just bodged over all the massive voids and called it a good job. I know I had the right to complain but after seeing how bad the work was done I did not want the crew back…. The work was 100 % paid for by the government. The independent surveyor who just finds the jobs and sells them on said he was earning a fortune just lining jobs up, the crew  who did the work were only here for 4 short days, god knows how much the company gets from the government. All in all I am glad it’s done as I could not afford the materials to do it myself  but if they treat every job like my job then this sort of scheme is a joke and waste of tax payers money. ———Rant over——— 

just a couple of photos of standard details that were everywhere, many of the voids were up to 100mm wide with the  front gaps that you could see being 10-20mm they also forgot to do one whole wall, and used standard plaster board in the shower room….. (I have replaced it with the proper stuff….)