Part 17: Green Homes Service

Year: 2007
Policy Status: In force

With the implementation of the Green Homes Service in 2008, homes across the UK have access to a 'one-stop shop' service to help make their homes greener. It will provide a single point people can contact for a home energy audit, together with advice on how they can save water, reduce waste, green their travel, and connect to grants and offers from energy companies. The Green Homes Service will:

• Offer a green home health check - providing advice on energy saving, but also on water saving, waste reduction and recycling and green travel options if desired;
• Connect people with offers from energy companies for discounted or free energy saving products, such as cavity wall and loft insulation, and offer a range of other financial support packages through programmes such as Warm Front;
• Offer a range of financial support packages to householders;
• Contact people buying and selling homes with poor energy ratings to connect them with grants, loans and financial packages to get the work done to improve the rating on their homes; and
• Pilot a premium service for a green home makeover using trusted suppliers and minimising hassle for the householder.

The service will be backed by a range of measures, including:

• Transforming the Energy Saving Trust with more than £100 million in government funding to build the existing energy advice service to become a proactive Green Homes Service rolled out nationwide by 2011, based on a regional network of one stop shops.
• Boosting investment in energy saving, by requiring energy companies to double the energy saving measures they install in people’s homes from April 2008, meaning they will reach up to 8 million households. The Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) will save 4.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2011 through measures that could include cavity wall insulation for 3 million homes, with a typical saving of £90 on fuel bills.
• Increasing support for renewable energy, with new CERT incentives for energy companies to innovate, encouraging them to install more renewable energy. Up to 150,000 homes could be generating their own renewable energy by 2011, and other incentives for microgeneration, such as feed-in tariffs, will be investigated.
• Promoting innovative finance, with the Green Homes Service leveraging funding from the government’s home energy saving and fuel poverty schemes, as well as looking at how to remove barriers to investing in home energy saving and renewable energy through savings on fuel bills - for example by linking repayments to the home, regardless of a change in ownership or switching energy supplier.

The service has been launched on 1 April 2008, when the Energy Saving Trust will offer green advice to consumers on energy efficiency, renewable energy, travel, water efficiency and waste reduction. Up until that time, the Energy Saving Trust has a reactive only service. The new funding will enable the service to be proactive and to take their initiatives directly to people's doors.

The Green Homes Service will form part of the Government’s Act on CO2 campaign, which aims to encourage people to cut their own carbon footprint. As of November 2007, more than 500,000 people had visited the web-based Act on CO2 calculator to work out their carbon footprint and to receive a personalised action plan to reduce it.