The Green Homes Grant can help alongside ECO to drive the country towards net-zero
29th September 2020 | Residential Energy
The Government’s new Green Homes Grant scheme, set to launch this month, is aimed at creating jobs and benefitting the economy as it recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it will also provide much needed support for a wider push to reduce the carbon emissions of our homes that works alongside the existing Energy Company Obligation (ECO).
Over the past 7 years, the ECO scheme has made great strides in tackling household emissions and reducing the energy bills of those most in need. EDF is a well-established market leader in ECO – in the last year alone, we installed more than 45,000 energy efficiency solutions into UK homes. Since 2018, the energy efficiency measures we have installed have delivered£660 million in lifetime bill savings for our customers which saves 199,732 tonnes of carbon entering our atmosphere each year.
Green Homes Grant
Clearly, the scheme remains critically important in helping to reduce energy bills and fuel poverty for those who are eligible, whilst also reducing household emissions. However, the reason the Green Homes Grant is so welcome is that it is open to homeowners beyond those targeted by ECO encouraging those who can afford it to take their own steps towards reducing carbon emissions.
This is a vital change in policy which is required if we are to achieve our ambition to be net zero by 2050. The scale of decarbonising heat is daunting but it can be achieved with the right measures. Housing still makes up a large proportion of the UK’s carbon emissions – around 14%. In 2019, the Committee for Climate Change said these need to fall back 24% from their 1990 levels by 2030: in 2017, instead of falling, they rose 1%.
Therefore, in order to meet out targets, more needs to be done to make sure emissions are reduced in all 29 million households in the UK, not just those targeted by ECO. New insulation will continue to play an important role in retrofitting all homes to make them more energy efficient, reducing emissions and bills for customers.
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