Last year saw a four-year high in the level of home heating and insulations delivered through the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) programme, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
The government’s latest annual household energy efficiency statistics show that around 324,200 measures were installed through the supplier-funded programme during 2020.
This figure marked an increase of 47 per cent compared with the 220,615 measures installed in 2019.
As well as a significant increase on the previous year, this also marked the highest level of measures installed through ECO since 2016 when the sum earmarked for the programme was cut from £1.3 billion to £640 million to ease pressure on household energy bills.
Last year’s increase happened despite a significant dip in the number of measures delivered from late March to May 2020 as a result of the first national Covid-19 lockdown and social distancing restrictions. The volume of ECO home heating and insulation installations decreased by 57 per cent from March to April, the statistics show.
However, following the easing of full lockdown restrictions, delivery of measures rebounded.
Each month from August to December saw more than 30,000 measures installed, including 40,565 in November 2020, which was the highest monthly level since March 2016.
Two-thirds of all measures installed in 2020 were delivered in the second half of the year.
The report says the reason for the increase is that delivery rates for programmes like ECO tend to be slow down at the start of new phases because it takes time for suppliers to adjust. ECO3, the latest phase of the programme, went live on 3 December 2018 with a tighter focus on helping households in fuel poverty and greater input from local authorities.
The increased number of ECO installations was also achieved despite the introduction of Trustmark accreditation and new PAS standards requirements at the beginning of last year, which led to a dip in installation levels in January 2020.
Last year’s figures pushed the total number of measures installed under ECO by the end of 2020 up to around 3.1 million.
The proportion of heating measures has increased from 50 per cent last year to 61 per cent in 2021, while insulation installations dropped correspondingly.
Separate monthly figures on the progress of the Green Homes Grant (GHG) scheme show that the number of vouchers issued increased by around a third in February, from 21,000 at the end of January to 28,300 that month.
The number of measures installed had more than doubled to 5,800 during the month, but only 2,900 vouchers had been paid.
The proportion of applications, for which further information is being sought, had dropped to 35 per cent at the end of last month compared to 46 per cent in January. Administrative problems have been cited as the key factor bedevilling the roll out of the low-carbon heating and insulation scheme.
Overall, the figures show that by the end of February 2021, there had been 123,537 applications for GHG vouchers.
Commenting on the latest GHG figures, Jess Ralston, analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “Despite making the Green Homes Grant unnecessarily difficult to access and imposing unmanageable deadlines, there remains immense backing for measures to curb energy waste from Britain’s homes.
“Low conversion of applications to vouchers issued will also cause concern, especially amid near-constant reports of how the scheme is being mishandled. As the government weighs up options for next steps, it would be wise to learn from mistakes made in the Green Homes Grant and deliver a package to make a real dent in emissions from our homes.”