Kwasi Kwarteng has said it would not be appropriate to merge the Energy Companies Obligation (ECO) with the government’s new energy efficiency upgrades voucher scheme.
The energy minister was quizzed by his Labour shadow Alan Whitehead about whether he had assessed the “potential merits” of merging the Green Homes Grant (GHG) and the industry funded ECO scheme in order to enable more cost efficient co-funding of energy efficiency jobs.
The new £2 billion GHG scheme, which all households are eligible for, will run in tandem with ECO, which is targeted at the fuel poor.
But in a written answer to his opposite number, Kwarteng replied that the two will not be merged.
“Both have different objectives, target audiences, eligibility criteria and funding mechanisms, therefore, it would not be appropriate for the schemes to be merged.”
Whitehead also asked what steps the government is taking to ensure the new GHG scheme complements rather than competes against the Energy Company Obligation supply chain.
Kwarteng said requirements for tradespeople completing work under the new scheme, which will run until next March in a bid to provide a short-term economic stimulus, are in line with the requirements for the ECO scheme.
He also claimed that the GHG will build capacity and skills in the supply chain for longer-term decarbonisation objectives.
Whitehead told Utility Week that the way the scheme has been designed means that it will not tackle the more deeply rooted problems of fuel poverty as effectively as it might have done if it had been better co-ordinated with ECO.
He said “An opportunity to considerably move ECO forward will be completely lost
“We could design a programme that would fit those things well together but it won’t advance wider issues of higher spending on hard to treat homes where fuel poverty is heavily embedded.
“What could have been a really good addition to a longer-term energy efficiency of homes is likely to be a fairly peripheral go at some short-term energy efficiency measures that don’t tuck in very well.”