The Green Deal is showing promise, but urgent attention is needed to ensure that the initiative fulfils its potential, according to a “report card” by the UK Green Building Council (UK-GBC).
The UK-GBC described the Green Deal as “genuinely innovative” with “huge promise”, and it said the “government deserves credit for prioritising home retrofit”, but it warned the scheme could suffer from “potentially weak consumer take-up”.
It raised a “damaging transition from existing policies to the Energy Company Obligation” as a significant concern and said as a whole the government “could do better” on its green building strategy.
The “half-term” report by the UK-GBC said the government was sending mixed messages, with “worrying comments” from the chancellor conflicting with “positive messages” from Decc.
“In so many policy areas, good ideas or grand ambitions are undermined by half-baked policies or contradictory messages,” said UK-GBC chief executive Paul King. He added that there was “plenty of room for improvement all round”.
This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 28th September 2012.
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