The department for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) has officially launched its green home innovation fund.
Applications are now open for the £4.63 million pot, with the deadline for submission of expressions of interest set at 26 September and bids by 14 October. The exact number of projects will be dependent on the ambition and scope of the bids received, but BEIS expects to fund between three and five projects with funding awarded in the region of £800,000 to £1.8 million. The projects must be completed by March 2021 – although the actual work on homes could carry on longer than this.
The fund is open to financial institutions and mortgage lenders with a retail presence with partnerships with energy suppliers or smart data firms to deliver energy assessments and retrofit encouraged.
The funds are eligible for use in areas such as designing programmes, launching pilots, carrying out market research, marketing, supply chain development work and energy audits among others.
Projects can include existing Green Mortgage Products that have not achieved traction in the market and need re-marketing and/or re-development, or products that lenders want to re-badge and re-organise into Green Home Finance Products.
Among the suggestions put forward by the government in its guidance are reduced rate mortgages for more efficient properties or incentivising energy efficiency works when taking out a mortgage. It also suggests unsecured home renovation loans with a percentage of the loan allocated to energy efficiency works.
BEIS said it expected that the level of funding requested would reflect the ambition and innovation of the bids received and that projects with the potential to roll out across the UK’s housing stock would score higher than niche ideas
Full guidance on the scheme can be found here