The Energy Company Obligation (Eco) aims to insulate Britain’s leaky and inefficient housing stock and help reduce the UK’s carbon emissions.
Householders will benefit from warmer homes and cheaper bills because of the scheme, which the government estimates will cost energy suppliers £1.3 billion a year – although the suppliers themselves say the scheme could cost double this.
One of the reasons for this is the inefficient delivery of the scheme, coupled with the limited number of measures and the “overly prescriptive” criteria on what energy efficiency measures can be installed.
Utility Week joined Safa Kafali and Darren Murphy, Eco surveyors for EUM Consultants, which is helping Npower to meet its Eco goals, on two prearranged surveys.
On a normal day, Kafali says, they would be door-stepping households they thought may be eligible for insulation in hard-to-treat cavities, as well as additional loft insulation.
“What we do is we do our research by going onto PrimeLocation.com,” says Kafali. “You put in the information and the types of houses come up. We tend to travel all the way to Twickenham, Richmond and Surrey.
“We do a lot of travelling because we have to go to those areas, so we’re spending hours and hours a day burning fuel. So it’s a Catch 22 situation it terms of saving carbon.”
He adds that “80 per cent of our time is spent trying to find people who are eligible” for Eco, and in a typical day he and Murphy will knock on up to 30 doors but only be able to survey one or two houses.
Today, the groundwork has already been done so we can see the pair in action.
We arrive at the first property, a semi-detached house close to Woodford Cross tube station, and I’m slightly surprised that the property is eligible for Eco because it looks rather too affluent. I was expecting something more down at heel.
There is a two-storey extension to the side of the property, as well as a small, single level extension at the front, and a conservatory at the rear.
Kafali says: “What you’ll find is people have some money and they’ve spent it on their property and now they qualify, whereas someone who lives in a mid-terrace property and in fuel poverty potentially, they haven’t got anything that will qualify them as hard to treat.”
Murphy is preparing to start drilling into the walls so he can examine the cavities and ascertain whether the house qualifies for Eco-funded insulation. He says: “With the way it’s set up at the moment, most of the jobs we do go to wealthy people.
“It’s really strange the way it’s set up.”
Once the drilling is completed, Murphy uses a borescope and a photo of the hollow cavity logged into his GPS-tracked iPad as evidence that they house is eligible for help under Eco.
After filling the hole that was drilled into the external wall, he asks the homeowner if the property has loft insulation, and on being told it has not, he checks the attic and once again – via the camera on his iPad – records the fact.
With the first house done, Kafali and Murphy book a follow-up appointment with the homeowner for a domestic energy assessor (DEA) to visit to property and give it an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), something the pair think is an unnecessary step that adds cost and slows the process down.
Murphy says EUM Consultants is planning to restructure its work teams so that a DEA will go out with each pair of Eco surveyors. This will “make things a lot smoother for the customer because it’s one less visit.”
We then leave the first house and head to the second property a 10-minute drive away.
We pull up outside the mid-terrace house, which belongs to an elderly lady, whose daughter is there to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Kafali explains what Eco is to the daughter, and why she will be eligible for insulation – both in the loft and in her cavity walls. The daughter tells us all that her mother really wants the insulation to keep her energy bills down, and to help keep the house warmer, especially as her bills have gone us recently.
With the surveying process complete, we all leave the house with the homeowner happy and looking forward to a warmer house in a few weeks when the installers fill the walls.
Murphy and Kafali head off to try and find some more eligible households, but they are both content that they have been able to help two homeowners – who are in very different circumstances – look forward to warmer homes this winter, and lower energy bills.
I head off into central London for lunch with Alex Tsimboykas, a director with EUM Consultants, to get his views on Eco and the difficulties his surveyors have had in finding eligible households – and in keeping the costs of the scheme down.
The cost of the scheme and how it is paid for is a hot topic after the prime minister’s pledge to “roll back” green and social levies, and the subsequent announcement of a review into them.
Tsimboykas tells me: “How it’s paid for is not the issue, personally.
“You can keep it on the bill, you don’t need to tax for it. You could drive the cost down and deliver it in a more cost effective way by less restrictive criteria, by taking things out of the process – like RDSap .”
He adds that getting an EPC per household costs £50, and it is not necessary.
“There might be only 4,000 measures fitted in a week, but I bet there’s about 30,000 surveys done. All of that cost gets put on to bills.”
Tsimboykas says the criteria for Eco should be relaxed, allowing more insulation measures to be included – such as standard cavity wall insulation rather than just hard-to-treat cavities. This would not only “drag the cost down” but would also allow more people to benefit.
“You can do it en masse if you lift the criteria – it’s an easy fix.
“You need to extend it slightly, because there are energy saving light bulbs and draft proofing – there are loads of measures you can do under Eco that a lot of people don’t do. You should do a full energy survey of that house.”
Tsimboykas’s mantra is simple: “If it has got a cavity, fill it.”
He tells me this is a “dead simple solution” to solving the problem of meeting Eco targets and helping insulate Britain’s homes. “Everybody is paying for it. I’m paying for it, you’re paying for it – everybody is going to pay for it, so everybody should be able to benefit from it.”
Repeating his mantra – not for the first or last time – he adds: “I think you have to help the poorer people – you have to.
“I think there should be a ratio in there of what they can submit. If you’re going to give them a target, don’t give them a target of how many hard to treat.
“It’s a really easy fix and you can target the right people.”
Tsimboykas points out that Npower has only had about 50 enquiries through its own system because householders “don’t know if their walls need doing”, but he says a “simple extension” to Eco is not the answer – “because if you don’t change the criteria you’ll still be doing this in 10 years’ time”.
Just before the end of our chat, Tsimboykas tells me one final thing – that he has invited the energy secretary Ed Davey, climate change minister Greg Barker, and the shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint to join some of his Eco surveyors.
“They will then be able to see what it is really like – and then hopefully use that experience to make a real difference.”
He says that having one of the leading political figures having to turn down a household for insulation under Eco because they do not quite meet the eligibility criteria would “open their eyes”.
Then – one last time – he repeats the commandment: “If there is a cavity, fill it.”