The Green Deal: making home refurb cheaper and easier
Posted by Darren Shirley on 21/07/10 12:51 PM
We’re looking forward to seeing the government’s new ‘Green Deal’ – the plan to retrofit UK homes to make them more energy efficient. Our homes produce 26% of the country’s carbon emissions, so this is a potentially vital step in controlling climate change. The programme is due to start in 2012, but the Green Deal bill is going through parliament later this year. Over the next few months we’ll be looking in detail at each aspect of the Green Deal – checking for gaps and room for improvement.
We’ll start with one of the most important elements we want the government to include in the Green Deal – financial incentives.
Yesterday we saw a flurry of UK media attention on the proposed reforms to stamp duty, which would reform the homebuying tax on energy-guzzling properties. The Times, Telegraph, and Daily Mail (twice in one day) all carried articles arguing the pros and cons. To some it’s an intrusive tax, to others a welcome incentive. So what’s the reality?
The government is looking at how stamp duty could be used to reward buyers and sellers for making a property more energy efficient – particularly if it falls in the lower F or G bands on an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). That covers 20% of the British housing stock – just under 5.5 million homes.
The proposal would add 0.5% extra levy on normal stamp duty rates for those homes. So that’s clearly the tax side. But if the property was improved to at least an E rating on an EPC, the homeowner would receive a refund of the 0.5% – plus a rebate of another 0.5%. That money would be paid through savings in your energy bill. So that’s the incentive!
Great British Refurb campaign backs change
Recent work by the Energy Saving Trust has shown that a large chunk of the F and G-rated homes will cost less than £3,000 to upgrade to a Band E. And under the Green Deal, the householder would not have to fork out any of that £3,000. In other words, you could profit from making your house cheaper to run and more environmentally friendly.
We’ve been suggesting similar reforms of stamp duty for a while. Through the Great British Refurb campaign, which we run with the UK Green Buildings Council, we received the backing of thousands of people at this year’s Grand Designs Live show for the introduction of this kind of incentive.
But so far the number of people adopting energy efficiency measures at home has not been anywhere near the mass scale needed if the government is to have a hope of meeting the legal carbon targets for 2020.
If they fail on energy efficiency in existing homes, more of the burden for reducing emissions will have to fall elsewhere in the economy, where it will be more costly and intrusive.
Energy efficiency is one of the cheapest and easiest ways of cutting carbon. But the government has to help homeowners see all the benefits. Stamp duty reform is one of the best tools it can use.
So we congratulate the government for exploring this option, and we urge them to make it part of the Green Deal. We know the thousands of people who support our Great British Refurb Campaign will be right behind them.
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