Economic boost for UK builders with Green Deal launch

The Green Deal launches today to help improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s built environment by enabling householders and businesses to secure the up-front capital to make energy efficiency improvements to their buildings. Refurbishing existing buildings to new standards and turning them into good green assets has recently been identified as one of the best bets for the property sector in the year ahead and today UK-Green Building Council’s Paul King said the launch of the energy efficiency scheme could help create jobs and stimulate economic activity.

According to DECC, buildings that leak heat and waste energy account for 43% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions and it estimates that by 2020 the Green Deal could reduce UK household and business carbon emissions by 4.5 million tonnes per year.

Using a Green Deal, the costs of energy saving measures and their installation would be paid by a third party Provider and paid back through energy bills. Under the Golden Rule, the payments should not exceed bill savings from the installed measures.

Myles McCarthy, Managing Director, Implementation Services, the Carbon Trust admitted that motivating businesses to act wasn’t easy and that extra incentives and drivers could be required.

He said: “We need to unlock this economic opportunity – our research and experience has found that businesses implementing energy efficiency schemes can generate returns on investments as high as 40% and good projects can deliver paybacks in less than two years.

“In the business sector, key to successful implementation of energy efficiency is demonstrating the business case that the upfront financial investment will be quickly returned and a profit made.”

To help UK businesses invest to save the Carbon Trust has launched a£550million loans scheme with Siemens Financial Services, with a linked implementation service.