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Britainmain house of insulation The program has received a condemnable decision National Audit OfficeUnder the Energy Company Responsibility (ECO) scheme, Thousands of homes have been left with faulty or even dangerous installations.Auditors say this is the result of weak oversight, poor skills and confused accountability.
The report is troubling not only because of the human cost, but also because it exposes a deep failure of governance in the UK’s efforts to decarbonise home heating. This is a complex task that demands long-term management, but it has instead been left to the market.
ECO was designed to help energy suppliers cut emissions and bills for homes. Suppliers are companies that buy Electricity Or gas from a generator and sell it to you – the company named on your bills is your supplier. In theory, ECO means these suppliers meet carbon or energy savings targets set by the government by funding insulation and heating upgrades for homes, with regulators checking whether the installations qualify.
Before ECO there were two other schemes which operated on a similar principle. For years, they worked quite well for simple and low-cost measures like loft or cavity wall insulation. But in 2013, ECO was launched and expanded to cover more complex and expensive retrofits such as solid wall insulation – an unprecedented change.
So what went wrong?
National Audit OfficeThe latest findings confirm fears that this was an approach set up to fail. Many installations require major improvements, and some pose immediate health risks. The problems are familiar: low-skilled workforce, uncertified installers, weak regulation and oversight.
Individually, these problems can be fixed. The government can improve installer training, tighten audits and crack down on fraud. But together, they highlight a deeper problem: a misconception that market-based instruments can bring about fundamental change.
Energy efficiency obligations such as ECO work well for standardized, low-risk tasks, such as swapping out bulbs or improving boilers. But, as we warned in 2012, they are less suitable for complex, capital-intensive retrofits of millions of households, which require a lot of coordination and long-term financing.
The UK’s energy efficiency administration is still far out of touch with the realities of people’s homes. Responsibilities are confusingly divided between suppliers, Whitehall departments, auditors and local authorities, and it can often feel as if no one is really in charge.
That’s why the failures highlighted in the National Audit Office report are not simply due to implementation glitches or a few “bad Apple” installers. They are failures of governance models designed for incremental change, not the transformation required for net zero.
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If Britain really wants to rebuild millions of homes, it should look at what is being done in other countries. Germany’s long-running KfW loan program is an example. For more than three decades, it has supported high-performance renewables through low-interest loans and grants. Successive German governments have recognized that the returns – in jobs, tax revenues, economic stimulus – have consistently outweighed the upfront costs.
In contrast, ECO has been repeatedly reorganized, making forward planning difficult due to changes in goals and funding levels. The UK has lagged far behind its peers by treating home retrofit as a short-term obligation rather than a long-term national project.
About the authors
Evan Archer-Brown is a DPhil candidate in Geography and Environment at the University of Oxford.
Brenda Boardman is Emeritus Research Fellow in Energy at the University of Oxford.
Jan Rosenow is Energy Program Leader at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.
This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. read the original article,
Retrofitting homes is inherently local (you can’t pick up your home and take it to another area). Local authorities should therefore play a stronger role in coordinating delivery, enforcing quality and linking retrofits with other social goals such as tackling fuel poverty.
Involving councils would align retrofits with local priorities rather than distant central government goals. It could also restore confidence among those who might otherwise be wary of such schemes.
The UK’s upcoming Warm Home scheme is a chance to reset. The government needs to take a hard look at the tools we have and think about what is needed to promote the creative and bold policy needed to decarbonise our homes.