Energy minister admits prediction that 10,000 Green Deal plans would be signed in the first year of the flagship scheme was well off
Energy minister Greg Barker has admitted his prediction that 10,000 Green Deal plans would be signed in the first year of the flagship scheme鈥檚 operation was 鈥渟pectacularly wrong鈥�.
Last March, three months into the scheme, Barker told BBC Radio 4: 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 be sleeping if we didn鈥檛 have 10,000 [signed up to the Green Deal] at the end of the year.鈥�
But official figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) today revealed by customers through to the end of December, and only 626 of these were completed and live, meaning the customer is paying back the loan through their energy bills
Speaking to journalists at a UK Green 黑洞社区 Council event today, Barker said 鈥淢y understanding and perception of how the market works is very different in practice to how it was in theory.鈥�
When asked to say how many plans he wanted to see signed before the next election in 2015 he said: 鈥淗aving got it spectacularly wrong last year I鈥檓 not giving it any more forecasts.鈥�
The DECC figures showed 129,842 had been carried out over the first year of the Green Deal, meaning only around one in every 1,300 households to undertake an assessment have gone on to sign a Green Deal plan to date.
However, DECC insists that its research shows that 81% of people undergoing a Green Deal assessment are 鈥渃onsistently telling us that they are taking action following their assessment鈥�, with households choosing to pay for measures themselves rather than use Green Deal finance.
Barker added: 鈥淲e thought that unless we gave customers the payment method no one would touch these things, in actual fact people are doing them and installing them and the barrier to entry does not seem to be finance.鈥�
However, he said early adopters of the scheme would be 鈥減re-disposed to see the sense in it鈥� and pay for measures themselves.
He said as the programme 鈥渟caled-up鈥� financial barriers would become more significant and a higher proportion of people have assessments would chose to use Green Deal finance to pay for having energy efficiency measures installed.
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