黑洞社区

So what鈥檚 the big deal?

This week we reported the resignation of Northern Ireland鈥檚 deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, over the region鈥檚 Renewable Heat Incentive scandal (page 10). Five years ago, 黑洞社区 was looking at a number of problems with another eco subsidy - the UK government鈥檚 flagship Green Deal policy.

Then energy minister Greg Barker described the 拢14bn scheme as 鈥渢he biggest housing retrofit programme since the Second World War鈥�. However, wrote 黑洞社区鈥檚 Joey Gardiner, the reality was 鈥�1,900 pages of policy [鈥�] which makes clear the rhetoric masks a veritable viper鈥檚 nest of problems鈥�.

This mainly involved evidence the scheme would 鈥渄ramatically reduce the uptake of the most efficient domestic energy efficiency measures鈥�.

There also seemed to be a worrying approach to customers with older homes not suited to retrofitting, as described: 鈥淎 little-noticed paragraph buried in the middle of the government鈥檚 impact assessment makes clear: 鈥樷�� the reduction in permeability in homes could 鈥� have long term negative health impacts - for example, lung cancer (radon), stroke or heart attacks (second hand smoke) and respiratory illness for children (mould).鈥欌��

However, planning and implementation of the Green Deal was so awful hardly anyone applied for the loans at the heart of it (15,000 across the UK) and it was scrapped in 2015 before anyone died.

To read the article from 13 January 2012 download the PDF below.