POLICY GREEN DEAL
NEW COOLING SYSTEM
Capital cost: £400,000 Payback: Seven to eight years
NEW HEATING SYSTEM
Capital cost: £70,000 Payback: four years
‘On bigger buildings the Green Deal could
be used to convert £200,000 projects into £400,000 projects. But it really does depend on the sort of project you’re involved with. It will make projects that would normally be beyond the normal payback criteria viable, too.’ The non-domestic Green Deal will enable property owners to install measures that have a payback period of up to 25 years. It could also be a good option for clients who can’t otherwise afford to install some Green Deal measures. For example, says Geens, replacing the
lighting system in an offi ce block has a healthy payback period and could halve future electricity bills but, in the past, clients may have been unable to raise the initial capital to proceed. Now, he says, they have a solution to that problem. ‘[Before the Green Deal] you could have something with a six-month payback but have to spend £200,000 to install it to save £400,000 in a year,’ explains Geens. ‘In that case, it doesn’t matter how short the payback is, you just couldn’t do it if you couldn’t afford it. ‘It’s not just about payback, it’s about how
much it costs to do in the fi rst place.’ Since being accredited, Sweetman
has lodged the fi rst non-domestic Green Deal assessment on the national register, while Hipkiss has conducted a number of assessments for premises such as schools, community buildings, shops and offi ces, which are still waiting to be lodged. But Hipkiss’ experience in conducting these
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assessments has made him question whether people are actually aware of what the initiative is trying to achieve. ‘The level of interest is perhaps not
what it should be; people don’t seem to be appreciating the value of the Green Deal assessment,’ says Hipkiss. ‘A lot of occupiers don’t seem to know what
they have agreed to. For example, at a typical community building, the site contact was the maintenance man. My introduction was: “I’m here to do the Green Deal survey and could we review your energy bills?” The reply was: “I don’t know anything about the bills.” I told him that we couldn’t complete the survey without the bills, explaining then how the Green Deal worked. He found some in the end, but it was far from plain sailing. ‘On a survey for an industrial unit it was
quite clear that the occupier wanted solar panels on the roof. I would say that, in that instance, solar panels were a good option, but there were plenty of other options more viable for the occupier than solar panels.’ A further complication to the success of the non-domestic Green Deal, warns Hipkiss, is the fact that there is no fi nance available yet, which is fundamental to the operation of the Green Deal (see box, ‘DECC responds’, right). He added ‘There may be a big issue there. I think it will hold the scheme back.’ Couple this with the lack of promotion
of the non-domestic Green Deal by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and it paints a confused picture
DECC RESPONDS
Addressing the points raised by Richard Hipkiss about the apparent lack of fi nance and marketing for the commercial Green Deal, a spokesman for DECC said: ‘We anticipate that there will be a number of fi nancing offers available to non-domestic Green Deal customers over time. The Green Deal is market-led and Green Deal providers are responsible for developing their own fi nancing offers (outside the Green Deal Finance Company offer for domestic customers), and as such we expect offers to vary from provider to provider in both price and availability. ‘The timing of the availability of these offers will be a commercial decision for Green Deal providers operating in this market. ‘The government is committed to improving energy effi ciency and reducing carbon emissions. The Green Deal is one of the key tools to deliver this. It is a market-based scheme and we expect businesses to be driven by both the economic benefi ts of energy effi ciency improvements, and by its impact on company brand and reputation.
The spokesman added that guidance is available at
www.gov.uk/green-deal-energy- saving-measures and
www.greendealorb.co.uk
May 2013 CIBSE Journal 21
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