Green Deal

Green Deal

The Green Deal is a loan to help owners and tenants to pay for energy efficiency and/or renewable energy improvements to their home. You have the work done but don’t pay anything upfront. Instead you take out a Green Deal loan and make repayments through your electricity bills. Overall, your energy bills should fall because the improvements to your home will make it easier to heat and power. If you move out of the house, the new owner/occupier picks up the payments, which are attached to the home’s electricity meter, not to you. 

There are 46 different measures you can install in your home that can be funded under the Green Deal. Common ones are insulation (loft, cavity, solid wall and underfloor), boilers, double glazing, draught proofing and solar panels.

The process for getting a Green Deal is

  1. Assessment: a Green Deal Assessor will look at your house and the way in which you use energy in it (there is usually an upfront charge for a Green Deal Assessment).
  2. Recommendations. The Assessor will recommend improvements that are appropriate for your house. Your Green Deal Report will show if they will pay for themselves through reduced bills.
  3. Quotes. The company which provided the assessment might offer to quote to do the work but you can get as many quotes as you like so long as they are from Green Deal Installers. You don’t have to install all of the recommendations in your report.
  4. Installation. Your Green Deal Provider will arrange for improvements to be made to your home by a Green Deal Installer. Green Deal Providers arrange Green Deal Plans, provide finance, and arrange for the installation of the agreed energy efficiency improvements.
  5. Benefit. You will then begin to benefit from a more energy efficient home.
  6. Pay. Your Green Deal repayments will automatically be added to your electricity bill. You may find that it is your bill for heating that drops (e.g.: gas or oil) but the repayments are made through your electricity bill – so to know if you are saving you will have to add the two together and compare them to how they were before you had a Green Deal. If you heat your home using electricity your electricity bill should drop.
 

 

To find a Green Deal Assessor in your area call 0300 123 1234 or visit the website.

Look out for the Green Deal Approved Quality Mark (see right). All Green Deal Assessors, Providers and Installers need this mark to show that they meet Green Deal standards and are authorised to operate under the Green Deal.

Other Ways of Paying

Green Deal loans have interest attached to them. You may find that you can get a more favourable rate of interest by extending your mortgage or taking out a loan. You could also choose to pay for the work with savings, thus avoiding interest altogether but still benefitting from reduced bills once the work is done. Remember that if you extend your mortgage or take out a loan that this will stay with you even if you move house.

Green Deal for Non-Domestic Buildings

The Green Deal is available for non-domestic buildings, such as community buildings and those housing businesses.

The Centre for Sustainable Energy has produced a pack of resources for local communities who are interested in the Green Deal, either for their community buildings or to help households take advantage of the deal.

 

 

More Information

There is more information about ECO and the Green Deal on the government’s website and on the Energy Saving Trust’s website.

You can read factsheets on ECO and different aspects of the Green Deal here.