Enabling Measures Final Report

Enabling Measures Final Report

Produced for the Energy Saving Trust

May 2013

Changeworks

36 Newhaven Road

Edinburgh, EH6 5PY

T: 0131 555 4010

Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.Introduction

Note on this report

2.Context: Green Deal, ECO and Enabling Measures

The Green Deal

ECO

Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland: Area Based Scheme (HEEPS ABS)…………………………………………………

3.Methods

4.Learning from Previous Insulation Programmes

Lessons from UHIS / HIS – Enabling Measures for Loft and Cavity Wall Insulation…………………………………………………………………………….....

Understanding Barriers to Install

Perceptions on Enabling Measures Required for ECO and Green Deal

Experience of Key ECO-Eligible Installations

Summary

5.Survey of Consumers’ Experience of UHIS-Related Enabling Measures

Survey of Households who had Installed Insulation

Survey of Households who had not Installed Insulation

Conclusions

6.Developing a Classification for Enabling Measures

Piloting Enabling Measures in the Context of Green Deal and ECO

7.Piloting Enabling Measures – Following Up Install Cancellations to Enable Installations

8.Piloting Enabling Measures – External Solid Wall Insulation

Pilot Overview

Household Perceptions in Advance of Install

Enabling Measures

Measures Piloted

9.Piloting Enabling Measures – High Rise Hard to Treat Cavity

Lessons on High Rise and Multiple Occupancy Installations from UHIS Funding of Schemes

Pilot Site Measures Used

10.Conclusions and Recommendations

Types of Enabling Measures

Demand for Different Measures

Recommendations......

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report presents the findings from a study commissioned by the EST and delivered by Changeworks into the enabling measures that could be used to support the installation of energy efficiency measures delivered as part of the Green Deal and ECO.

The overall aim of the project was to enhance understanding of the barriers to uptake of installs,and to explore the enabling measures to overcome these. This was achieved through a range of research and pilot activities, including:

Desk research exploring previous and current use of enabling measures in insulation programmes.
Interviews with key stakeholders involved in insulation programmes
Surveys of households to explore perceptions and importance of enabling measures.
3 pilots of enabling measures (a follow–up of households that had not taken on previously offered measures; as part of an area-wide solid wall insulation installation, and as part of a high-rise cavity installation)

The desk research and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders to explore enabling measures used in previous programmes demonstrated a wide range of possible barriers to installation of insulation. These ranged from supporting and working with households through to covering the costs of technical or repair work. This research also highlighted that the legacy of previous funding schemes has resulted in differing opinions and expectations as to what could, or should, be funded or described as an enabling measure and what should be included in the core costs of an installation. For example, scaffolding has been funded as an enabling measure previously, but this could be viewed as a core cost of the work as it could not go ahead without it (in some cases).

The surveys with households that had previously enquired about insulation suggest that there are a range of concerns which may deter people from proceeding with insulation. These include: reassurance on the offer of insulation that they are targeted with; the quality of the installation or installers; suitability of the insulation for their property or the damage it may cause; and additional costs or requirements pre or post installation works (e.g. laying down boarding in lofts).

To alleviate concerns and encourage households to install insulation, the findings suggest that support, advice and information from an impartial body areessential in enabling households to install insulation.

A Classification of Enabling Measures

These research findings were used to develop a classification of enabling measures in order to facilitate an understanding of what the potential enabling measures and what might be required to deliver these. A wide range of items were identified as enabling measures, including such diverse items as loft vents, scaffolding, supporting transport costs to rural areas and direct assistance in clearing lofts. As such, enabling measures can be viewed as being grouped into four categories along a spectrum, with costs and challenges of installation at one extreme and supporting the household to install measures at the other. These are presented in the following diagram, with examples of measures included.

Piloting Enabling Measures

Three trial sites were identified in order to test out this understanding of enabling measures and to explore if any further insights into key enabling measures that could be used to support ECO and HEEPS ABS rollout.

The follow-up pilot with households who had not installed loft or cavity insulation after making an enquirywith Home Energy Scotlandexplored the extent to which additional support to encourage and engage installs can achieve success. From a small sample of 64 households that had not proceeded with installation, two were assisted to achieve a successful install. This occurred as a result of providing further advice and support to households and working with installers to pursue these homes. Although a small pilot, this highlights that concerns can be alleviated (and installs achieved) by providing further support to households.

The area-wide solid wall insulation pilot explored perceived barriers in advance of installation (via a household survey) and trialled measures during the install process. This identified that the majority of measures requested and used related to returning the properties to their original state (e.g. repair of fences and gardens damaged during install). This pilot also highlighted the importance of having support and advice available to households to facilitate installs and project management.

The high-rise cavity pilot again highlighted the importance of advice and support in enabling residents to install, and also in identifying resources to return properties to their original state after installation.

Conclusions and Recommendations

This research clearly identified that household support, engagement and recruitment is vital in delivering installs. This not only relates to scheme promotion and information dissemination from impartial and trusted sources, but also in managing queries and questions and working with installers to facilitate installs. This is especially important as technologies such as solid wall insulation require significantly more upheaval and intrusion than loft and cavity installs. In addition it will be important to ensure that any available measures are effectively promoted and resources invested to follow up with interested clients to ensure households feel supported and therefore follow through on their decisions to install. This is likely to require close working with installers and other key stakeholders (such as builders who may be renovating homes) to ensure that those that need the measures are aware of them and that effective advice can be sought.

Based on this research we recommend that local authorities should be encouraged to allocate significant resources to household engagement, support and follow-up, along with exploring routes to engage wider stakeholders, such as local tradespeople, in the promotion of measures.

The spend on enabling measures through HEEPS ABS projects should be monitored closely. This should include

An outline of the types of property or insulation types that are to be targeted (high rise; EWI etc.) to facilitate an informed understanding of enabling spend
Monitoring staff time spent engaging with households (and the nature of this engagement – e.g. seeking collective agreement for communal buildings; responding to complaints queries about installers etc.)
Value (and nature) of enabling spend on preparing site for install, making good sites after install, and non-standard technical issues or costs
Reporting on what is and is not specified as core costs when asking installers to prepare bids for work

This data should provide vital information to inform the targeting of measures in the future. Throughout this process it will be important for scheme managers to ensure that the installation market does not take advantage of this provision for enabling measures and that these are contained, where reasonably possible, in the core costs of installation.

1.Introduction

The overall aim of the project was to enhance understanding of the barriers to uptake of installs and develop and evaluate enabling measures to overcome these. The ultimate aim of the work was to identify how best to support the roll out of the Green Deal / ECO in Scotland through the use of enabling measures.

This was achieved through exploring the following objectives:

Understanding the barriers to energy efficiency installs
Evaluating previous enabling measures used in energy efficiency schemes
Identifying enabling measures that may increase uptake
Evaluating the uptake of measures and exploring the impacts in relation to the Green Deal and ECO environment.

Note on this report

This work was undertaken in late 2012 – spring 2013 during the period that the ECO and Green Deal schemes were first being ‘rolled-out’. Subsequent to this research being completed, changes have been made to the legislation upon which these schemes are based[1] – in particular in relation to the ECO targets (being reduced) and the insulation measures included in the scheme being widened. Despite these changes, the findings from this research still stand and are still highly relevant to the future roll out of insulation schemes.

2.Context: Green Deal, ECO and Enabling Measures[2]

The Green Deal is the UK’s flagship energy efficiency policy introduced in 2013. It is intended to drive installations of energy efficiency measures by eliminating the need for households and businesses to pay upfront for measures. Instead, households will make payments over a specified time period to cover these costs. The ‘Golden Rule’ aims to ensure that these Green Deal payments do not exceed savings made on energy bills as a result of these measures, meaning that households will not be worse off. Measures in hard-to-treat housing that do not meet the Golden Rule, or measures in low income households, will be funded or part-funded through the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). DECC initially estimated that 14 million homes would be insulated under Green Deal.

It is therefore important to understand what types of activity could facilitate uptake and maximise the flow of Green Deal/ECO funds into Scotland. Barriers to uptake can be wide ranging and, based on previous experience from other energy efficiency schemes (focusing on loft and cavity insulation), can include a wide range of ‘measures’ such as flat owners needing support to agree to joint works, assisting with the cost of scaffolding to make insulation affordableor households requiring support or assistance to clear lofts. Enabling measures to address these have been used as part of CERT / CESP activity, but the Energy Saving Trust (EST) acknowledges that they do not yet have a clear picture of the effect of these enabling measures on uptake.

The Green Deal

Households interested in the Green Deal will have a Green Deal assessment carried out on their home by a certified Green Deal assessor. This will include a technical assessment of the measures suitable for the house (based on an EPC) and an occupancy assessment to help ensure energy savings predicted for any potential improvement are accurate for the occupants (i.e. based on their specific heating patterns). Measures that meet the Golden Rule will be eligible for Green Deal finance. Finance is available for up to £10,000, paid back over a 20 year period or less and interest of approximately 8% is charged on the loan. The finance and overall process will be managed by a Green Deal Provider.

Should any subsidised enabling measures be made available for Green Deal work, these will be likely to reduce the overall cost of the work and therefore reduce repayments. This will potentially have an impact on the likelihood of meeting the Golden Rule, resulting in potential to increase take up.

ECO

The ECO will initially run until March 2015. It will place three obligations on energy companies:

a)Affordable Warmth Obligation – will provide funding for low income private households for any measure that ‘reduces the notional cost of heating the property’. This will include boiler repairs if accompanied by a level of aftercare for households. Only those in private households will be eligible. Qualifying benefits will include: child tax credit with a household income under £15,860, income-related employment and support allowance, income-based jobseekers allowance, income support, state pension credit and working tax credit with a household income under £15,860. District heating will also be included.

b)Carbon Saving Obligation – will fund measures in hard-to-treat properties. All properties receiving money through this stream must have solid wall insulation or non-standard cavity insulation installed. Alongside this, other measures may be offered such as loft insulation, glazing, draught-proofing and district heating systems.

c)Carbon Saving CommunitiesObligation(CSCo) – will target insulation measures in low-income communities (defined using the ‘data zones’ in Scotland which represent the 15% of multi-deprived areas). This target will be set at 20% of overall carbon saving target. Loft and cavity wall insulation are expected to be the most commonly installed measures through this scheme but a wider range of measures will be eligible, including solid wall insulation. Energy companies will need to deliver 15% of this obligation in rural, low income households in small settlements with a population under 10,000.

A summary of these three streams is provided in the table overleaf. It is important to note that the different types of ECO funding will tend to require different types of measures. They will, therefore, tend to require different types of enabling measure: The Affordable Warmth and Carbon Saving Communities strands will mirror (to some extent) the technologies installed as part of the Scottish UHIS (Universal Home Insulation Scheme) projects and as a result the need for enabling measures may be similar. However, the Carbon Saving element will be more likely to focus on solid wall and hard-to-treat cavity insulation (and is the largest element in terms of funds). These are areas where there is a significantly smaller knowledge base in relation to the enabling measures needed to facilitate installs and significant amounts of active learning is being undertaken by all stakeholders as the use of these technologies becomes more mainstream. Some examples of possible enabling measures are presented in the table overleaf and will be explored further in the next section.

Table 2.1 Summary of the three streams of ECO funding (May 2013)

ECO obligation / Affordable Warmth / Carbon Saving / Carbon Saving Communities
Estimated funding (million/year) / £350 / £760 / £190
Estimated proportion of ECO funding / 27% / 58% / 15%
Target households /

Private households
Low income households (on specified benefits)

Hard-to-treat properties
Households on any income

Low income areas (15% lowest multi-deprived areas)
20% can be delivered in aligning areas
15% of target must be targeted at low population settlements

Eligible measures (for full list see appendix) /

Any measures that reduce heating costs
Likely to be mainly cheaper measures – CWI, LI, heating upgrades

SWI or non-standard CWI must be installed
Other measures can be installed alongside (glazing, LI, etc.)

All insulation measures eligible
LI and CWI expected to form majority of installs

Examples Enabling Measures /

CWI: access; vents
LI: boarding; loft clearance

Internal Solid Wall Insulation: Decant costs; respite care
External SWI: structural surveys; building improvements

CWI: access; vents
LI: boarding; loft clearance

Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland: Area Based Scheme (HEEPS ABS)

HEEPS ABS is a Scottish Government programme which replaces previous energy efficiency schemes (such as the Universal Home Insulation Scheme). Pilots were run in 2012-3, and further projects will run in 2013-14 and 2014-15. It is an area-based scheme delivered by local authorities and will fund measures in private households.

HEEPS ABS is intended to be used alongside ECO funding, and in this way ECO funding can be leveraged into Scottish projects. It is expected that a ratio of 3:1 of ECO to HEEPS ABS funding will be achieved across the scheme (not per property). Thus, to some degree, HEEPS ABS funding is dictated by ECO criteria. All Green Deal and ECO measures are eligible (although ensuring that secondary measures defined under ECO are only installed when primary measures are installed). It is expected that schemes should be a mix of higher cost measures (such as HTT, CWI and SWI) and lower cost measures (such as LI). As a result it can be expected that enabling measures in relation to this funding programme will mirror those described above.

3.Methods

This project was undertaken over a number of phases and involved the following elements: desk research exploring previous and current use of enabling measures; interviews with key stakeholders involved in insulation programmes; a survey of households to explore perceptions and importance of enabling measures; and a pilot enabling measures. These are described in more detail below.

Desk Research

This stage of the research sought to gather learning from existing datasets, programmes (HIS and UHIS) and other relevant literature. This focused primarily (but not exclusively) on loft and cavity installs (due to the prevalence of these measures in these programmes). The learning explored barriers and the importance of currently offered enabling measures (mainly in relation to loft and cavity wall insulation). This sought to highlight knowledge about barriers to installation and possible enabling measures currently and previously used.