EU loses nerve to tackle climate change, fuel poverty & slashes 2030 energy efficiency goal

Energy efficiency – you know it makes sense, right?

While paying lip service to the Paris Agreement, the European Union has let a minority of countries slash its energy efficiency targets by 90 per cent on the grounds that even modest targets are too expensive. The EU’s commitment to tackling climate change and fuel poverty is now seriously in doubt.

A version of this article was first published in The Fifth Estate on 5 July.

At a meeting of the Energy Council of EU energy ministers on 26 June, where several energy efficiency policies were discussed, agreement on the energy saving target from 2020 to 2030 was hard to achieve, and reaching consensus came at great cost to the level of ambition.

The new target

Currently the energy saving target is a non-binding one of 20 per cent by 2020, compared to baseline projections. A legally binding target of achieving 30 per cent energy use reduction by 2030 had been on the table.

Originally the European Parliament was calling for a 40 per cent target because the EU is already on track to achieve 24 per cent savings by 2030, and deeper savings are easily available and cost-effective. Earlier this year there was wide expectation that the final compromise might be between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.

But at the meeting, some countries demanded that the target should be only voluntary – and other countries demanded that it should be as low as 27 per cent.

In the end a non-binding 30 per cent target was agreed.

This compromise means the new target is less ambitious than the current 20 per cent by 2020 target. Currently countries would have to save 1.5 per cent energy a year. A 30 per cent target by 2030 decreases it to just one per cent between 2026 and 2030, assuming all countries co-operate.

Further loopholes were also added, specifically permitting:

• the double counting of energy savings from new buildings standards/codes – even though those are already covered by the Energy Performance in Buildings Directive
• double counting in the period 2021-2030 savings from energy efficiency measures installed before 2021 with lifetimes longer than 23 years – as if they were new savings
• 15 per cent of on-site renewable energy generation to be treated as energy savings
• excess savings from the current Article 7 (Energy Efficiency Obligation) period 2014-2020 towards the minimum savings 2021-2030

Observers Jan Rosenow and Richard Cowart calculate that together this will reduce the actual energy savings mandate in the EED from an effective level of 443 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) a year to just 52 Mtoe – a reduction of almost 90 per cent.

Rogues and heroes

The rogue countries that argued for this result were the UK, which allied itself with eastern states Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania. The WWF said these countries “could not even support the final weak deal”.

The British negotiator was Conservative MP Richard Harrington. Where other countries sent their secretaries of state for energy, Britain sent an under-secretary from the business, energy and industrial strategy department, who had only been appointed a week earlier.

Richard Harrington

The heroes of the day were France, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and Ireland, who were congratulated by Greens MEP Claude Turmes for fighting hard for a strong deal. He said afterwards that he would use his place on the European Parliament’s Industry Committee to “raise the ambition” of the targets.

EU Energy and Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete commented that finding agreement on the Energy Efficiency Directive was “not easy” and that as a result it fell “below the ambition of the Commission”.

Miguel Arias Cañete

Others were equally disappointed. Clémence Hutin, climate justice and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “These negotiations should have been about ramping up the EU’s climate efforts for 2030, instead we are risking a decade of inaction. EU governments have expressed deep regret at Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, yet they are turning their backs on the main tool for cutting emissions – energy efficiency.”

Benedek Jávor, Greens/EFA MEP said: “There is an engaged energy efficiency community that stands ready to raise ambition levels and invest massively in the energy transition. They just need the right signals from policymakers. To fully unlock this potential, all member states need to give their support. Where some countries lag behind, there is a real risk of higher energy costs and serious competition gaps.”

The European Parliament’s own Impact Assessment had shown that higher levels of ambition would deliver significantly greater benefits, as revealed in the table below.

Level of energy savings:	30 per cent	33 per cent	35 per cent	40 per cent
Reduction in gas imports	12 per cent	23 per cent	29 per cent	41 per cent
GDP increase in 2030	0.39 per cent	1.45 per cent	2.08 per cent	4.08 per cent
Additional jobs	396,950	1,587,800	2,428,400	4,856,800
Savings in fossil fuel import bills (bn) for 2021-2030	69.6	147.3	199.3	287.5
Reduction in pollution control and health damage costs (bn/year )	4.5-8.3	15.2-28.4	19.9-36.6	30.4-55.9
Total GHG emissions reductions ( per cent to 1990)	41 per cent	43 per cent	44 per cent	47 per cent

These are consistent with figures from the De-Risking Energy Efficiency Platform (DEEP) database, which contains close to 6000 individual energy efficiency projects across the member states of the EU. Overall, it shows the cost per kilowatt-hour saved in buildings is 2.5 eurocents and in the industry sector 1.2 eurocents.

Fuel poverty is an issue in all member states. It affects tens of millions of Europeans (between 50 million and 125 million depending on how you measure it). Of the main causes – low income, high energy costs and poor insulation of European dwellings – the directive could do much to affect the latter two.

The Energy Union strategy and the Paris Agreement

The Energy Efficiency Directive forms part of the EU’s Energy Union Strategy.

The general aim of the Energy Union strategy is to move towards the decarbonisation of the EU economy by 2030 and beyond, while strengthening economic growth, consumer protection, innovation and competitiveness. The Commission proposal on energy efficiency updates the current Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU and was presented in November 2016.

Buildings are the largest single energy consumer in Europe, consuming 40 per cent of final energy.

Even before this meeting, the EU was not on a trajectory to meet its self-assigned 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of “at least” 40 per cent by 2030 below 1990 levels under the Paris Agreement.

According to Climate Action Tracker – which monitors individual countries’ plans to achieve the global aims of the Paris Agreement of limiting warming to 1.5°C – the EU’s domestic emissions are projected to be cut by only 30-39 per cent.

The EU’s target is, anyway, not consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, says Climate Action Tracker. Extrapolating the current trend to 2050 would give an emissions reduction of 64 per cent below 1990. The EU’s goal is 80-95 per cent.

Looking at energy savings alone, by totalling the amount of savings reported by member states in 2014 and 2015, the total savings target is currently on track to be less than zero.

Factoring in the new, seriously unambitious targets under the Energy Efficiency Directive would make achieving Europe’s goal under the Paris Agreement much harder and more expensive to achieve.

The extra expense comes because it is cheaper to take action now than in the future, and because it is generally cheaper to install measures to save energy than to build new generation plant.

The European Union is now seriously lacking credibility in its position on tackling climate change. What is always puzzling is why energy efficiency – which has been shown innumerable times to have multiple benefits and mostly be more cost-effective than building more generation capacity – has so few friends.

Perhaps we should stop energy ministers deciding such matters and let those unswayable by lobbying from energy suppliers do so instead.

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy efficiency, building refurbishment and renewable energy. See his website here.

Tags: energy efficiency,

Why does the UK have lower energy bills but rising fuel poverty?

Note: A version of this piece first appeared last week on The Fifth Estate.

 
Average fuel bills have fallen and investing in energy efficiency does not need to push up energy bills according to new research from the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC). Yet a recent debate in the Houses of Parliament on fuel poverty shows that ministers still lack the necessary political will to tackle its scale and are complacent about the effect of their efforts.

The UK ranks 14 out of 16 western European countries for fuel poverty, and ranks bottom for the proportion of people who cannot afford to adequately heat their home.

Yet household energy bills have fallen since the Climate Change Act was passed – despite fears expressed at the time that measures to tackle climate change would push bills up.

So why has fuel poverty slowly been creeping up? The fuel poverty gap, which is a measure of the difference between a household’s energy bill and what it can afford to pay, increased from £235 in 2003 to £371 in 2014, according to Rebecca Long-Bailey the Labour Party Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Real wages have fallen over the last decade since the banking crisis and the austerity politics era begin. That's part of the picture. But there is more.

Compared to Sweden. Britain’s winters are mild yet due to good insulation of homes levels of fuel poverty in Sweden are about half those of the UK. A typical Swedish wall is three times more energy efficient. So what is going on in the UK?

Why have fuel bills fallen?

“Changes in annual energy bills from 2004 to 2008 and from then to 2016.” Source: CCC analysis. Estimates are for the average dual-fuel household with gas heating. 2016 estimates are based on consumption of 3,550 kWh for electricity and 13,500 kWh for gas. Note: 2004 is the first year for which comparable data is available to allow comparison over time.

Fuel bills in Britain have fallen not because of energy prices falling or homes being better insulated but because more energy efficient goods are on the market. This is in line with patterns found in Australian energy consumption.

Although the cost of measures to deliver a cleaner, low-carbon electricity system have added around £9 a month to the typical UK household energy bill in 2016, this was more than offset by a cut of over £20 per month due to reduced energy demand mainly from more efficient lights and appliances (according to the CCC’s fourth independent assessment of the impact of carbon budgets on energy bills).

This assessment finds that typical households which use gas for heating/hot water and electricity for everything else, paid (in real terms) £115 less per year for energy in 2016 than they did in 2008 when the Climate Change Act was passed. The total annual bill includes just over £100 to pay for decarbonisation measures.

Improvements in energy efficiency have saved the typical household around £290 a year since 2008.

This is largely due, as Green MP Caroline Lucas pointed out in the Parliamentary debate, not to the refurbishment of homes but to a European Union directive – the Ecodesign Directive – which, she said, is projected to produce average annual savings of £153 by 2020 – 20 per cent of the average annual energy bill.

This has been so successful that it has led to the virtual phasing out of all inefficient goods, including household appliances, boilers and windows, below the A rating since the energy rating label for goods was introduced 20 years ago.

It has encouraged the development of ever more energy efficient products. Consumer surveys show that about 85 per cent of European citizens look at energy efficiency labels when they purchase products.

The European Commission last week therefore decided to replace the current confusing A+++ to G labels for products by a clear and easier to use A to G labels to make energy labels more understandable.

Once this is approved by the European Parliament and the Council, product registration and public databases will be provided to make it easier for people to compare the energy efficiency of household appliances.

Fuel poverty and policy

But still fuel poverty is rising.

A household is said to be living in fuel poverty if its income is below the poverty line and it has higher-than-typical energy costs.

On 21 March, British MPs debated fuel poverty. The minister responsible for energy reminded everyone that in 2014 the Government adopted a target for England for improving the homes of all fuel-poor households to a band C energy efficiency rating by 2030. Along the way they are to be improved to a band E rating by 2020 and to a band D rating by 2025.

Only 7 per cent of fuel-poor households currently live in a band C rated property – most in much worse homes. Improving E, F or G-rated homes to band D can reduce energy costs by an average of £400 a year.

This is a lot more than the money saved by switching appliances to the most efficient, however much that helps. Besides, the poorest people cannot afford to buy new appliances.

A revised Act of Parliament that obliges energy companies to refurbish customers’ homes is about to see 500,000 homes improved over the coming 18 months. This is an extension of the Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order, which will prolong the Energy Company Obligation scheme from 1 April 2017 to 30 September 2018. It is well overdue and its tardiness has created uncertainty in the industry.

Seventy per cent of the support available under the Act will be directed at low-income homes. However there is currently no clear indication of what will happen to the obligation after 2018.

New private rented sector regulations will target the least efficient F and G-rated properties from 2018 by requiring landlords to improve those properties to at least a band E.

But is this enough?

The failure of policy

There has been an 88 per cent fall in the number of measures taken to retrofit homes since 2010 as a result of government policies, according to Long-Bailey.

Policies to date have failed to support the development of a large-scale sustainable market for energy efficiency investments.

The Association for the Conservation of Energy believes this is “because there has been a lack of a stable and long-term framework within which the energy efficiency supply chain can develop its market. Energy efficiency policies have proved susceptible to decisions driven by short-term political priorities”.

The Committee on Climate Change estimates that 4.5 million cavity walls remain un-insulated, 10 million easy-to-treat lofts could benefit from additional insulation and seven million solid walls are still without any insulation.

The case for further government intervention is clear, but the political will to spend money on this area is lacking.

The economic benefits of insulating homes

It’s not just about bills. It’s about human health and winter deaths, of which 8000 were said to occur last winter due to fuel poverty. But if that fails to persuade MPs to take action there are financial arguments too.

Analysis by consultants Frontier Economics suggests that the net present value of investing in insulating homes could be as valuable as the High Speed 2 rail link being backed by the government. It sees this type of investment as an infrastructure priority.

Opposition parties Labour and the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalists are united with the NEA that the National Infrastructure Commission and the UK Government must act on the strong case for domestic energy efficiency to be regarded as a hugely important infrastructure priority.

A further report by Cambridge Econometrics found that for each pound spent on insulating homes £1.12 is generated for the Treasury and £3 for the economy in GDP, and 42 pence is saved by the NHS.

The future effect of climate change targets on electricity bills

If it will not cost – but benefit – the taxpayer, will it cost the bill payer?

“Central estimates for changes in annual household energy bill from 2016 to 2030.” Source: CCC analysis. Estimates are for the average dual-fuel household with gas heating.

The CCC calculates that the gradual shift towards low-carbon electricity could add a further £85-120 a year to a typical bill by 2030 if further policies to meet UK climate objectives are put in place, but that further improvements in energy efficiency have the potential to deliver even more savings for households in future (around £150, or more if wholesale costs continue to rise). That’s a net benefit to consumers of at least £30.

It points out that, “There is also a range of opportunities for business arising from the transition to a low-carbon economy. The UK low-carbon economy already makes up 2-3 per cent of GDP and employs hundreds of thousands of people.”

Jesse Norman, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), concluding the debate on fuel poverty for the Government, called their target to reduce fuel poverty “ambitious”.

But seen in this context it does not appear nearly as ambitious as it could be.

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy, buildings and sustainability. See his website here.

The tragic effects of neglecting energy efficiency

The British government's policies on energy efficiency are causing a crisis in the industry where confidence has hit an all-time low. This is coming at a time when, by contrast, consumers and investors are beginning to gain enthusiasm for energy efficiency, not just in the UK but in Europe and the USA. More and more accurate tools are being devised to improve the energy use of buildings, whether involving newbuilds or retrofit projects. But none of this is yet affecting the tragic victims of neglecting energy efficiency.

The double whammy

The latest quarterly Energy Efficiency Trends report on the non-residential energy efficiency market has revealed that confidence is at an all-time low amongst suppliers. Declines in customer orders have led them to report almost universally negative views of British government action on energy efficiency. Most "consider the government’s management of energy efficiency policy as ineffective". Low energy prices and the “perception of cheap energy costs going forward” have combined with this to make a double whammy for the sector.

But this is not the case from the consumers' angle. Building owners or managers were far more positive, with eight out of ten reporting undertaking projects, of which LED lighting continued to dominate investment. Spending was reported to be increasing, and – especially reassuring – there were signs of increasing awareness (and deployment) of robust performance measurement (installing M&V - Measurement and Verification tools) to help ensure that investments do return the expected financial savings.

Lighting the way

As mentioned above, upgrading street lighting to LEDs is a new popular trend in energy efficiency investing. A recent high profile investment in this area is the loan of £9.87 million over four financial years by the UK >Green Investment Bank to Stirling Council in Scotland, announced last week. This will help the municipality to save £31 million over the thirty years of the lights' expected life by erecting 12,000 LED lamps and 4,000 lamp posts.

Stirling is following the nearby city of Glasgow in taking this step. Power consumption is forecast to fall by 63%, and 14,400 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to be saved over the project's lifetime. Scotland's Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing, supported the investment, saying that "The Scottish Government has designated energy efficiency as an infrastructure investment priority that looks to build on our track record in renewables in demonstrating the multiple benefits from investing in low carbon infrastructure".

The loan comes from the Green Investment Bank's 'Green Loan' scheme that is specifically designed to help local authorities make the switch to low energy streetlights and to improve energy efficiency in the National Health Service. Edward Northam, Head of Investment Banking at the GIB, said that "more and more local authorities are considering the benefits of the spend-to-save approach, with Stirling becoming the third UK council to opt for a Green Loan".

Banking certainty

Other investment banks are also seeing the advantage of investing in energy efficiency. The European Investment Bank (EIB) is lending a further €19.5 million – the second tranche of a €42 million loan – to finance part two of a refurbishment programme for multi-family apartment housing in Bucharest. This represents about 75% of the project’s cost.

The Bank has already provided some €400 million to finance the energy efficiency refurbishment of multi-apartment buildings in the city. The work is expected to save around 50% of the heating energy used in the 140 buildings – comprising 9,500 apartments – that's about 74 GWh per year.

Reducing energy use in buildings has other benefits besides saving money and carbon emissions. Independently validated research correlates that it makes the building's occupants happier. The increase in customer confidence may show that the message is finally getting through about the ten-eighty-ten rule, discovered in 2013. This is that ten percent of the total lifetime cost of the average commercial building comes from its construction; eighty per cent is spent on operating it during its lifetime; the remaining ten percent is in dismantling it.

Therefore ninety percent of a building’s costs are entirely influenced by its design, construction and operation. This rule comes from numerous studies, including the Egan Report on Rethinking construction. Research from BSRIA and BRE has shown how better planning at new building or refurbishment design stage and greater care in implementation result in lower operational costs and better building performance – and therefore greater occupant satisfaction.

Josefina Lindblom, policy adviser at the European Commission with responsibility for resource efficiency in the building sector, is an advocate of a whole lifecycle costing of energy use in the construction, arguing for a wider approach to evaluating performance and resource efficiency. She can be seen in a series of videos, the Construction Climate Talks, part of the Construction Climate Challenge Initiative.

Tools to achieve better confidence

Measuring lifetime impacts is the new trend in energy efficiency investment and a number of tools are being developed for this purpose.

In the USA, the bar has been raised by the LEED Dynamic Plaque. This is billed as "the next step in measuring and improving building performance over the life of these buildings". LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a third-party certification system. Dynamic Plaque is a display in a building's lobby or other prominent location, that uses data streams, the results of annual surveys and aspects of building performance data to generate a self-updating LEED performance score.

LEED Platinum plaque

Everyone is therefore able to see how the building is performing in relation to the use of energy, water, waste, transportation and to occupant experience. The display includes a timeline that allows for comparison between the current period and previous months or years, and average scores from other LEED certified buildings. This allows building facilities staff and even tenants/occupiers to take an active role in improving the efficiency and performance of the building. There is even an iPhone app that goes with it.

LEED Platinum plaque iPhone app

In Europe, an even bigger four-year project to benchmark real-world building performance is reaching its conclusion. Called DIRECTION, the deep understanding of building performance that it has generated is now being made available to designers, owners, constructors, local authorities and all interested parties.

It combines energy optimisation, highly efficient equipment and advanced energy management. This has been complemented with economic analysis and reporting, to create "a proven, sustainable model for construction".

The DIRECTION Best Practices Book offers 19 best practices from Munich (Germany), Valladolid (Spain) and Bolzano (Italy) which summarise the key recommendations to the energy efficiency sector. These are shown below:

 DIRECTION Best Practices Book key recommendations to the energy efficiency sector.

Finally, another proprietary toolkit that is available for managers gives a practical methodology to identify and mitigate risks during large-scale retrofits. It is presently being used by the Greater London Authority’s RE:NEW programme.

Its originator, Lisa Pasquale, of consultancy Six Cylinder, was recently recognised for her work with a Rising Star of 2016 award from the UK Green Building Council. Lisa says she sees her own mission as "raising awareness of certain shortfalls in our industry and influencing practices to improve performance outcomes for the built environment and construction sectors, and the people they serve".

Even greater advances are in the pipeline. Algorithms are being developed that will take Building Information Modelling (BIM) and M&V, or 'smart metering' to the next level. These will allow the improvement of lighting and heating and cooling systems by identifying systems that aren’t working as intended — such as thermostats that don’t change temperatures at assigned times — and correcting them.

So far, these algorithms have worked well in the lab (specifically the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). Now PNNL is testing them in the real world use, after which an Oregon-based company, NorthWrite, will adapt them for cloud-based software.

These advances should all help to give municipalities, developers and building owners or managers greater confidence in investing in energy efficiency. In the UK this should help to give optimism to suppliers in the sector. The laggards are the UK government, and the real losers, sadly, are the victims of fuel poverty in uninsulated homes. New research shows that 9,000 extra deaths were caused by low indoor temperatures in the UK in the winter of 2014-15.

Unfortunately the cost of death doesn't figure in business spreadsheets. Nor can these 'building occupants' ever fill out a survey to quantify their 'occupant experience'. Seen from this perspective, do you get the feeling that all the above seems a trifle, well, academic?

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David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life (Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

Warm Front fiasco: This Government doesn't care about the fuel poor

The Government has betrayed thousands of people who suffer in fuel poverty by deliberately not spending £50.6 million of its budget last year allocated to help them and then refusing to give it back, and is betraying millions more by cutting its future budget.

The £50.6 million, being unspent, has returned immediately to the Treasury general coffers.

The figure came out of a Parliamentary answer by Greg Barker this week to questioning by opposition Energy Minister Caroline Flint, who has been persistently badgering the government to do more about fuel poverty.

The end result of the fiasco is that 22,000 households remain in fuel poverty that could have been helped.

Four million people

Four million of the most vulnerable people in the country are unable to pay their energy bills and suffer ill-health, days off work and poor quality of life as well as having less to spend on other necessities as a result, according to the latest figures.

The underspend happened despite the rejection of nearly 30,000 families who applied for help with insulation, because they didn't qualify under the new, stricter, eligibility criteria.

Ron Campbell, the policy officer for National Energy Action, calls the situation “a cock-up".

“The low take-up of Warm Front help, is due partly to the stringent eligibility requirements," he told me, "but mostly to the fact that a decision was taken not to promote the help available, because it was felt that with a reduced level of funding it would run out too quickly.

“The installers, such as Carillion, haven't been promoting it on the assumption that existing referrals from councils and Citizens Advice Bureaux would ensure uptake, but it just hasn't happened partly because of the stringent requirements."

“The Government thought that 57,000 households would be helped, but in it the event there was a 22,000 shortfall."

Warm Front is the main measure directly funded by the government to support those in fuel poverty and is ending next year.

The last report of the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group said it was a matter of “serious concern" that the government is ending this scheme.

Under the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 the government is legally obliged to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016.

At this rate it is going in exactly the wrong direction and will fail spectacularly.

Carillion's failure

The company with the contract to deliver Warm Front is construction giant Carillion. It is among the 22 companies first in the queue of providers of Green Deal energy efficiency installations.

Its failure to fulfill its Warm Front duty casts doubt on its ability to deliver Green Deal measures successfully.

As a result of its underspend last year, DECC forced it to repay £14 million of the money was given to fulfill his contract.

I tried repeatedly to get a statement from Carillion on how much money it did receive and how the £14 million figure was arrived at.

It refused to give this transparency and would not answer the question. It also refused to say why it did not promote the scheme especially when it knew that there was to be an underspend, referring all questions back to DECC.

A spokesman did provide a statement saying "Following changes to the funding and the qualifying criteria, take up of Warm Front has been lower than in previous years, and this has resulted in an under-spend for the latest financial year."

It called this “clearly disappointing and naturally we would encourage anyone who feels they may qualify to apply".

"Funding for Warm Front and the rules of the scheme, including expenditure on publicity, are all managed by Government and therefore these are not issues we can comment on," it added.

DECC did respond, and its statement is at the bottom of this piece, but adds little and certainly does not contain an apology for its incompetence.

How the money is drying up

In 2011-12, 43,585 applications were accepted for a Warm Front grant; a further 28,789 applications were turned down for assistance. 8,297 further applications are still awaiting a survey.

The total budget of £143 million for Warm Front consisted of £110 million allocated through the spending review 2010. Of this, £108 million was directly allocated to Warm Front measures.

In addition, DECC allocated £25 million to support the completion of outstanding work from 2010-11 with a further £10 million allocated to Warm Front in 2011-12 from the Department of Health.

Next year, the funds allocated to Warm Front will be reduced even further, to £100 million. Mr Campbell says he believes that the Treasury thinks the level of support should be more like £30m.

When Warm Front ceases in 2013, for the first time since 1978 there will be no taxpayer-funded scheme to install energy efficiency measures in dwellings occupied by vulnerable and low-income households.

This is where the Coalition's public spending cuts really hit home.

It is nothing short of scandalous.

But how many are in fuel poverty?

Official figures on fuel poverty lag considerably behind real-time increases in fuel prices, meaning that officials have no chance of keeping up with the situation on the ground.

The latest fuel poverty statistics, published on 14th July 2011, only relate to 2009, when four million were found to be in fuel poverty.

But energy prices have risen considerably since then. In the last year alone the Big Six energy companies have raised average domestic gas and electricity bills by £183, and uSwitch research says that up to 4 million households may be in debt to their energy suppliers.

The figure for those who do pay but are still cold due to poor insulation in their homes may be higher.

Under the government’s Warm Home Discount Scheme, 800,000 of the poorest families qualify for a £120 fuel bills rebate. But Save the Children says that just 3% of eligible families were receiving it last year, another chronic underspend.

Data on the final number of households assisted under the Warm Front scheme from 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2012 will not be known until Ofgem have conducted a review of suppliers’ spending in that year.

The most recent report of DECC's Fuel Poverty Advisory Group covers 2010.

No wonder the Government cannot get on top of the situation when it is so hard to get up-to-date figures.

150,000 are out of 2.9 million

Professor John Hills’s Fuel Poverty Review, published last month, shows the extent of the scandal yet to be caused by the cuts: the policies the Coalition has put in place are so ineffectual that they will reduce the number of fuel poor households by just 150,000 by 2016. And that is including the Green Deal.

A staggering 8.5 million individuals within 2.9 million households will still be in fuel poverty, with an aggregate fuel poverty gap of over £1.7 billion, compared to a gap of £1.1 billion in 2009.

Prof. Hill says fuel poverty contributes "not just to the excess winter deaths that occur each year (a total of 27,000 each year over the last decade in England and Wales), but to a much larger number of incidents of ill-health and demands on the National Health Service and a wider range of problems of social isolation and poor outcomes for young people".

Condemnation

This Government incompetence has already been condemned by the Association for the Conservation of Energy.

It said the Government's reaction to the Hill report, that it will spend nine months deciding on a new definition of fuel poverty, “beggars belief... instead they should spend that time agreeing a watertight plan to ensure that their statutory commitment to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016 is met in full.

"Without that, millions of fuel poor households will feel, quite rightly, that the Government has simply abandoned them.”

Caroline Flint has this week labelled the state of affairs "a shambles" and called for DECC ministers to come to the House of Commons and explain how they have left Warm Front in such a state.

The Speaker remarked that this was unlikely.

Further funding reductions

Here is more evidence of how Government funding cuts to the fuel poverty budget are biting.

The Deputy Prime Minister recently announced “at least £540m to fund energy saving improvements in the worst-off homes”.

This sounded impressive, but masks a reduction of 47% in Government help to tackle fuel poverty, from the 2010/11 figure of £1.15bn.

The Conservation of Energy (ACE) calculates it this way. In 2010-11, the budget for Warm Front was £345m and for CERT as a whole (the measure by which energy companies are supposed to assist households with bills), £1.3bn.

According to DECC, half of the CERT budget (53%) is spent on fuel poverty Priority Groups: £689m. Adding the whole of the £116.7m Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) you reach a total on fuel poverty and priority groups of vulnerable households of £1,150.7m.

New money of £540m is therefore only 47% of the previous year's total expenditure.

ACE asserts that Clegg’s £540m figure was in fact only an increase in the share of the Affordable Warmth part of the new Energy Company Obligation (ECO) budget. The £1.3bn ECO budget for home energy efficiency and the Green Deal stays the same.

Instead of handing it back the £50.6m Warm Front underspend to the Treasury, as has happened, the Deputy Prime Minister should announce that it will be carried over to this year’s budget.

Without this help those in fuel poverty will have to wait until hell freezes over before the last one of them is given assistance.

Or maybe this Government thinks that's where they ought to go to stay warm.

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Appendix 1: What is Warm Front?

The Warm Front scheme provides some heating and insulation improvements to households.

Qualifying households can get improvements worth up to £3,500 (£6,000 where oil central heating and other alternative technologies are recommended).

But the eligibility criteria are very stringent; for instance households must at least contain someone who has a pensioner premium, a disability premium, a disabled child or a child under the age of five, as well as being on other benefits and living in a poorly insulated house and/or without central heating.

To date, around £2.8 billion has been spent through the Scheme, which has resulted in around 2.3 million households receiving assistance, at an average of some £1,200 per household, according to the Hill Review.

Appendix 2: The figures behind the underspend

According to Hansard (Citation: HC Deb, 23 April 2012, c620W) the energy minister, Greg Barker, confirmed that the original budget for Warm Front and associated fuel poverty expenditure for 2011-12 was £110m.

During 2011-12 total expenditure was almost £108 million with a further £0.6
million committed but not yet paid. Therefore, of the original Warm Front
budget £1.4 million was unspent.

But, the budget was increased by £35 million during the year as a result of £25 million allocated to support the completion of outstanding works from 2010-11, with a further £10 million provided by the Department of Health.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) also received agreed rebates from Carillion Energy Services of nearly £14 million.

These rebates were used to offset expenditure in 2011-12 bringing a total reported expenditure for the year to £94.4 million. Against the new budget of £145 million for 2011-12, £50.6 million was unspent.

DECC’s statement

When asked to explain this, DECC issued the following statement:

"Money is allocated to Carillion at the start of each month based on the projected spend for the month, taken from the overall budget.

"In 2011/12 total expenditure on Warm Front and associated activities was £108.6 million.

"During 2011/12 Carillion was able to return £14 million to DECC as a result of rebates such as energy companies paying for the measures under CERT.

"These rebates were used to offset expenditure in 2011/12 bringing a total reported expenditure for the year to £94.4m.

"Out of a total budget of £145 million for 2011/12, £50.6 million was therefore not spent and was returned to the Treasury."

When asked why they did not promote the grants sufficiently, DECC provided the following response:

"Marketing of Warm Front through Carillion ceased in 2010/11 because the scheme was heavily oversubscribed. It was anticipated that demand would, as with previous years, exceed supply.

"We did a major marketing push earlier this year by contacting 675,000 homes in areas where we know there’s high levels of fuel poverty like Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford, County Durham and Sheffield to alert them about the Warm Front scheme.

"We also worked with the Citizens Advice Bureau, Consumer Focus, National Energy Action and energy companies to promote the scheme through their advice services."

This was clearly too little, too late. A "cock-up" for sure.

Rip-off tactics of the Big Six energy suppliers

Having poorly insulated homes is not the only reason why some people are paying too much for their energy use.

New research from think tank ippr finds that people who use the same amount of energy and live in the same area are paying vastly different amounts for their energy because of the way they pay their bills.

They are calling for regulator Ofgem to clamp down on anti-competitive practices in the energy market.

Those who are on a ‘standard credit account’ (paying for their energy use in arrears) and are very unlikely to switch tariff or supplier, are most likely to be paying over the odds.

With more than 60% of all households having never switched energy supplier and 34% being on standard credit accounts, over five million may be being overcharged.

IPPR tested tariffs for British Gas, EDF, E.ON, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE for three different payment types using a price comparison website for properties in London, Sheffield, Dumfries in Scotland and Aberystwyth in Wales.

Across each, Scottish Power was found to consistently offer the greatest differential between their standard and cheapest tariff at over ￡330.

The difference was greatest in Sheffield at ￡339 and second greatest in London at ￡333.

Npower offered the second largest differential between these tariffs of up to ￡315. E.ON was ￡229.

Whilst British Gas, SSE and EDF all offered much smaller differentials of up to ￡126, ￡100 and ￡86 respectively, as a whole, the difference in the tariffs offered could not be justified solely by the cost of different payment methods.

Those who are vulnerable or on low incomes are overrepresented among the group at risk of being overcharged.

Nick Pearce, IPPR Director, said: “The loss-leading by some suppliers is limiting competition in the energy market by making it harder for small suppliers and new entrants to compete."

Fuel poor targeted by renewable heat trials

Social housing tenants across the country are to receive £4m in the start of a trial that will help prepare for next year's Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

The exercise involves installing sustainable heating systems such as biomass boilers, solar water heating panels, heat pumps (ground source, air-to-water and water-to-water), in solid walled properties managed by 24 social housing providers across Britain.

These types of properties are harder to heat and insulate than more modern, cavity-walled dwellings and are typically inhabited by those classified as living in fuel poverty.

The social landlords comprise the first winners to be announced under the £15m Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) scheme competition, which was launched in August.

Participants will each receive up to £175,000 in the form of the following support for each technology:
Solar thermal hot water: £300
Air source heat pump: £850
Ground source or water source heat pump: £1250
Biomass boiler: £950.

Most of the winners are in the south west; a total of 558. Scotland, which is of course a much colder part of the UK, gets just over 400 schemes, the south east about 370, the east of England 310, Wales 290, with London getting the lowest number, because it has proportionately fewer solid walled properties: 32.

Air source heat pumps will receive the most support; they are very easy to install. Solar thermal comes close second, followed by ground source heat pumps and biomass boilers, which are the heating source of choice north of the border.

Air source heat pumps are controversial since some experience has shown that poor installation and management can lead to minuscule or dubious fuel or carbon savings.

One householder has complained to BRE that his MCS-approved air source heat pump achieved savings of only 200 watts over a 24 hour period, because of the number of motors it uses.

The results of the monitoring are expected to clarify this, together with the cost-effectiveness of ground source heat pumps, which is reduced if a trench has to be specially dug for the installation.

They are more cost- and carbon-effective if a hole in the ground is already available due to other construction activity.

One of the conditions for taking part in the scheme is that, once installed, participants permit the measures to be monitored to gauge their effectiveness, to better design the full roll-out of the domestic RHI that is expected next autumn.

Currently half of the UK’s carbon emissions come from the energy used to generate heating in buildings.

The Government estimates that the total of the measures under the RHPP and the RHI (domestic and non-domestic) are going to save the equivalent of the power supplied and carbon emitted by two new gas power stations up to 2020; that is, an average of 4.4 million tonnes of carbon per year.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker commented that the scheme "directly targets many of the people who could struggle to pay their heating bills in the winter. It will encourage an increase in the number of new heating technologies in social housing and help people deal with expensive fuel costs.”

Karen Lawrence, director of delivery for the Energy Saving Trust, said she was well aware of a great appetite for green technologies among social landlords, to "help tenants heat their homes more cheaply and efficiently".

"We also know councils and housing associations have become increasingly proactive and knowledgeable in the field of sustainability – and this was reflected in the standard of the bids for funding that were received," she added.

“Both this and the householder strand of the RHPP will also be great learning opportunities," she said. "Real data on performance in people’s homes is absolutely key in successfully boosting the market for renewable heat technologies.”

No doubt the Government also hopes it will help them avoid the costly and damaging mistakes associated with the mis-setting of the feed-in tariff levels for PV.

The vouchers are being issued on a first come first served basis. The scheme is still open to applicants, who can apply here or by phoning Energy Saving Trust on 0800 512 012.

RHI for businesses and organisations

Meanwhile, the non-domestic RHI will start at the end of this month.

It was originally scheduled to commence at the end of September, but required state aid approval. This has now been granted, subject to a small change in one tariff.

Businesses and organisations will be able to install sustainable heating systems and receive a favourable tariff for each unit of heating produced, over twenty years, in the same way that the feed-in tariff works for electricity.

This is expected to provide a huge boost to the heating industry.

The new rates are as follows:

Small biomass <200 kW: 7.6p/kWh (Tier 1) or 1.9p/kWh (Tier 2)
Medium biomass <1000 kW: 4.7p/kWh (Tier 1) or 1.9p/kWh (Tier 2)
Large biomass >1000 kW: 1p/kWh
Small ground-source heat pumps <100 kW: 4.3p/kWh
Large ground-source heat pumps >100 kW: 3p/kWh
Solar thermal <200 kW: 8.5p/kWh
Biomethane and biogas <200 kW: 6.5p/kWh.

This is the way to eliminate fuel poverty

Thousands of lives could be saved by giving energy bill rebates to the fuel poor that are conditional on having smart meters, advice, energy audits and eco-refits.

A recent report by Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics for the Government estimated that at least 2,700 people die every winter because they can’t afford their soaring heating bills.

This is more than the number who die on the roads each year.

Save the Children UK estimates that low-income families may pay up to £250 a year more for energy.

This is often because they do not pay by direct debit and are on pre-payment meters (although not all PPM customers are fuel poor).

But successive governments have found it hard to deal with the problem, and increased fuel prices have only served to make it worse.

Government policies to create a low carbon future are also adding around 8% to average energy bills, although in the future this means the bills won't be so vulnerable to fossil fuel price rises.

The only real solution to the problem is to help low-income householders use less energy and to improve the energy performance of their housing.

There has been no shortage of support for this idea already. Schemes include:

• The Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC, 2002–2008), the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT, 2008–2012) and the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) due next year to replace it. Half of CERT's budget (£1.8 billion) was targeted at households in receipt of means-tested benefits or disability-related benefits or where the householder is aged 70 or over
• Publicly funded schemes like Warm Front in England, and related programmes in the devolved administrations, which cost £470 million in 2009/2010
• The Decent Homes refurbishment scheme for social housing in England (and similar schemes in the devolved administrations). According to the DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) £4 billion was spent on heating and insulation improvements between 2000-2008, plus £2 billion between 2008/2009 and 2010/11)
• The pilot Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP), running until December 2012 and costing £350 million, which is targeted at deprived areas and the hardest to treat housing.

This is about £1.77bn a year. But they have yet to prove that they provide effective value for money.

In fact the UK is further from eliminating fuel poverty in vulnerable households than ever.

For example, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, when it examined the Warm Front in 2009, found it to be poorly targeted despite using means-tested benefits, since nearly 75% of households entitled to a grant are unlikely to be in fuel poverty, yet only 35% of all those households likely to be in fuel poverty are eligible for it, partly because it only applied to private housing.

The scheme did not prioritise those with the most energy-inefficient accommodation, especially in rural areas.

How to eliminate fuel poverty

The first problem is targeting the appropriate households.

The Government is hoping to use two new ‘data frameworks’ – the Home Energy Efficiency Database (HEED) run by the Energy Saving Trust, and the National Energy Efficiency Data (NEED) framework, which is being developed by DECC.

But there are severe problems with this: HEED does not include EPC ratings from England and Wales, and anyway EPC ratings will be available only for properties that have been put up for sale, missing out most people, especially pensioners, who do not move.

Therefore much greater attention needs to be paid to gathering and matching information.

It should not be beyond the bounds of the technically possible that much of this work can be done automatically, cross-checking with data from Local Authorities, energy utilities and charities.

After all, it's the sort of thing which the marketing departments of companies like Tesco do all the time.

But why not actually harness the power of crowd sourcing and encourage the fuel poor themselves to come forward by rewarding them to do so with a reduction and a rebate on their bills?

They should be able to volunteer through a central helpline run by the Energy Saving Trust and publicised by the energy companies themselves, as part of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), as well through local authorities and charities.

A condition for the receipt of rebates should then be that households are given, through the ECO, an energy audit, and a complete whole house eco-refit based on this audit, followed by training on how to use any equipment that has been installed.

The refurbishment should be done on a whole-home basis to achieve the maximum benefit.

Immediately on coming forward, all these households should also be automatically given smart meters.

When these are installed, the occupants should be visited and show how to use them, and given personal advice on how to achieve even greater reductions in energy bills through broader energy-saving behaviours.

This would get them off pre-payment tariffs straight away, which would reduce their costs.

It would encourage them to set and aim at specific energy usage or bill totals within a week or a month, so that they gain greater awareness and control over their energy use and budgets.

This could reduce their bills by at least 10%.

But this won't reach every home. Far more fuel poor households are in the private rented sector than are owner-occupiers.

These homes are more likely to be in a poor state.

The 2011 Energy Act will force landlords to improve the energy efficiency performance of their stock from the year 2015, using measures for which there is funding available through the Green Deal or the ECO, if a review, to be held in 2014, reveals that they have not already made voluntary improvements using the Green Deal.

In theory this approach should eradicate the worst performance (F and G SAP-rated), but it doesn’t guarantee a minimum standard, and this needs to be set in absolute terms - say the number of kWh used per square meter per year.

The Warm Home Discount is a step towards such an approach using energy bill rebates.

However, it is currently confined to a single subset of target groups and is not linked at all to any characteristic of the dwelling.

It should therefore be reformed and made conditional on a combination of the above interventions.

This approach is argued for by Paul Ekins, of the UCL Energy Institute, University College London, and Matthew Lockwood, Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Sussex in a new report on Tackling fuel poverty during the transition to a low-carbon economy.

They propose that any energy bill rebates would be paid to eligible recipients, from the moment they are given their smart meters, while their energy efficiency upgrading is being done, and through the follow-up advisory stage.

The cost of this could partly be paid for, they say, through a reform of the Winter Fuel Payments, which is currently also not targeted well enough.

The cost of eliminating fuel poverty

The IPPR and National Energy Action recently tried to estimate the cost of doing this through energy efficiency measures and came up with around £20–30 billion for England, or up to £64 billion for the whole of the UK.

The combined annual average spend on Warm Front, the CERT priority group and CESP is just around £1 billion for 2008–2011.

At that rate it would take 20-30 years to get around to every household in England.

Doubling the annual spend to £2 billion would end fuel poverty in England within 10–15 years as well as creating jobs.

Quadrupling it would bring the end date even nearer.

Given the huge amounts being spent on bailing out the banking system this is a small consideration that would save thousands of lives and vastly improve the quality of life for millions of people in this country.

And it is about the same amount as that spent on the measures I list above anyway - so there wouldn't be much change, it would simply be better targeted. There would just be the cost of running the helpline and administering the process.

And this sum is not much more than the £1.77bn being spent per year already on the measures listed above.

So there would be just a slight step change financially; and the money would simply be better targeted, with an additional cost for running the helpline and administering the process.

If the cost of a £2bn spend were completely to be passed on to the consumer, it would add £80, or 6%, to an average annual energy bill of £1,200, and the fuel poor would automatically be protected from this by the rebate.

Surely this is worth it?

The Energy Bill is still just a lot of hot air

The UK Government has come a long way in preparing the ground for massive carbon emission cuts in the future, but still lacks a coherent plan that will actually deliver energy efficiency in practice.

The Energy Bill, which is supposed to lay the foundations for the Green Deal, carbon price floor, market reform, carbon capture and storage, and a mass roll out of energy efficiency and renewable energy, is currently approaching the Report Stage in Parliament.

However, although many of its aims are laudable, there is no chance of them being realised unless there is more joined-up connection across Government departments and across the country as a whole that lays out exactly how they will be achieved.

Although the Bill makes reference to fuel poverty, limiting or eliminating it is not one of its stated aims. It should be, otherwise there is no guarantee that it can happen.

Furthermore, although the Bill currently contains a long-term aim to meet the 2050 carbon reduction target, by not tying actions to interim carbon budgets there is no way of ascertaining whether measures taken in practice actually are commensurate with the requirements of these budgets, and whether the country is on the right path.

In fact, there is no mention of the interim carbon budgets in the Bill at all.

Carbon budgets are set by the Committee on Climate Change to act as milestones along the way to the overall target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050. Its latest report says that already the UK may not meet the current period's budget by 2012.

Businesses and investors are unlikely to see the Green Deal as an opportunity without the certainty that interim targets will provide.

In order to arrive eventually at the 2050 destination, each sector within the economy needs to have a staged plan to work to, with interim goals along the way, and be effectively monitored.

In the building sector for example, the mechanism by which the Green Deal is implemented will be crucial to its success. It will require the cooperation of local planning departments, Building Control, the Treasury, trade associations, and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Deciding on whether carbon emission reduction targets from this sector are being met will be estimated based on nominal values for the carbon saved as a result of specific measures carried out, such as the number of solid walls or lofts insulated.

But in practice, work may be poorly executed, some of it may be DIY of dubious quality, and Building Control is not currently mandated or equipped to judge whether or not this work is to the appropriate standard. Monitoring of results is going to be crucial to telling whether the predicted emissions are really saved or not.

Nowhere in Government will you find a plan that pulls all these threads together.

WWF, along with the National Insulation Association, the Mineral Wool Insulation Manufacturers Association, and the Gypsum Products Development Association and many more, tabled an amendment to this effect in the committee stage of the Energy Bill called the Warm Homes Amendment.

Unfortunately, MPs voted the amendment out, instead inserting their own - now in as clauses 107 to 108. But there is still time to get it in, and MPs continue to be lobbied by the campaign.

Another objection to the Green Deal has been raised by Andrew Warren, director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy and himself picked by the Energy Minister Greg Barker to chair an industry-based advisory forum on the scheme.

The scheme is expected to contribute to a 29% reduction in carbon emissions from homes and 13% reduction from non-domestic properties by 2020.

Warren makes the valid point that the way the financing of the Green Deal currently set up could well cause it to backfire and shift public opinion against it. This is because it is financed by an increase on electricity bills, which will not be reduced by most of the actions taken under the Green Deal.

Instead, the reductions in energy use made from the measures taken will appear on heating bills which, for 78% of our homes and other buildings, is provided by natural gas.

Where participants get gas and electricity bills from the same company and when they receive joint bills, then allocating the Green Deal to the gas part should be achievable.

But most people still buy from two different providers, and when they discover that their electricity bill has risen and carries the Green Deal loan costs on it as well, then this, Warren says, is when they will be asking “why on earth they ever got involved with this Government flagship policy at all".

As WWF's campaigner on the issue, Darren Shirley, says, a high level framework is missing from the Energy Bill. Without a plan for saving energy, it will not happen. It needs many similar issues defining and joining up to make it deliverable.

In short, the strategy around the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation needs more incentives and checks to improve energy efficiency in the large proportion of the housing stock that currently lacks adequate insulation.

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and Display Energy Certificates (DECs) should be introduced into all non-residential buildings to incentivise emissions reduction.

At the moment, the Bill is still hot air. But isn't that what it's supposed to be eliminating?

Government removes 2.8 million from fuel poverty - by redefining it

The Government is proposing to change the definition of eligibility to its Warm Front scheme - which provides help to those on benefits in leaky homes - which will slash by 65% the number of households it has to help.

The Scheme - which has been so badly run that it is now temporarily closed to new applicants while it catches up with the backlog - aims to target those who need it most, such as the ill, elderly, and those with children on receipt of certain benefits.

The new proposals for eligibility introduce a thermal efficiency test for the home under which households can access Warm Front assistance only if they have a SAP rating of 55. Recipients would also need to be eligible for Cold Weather Payments - which means not just receiving Child Tax Credit (with an income of less than £16,040), as at present, but an award of Child Tax Credit that also includes an element for a disabled, or severely disabled, child or young person, or a child under the age of five.

Currently some 4.3 million households in England could qualify for assistance from Warm Front, of which 53% are believed to be fuel poor. But applying the new criteria would reduce the number to approximately 1.5 million households.

At a stroke, many households on low incomes with children will become ineligible for support. We also know that applying a benefits criteria to fuel poverty is problematic: an English House Condition Survey found that 57% of vulnerable households in fuel poverty do not claim the relevant benefits to qualify for the scheme, so would be ineligible despite needing help.

SAP - "Standard Assessment Procedure" - is a measure of how warm a building is, and the lower the number, the harder it is to heat. 100 is the most efficient. SAPs are related to Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) - a result below 55 will yield an 'E' rated certificate.

A SAP target of 65 to be achieved “wherever practicable” has been used in Warm Front since June 2005 (in Scotland the target figure is 60), so using a figure of 55 would capture fewer homes than before – another way for the Government to dodge its responsibilities.

One reason why this change is regressive is because the fuel prices used in the SAP calculation are normally fixed for 3 to 4 years. With the volatility in prices recently seen, this could mean that a home could need help when prices rise, without being considered eligible.

Another problem is that simply by installing a condensing boiler, 47 SAP points can be added - and a box ticked - but this measure alone would do nothing to improve insulation or remove draughts.

The Warm Front Scheme was criticised last year by the National Audit Office for being inefficient, and not well targeted. It said that over 635,000 households were helped between June 2005 and March 2008, "but as there were 1.9 million vulnerable households in 2006, this rate of progress will still leave many in fuel poverty in 2010".

Warm Front has experienced extremely high demand and diminishing budgets. In 2008-9, the last year for which statistics are yet available, the figure for homes helped was 233,594, down from 268,900 the previous year. Next year will see a reduction of 63,594 homes – 27% down - on an already very low figure.

Earlier this year, therefore, the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee recommended that "the Government to move resources away from the Warm Front Scheme towards a CESP-style, street-by-street approach as advocated earlier, and for the Warm Front Scheme to move towards providing an emergency service for the most vulnerable people in fuel poverty with urgent heating needs."

This proposed change is part of the Government's response to this recommendation, as is the new Warm Home Discount, under which, from April next year, energy companies will be required to give a discount on energy bills to more of their most vulnerable customers.

But these proposed new criteria have more to do with reducing Government spending than providing proper help to those who need it most.

Home Truths - a model for policy

Carbon emissions from UK homes could be cut by 80% by 2050, according to the indefatigable Dr Brenda Boardman of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.

Arguing that current Government policies will only deliver half the cuts in household carbon emissions they should have achieved by 2020, her report, Home Truths, outlines a comprehensive policy framework for cutting carbon emissions from new and existing homes.

Its model establishes that with Government spending of £12.9 billion a year for approximately ten years, 80% cuts in carbon emissions, the elimination of fuel poverty and provide permanent energy savings from UK homes worth £12.3 billion a year can be reached. The average household would see their energy bills cut by at least 66%, equivalent to a £425 annual saving at today’s prices.

Key recommendations include:
• a package of financial incentives
• reforming the energy market
• eradicating Fuel Poverty
• introducing and enforcing minimum standards for homes. Currently, the Code for Sustainable Homes does not require a mandatory rating even for all new homes.

The report makes a lot of sense, and the Low Carbon Kid hopes it feeds into the Climate Change Bill debate starting today.

>read the report.