The Green Deal's Golden Rule must be the ultimate sales tool, it can tell you whether something is viable or not. .. or can it?


NO! NO! NO! you missed the point!! You want to know the cheapest and most economic way to get what ever is under discussion done.


I cannot see how anything that carries a 7% ( or to 9.3% yesterdays Telegraph) interest rate can work out as the most economic or the cheapest way to go

The cheapest and most economic way to get home-improvements that save energy is NOT the GD. No doubt about that....
But, people don't do anything, inertia is very powerful in this regard. So if the GD prompts people to do something, then all to the good even though it isn't the cheapest path?

Cheers

Posted By: TriassicA YouGov poll commissioned by uSwitch of more than 5,000 energy customers found that 81 per cent had not even heard of the “green deal”.

Makes you wonder what they do know

Two of those 25 providers between them have been completing 10,000 measures per week under CERT and several of the others are very large too.
As for low awareness, the advertising for Green Deal has been delayed until all the finances were in place. The government is going to spend £2.9 million on advertising, it started on Monday and will be followed by the 25 providers each doing their own. As another initiative there are currently cashback awards for early takers. Carillion has been awarded the contract to manage the Green Deal for Birmingham City Council I believe. There are many people out there seeing this as an opportunity for all, customers, providers and installers. I'm starting to lean that way too

"There are many people out there seeing this as an opportunity for all, customers, providers and installers. I'm starting to lean that way too"
At current interest rates offered , what exactly is the opportunity for customers to borrow via the green deal, being tied to potentially inflated prices due to the GD's structure, rather than borrow the money, say via a additional mortgage advance ( 2.5% if I was to as an example ) and use an installer with lower overheads working outside the GD's ?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48088/1734-what-measures-does-the-green-deal-cover.pdf

With a GD loan in place you can still switch electricity suppliers, but only ones that support the GD and that is going to be most of the big ones. What you can't do is switch your supply to a company that does not support the GD.

Nick, by other schemes do you mean CERT and CESP?

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: SteamyTea</cite>You and Yours (maybe my pleading worked with them) did a bit about it yesterday:</blockquote>
<blockquote><cite>Posted By: SteamyTea</cite>Just who was this scheme set up for and why?</blockquote>
I heard the prog yesterday and it did say that the loans would be available to those with a poor credit rating as well so there's a good target.
In addition IMO the scheme was set up for the governments green cred. and the big players in the industry.

I also heard the description of EWI (as would be fitted to the solid wall house in question). EWI was described as putting battens on the wall, then insulation between the battens then render over. Does anyone EWI like this? or was the surveyor getting his knickers in a twist and mixing EWI and IWI

A posistive view
http://www.yougen.co.uk/blog-entry/2096/Green+Deal%273A+Deal+of+the+day+or+deal+of+the+decade%273F/?goback=%2Egde_3612272_member_207928790
"And this is THE thing. The Green Deal is, at its heart, a lending scheme that facilitates the borrowing of money at no real or effective cost for the purposes of energy efficiency improvements. Wrapped around it are strong customer protections over advice and assessments, installations, product warranties and selling. But at its heart it is really all about borrowing money. For the scheme to work its needs people to “want” to borrow money, and it needs organisations to “want” to lend money."
"So in answer to the question, is this the Deal of the Day? No it is not. But is it Deal of the Decade? I think it really is. When Green Deal has some time underneath it, when we have stopped calling it the Green Deal because green has become mainstream, and when we have all found the cost of energy so extraordinarily expensive, I think we will look back and say “of course I borrowed some money to improve my house, why would I use my own cash?”!"

.. because it was cheaper to use your own cash?

Saint - the above seems one of the main concerns regarding having the loan tied to the property , but i take your point regarding increasing your mortgage and taking that cost with you when you move being a negative.

I also relise there's benefit in creating a stucture that allows those that may struggle or are unable to obtain credit via other means , as I presume the GD will do

Darlyp, I tend to agree re. big money looking for just another way to bleed the public.

I also think the guy on yougen sites got a point regarding the potential for the GD to become better over time
as energy prices increase.

Simple solution, from an uninformed pleb like myself, would be for the government to make sure, by some means,the loan rate was attractive ie. < 4.5% preferably < 2.5%

what are HMG charging the big banks for their bailout loans ?

James, yes but in the perfect scenario and I take Daryl's point that the savings for some people may be less than projected due to the "Comfort Factor",then the golden rule means that the savings accrued from the GD measures are equal or possibly even greater than the cost of the measures. So the net cost to the consumer is zero. In that case the interest rate, within reason, doesn't matter....am I reading this correctly?

Clearly the Green Deal is the product of two particular (and somewhat contradictory) sets of circumstances:

1) A government that is unwilling to subsidise energy efficiency improvements itself, and is looking to shunt the cost into the private sector by dangling the carrot of decent profits.
2) The recognition by that government that the people it most wants to target for energy improvements don't necessarily have access to cheap credit of their own.

The Golden Rule is a sensible attempt to stop profit-hungry private interests from being tempted to pressure vulnerable people into taking out more GD credit than they actually need. As such it's the bit of the GD that makes the most sense, even if the implementation of it sucks.

The GD isn't a terrible idea, it's just only really well-suited to a small group of home-owners. It's just not fit for purpose as the main flagship programme.

Is there a mechanism for 'key meters' and what if the landlord gets the work done for them?