Energy saving: Lofty plans to keep the nation warm

[Legal Beagles]

As Tesco announces a surprise move into the insulation business, Miles Brignall reveals how many of the grants on offer are nothing more than hot air

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[Amethyst]

Re: Energy saving: Lofty plans to keep the nation warm

Lofty plans to keep the nation warm

As Tesco announces a surprise move into the insulation business, Miles Brignall reveals how many of the grants on offer are nothing more than hot air

• 
• • Miles Brignall
  • The Guardian,
  • Saturday September 27 2008
  • Article history
  
  

There has been a chill in the air in the past few days, and many of us have switched our heating on. So what better time for Tesco to start offering loft and cavity-wall insulation - in some cases for free?
The move comes amid growing evidence that the government's high-profile £1bn programme to tackle fuel poverty has more holes in it than a poorly insulated loft.
This week Tesco surprised its rivals by announcing it is going into the insulation business. In keeping with the other insulation programmes, Tesco is offering cavity-wall and/or loft insulation free to the over 70s, and to those on qualifying benefits. For the rest of us, it will install either for a subsidised, flat-rate fee of £199.
Tesco says it has insulated 50 homes in a trial over the summer and hopes to insulate half a million UK homes in the next three years.
The £199 price for loft or cavity-wall insulation is subject to a free survey and may be higher for "unusually large properties" or those requiring additional work. The service is open to homeowners, residential landlords and private tenants. At this price, Tesco slightly undercuts some of its rivals, but is broadly in line with the rest of the market - about half the true cost.
David North, Tesco's community and government director, says: "Ensuring your home is properly insulated is the single biggest thing you can do to save energy and help fight climate change. According to the Energy Saving Trust, the average household could save up to £275 every year by insulating loft space and cavity walls. It's an investment well worth making."
The supermarket says it will reclaim the cost through the government's recently announced programme of grants to tackle fuel poverty, which now affects 5.4m homes.
However, questions are already being asked about who the real beneficiaries of the programme will be. It has been suggested that when a profit-driven company such as Tesco becomes involved, the installers may be getting more out of it than the "fuel poor". Tesco admits this is a revenue-generating exercise, though it declines to say how much it will receive for each installation.
The main problem is that, in keeping with all the other government-backed insulation schemes, Tesco will not offer the service for free where the householder already has 6cm of loft insulation in place.
The Energy Savings Trust recommends that all households have 27cm of loft insulation. Because it is now almost impossible to find UK homes with no loft insulation, many question the value of the scheme in its current form. Up to 25% of a house's heat is lost through the roof.
A 70-year-old living on state pension would have to pay Tesco £149 to top up her loft insulation if she has more than 6cm in place. And the supermarket won't install anything if your roof has 15cm of insulation - just over half the recommended amount. Also, it has been pointed out by Friends of the Earth and Help the Aged, that these measures do little to help anyone whose home was built before the 30s and does not have cavity walls. They estimate that neither measure is possible in one-third of UK homes.
Add up all these points, and Gordon Brown's claim that up to 11 million low-income households would qualify for free insulation looks distinctly unlikely.
Ever since the government introduced the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (Cert) scheme, which requires power companies to invest in improving their customers' homes, Guardian Money has been contacted by unhappy readers turned down for extra loft insulation because of the 6cm rule.
The problem has been caused by the way the Cert scheme is calculated. For every home the power companies insulate they save an amount of carbon towards their three-year target. They get three-and-a-half times as many "points" if they can insulate lofts with fewer than 6cm in place.
With shareholders to please, there's little financial incentive for the power firms to top up a pensioner's home from 7cm to 27cm.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform acknowledges that there are problems with the scheme. "We want to see as many households as possible benefit from the energy-bill saving offers available under Cert. As part of this, thee will be forthcoming consultation on increasing the carbon points for installing loft insulation where people already have more than 6cm of insulation. We hope that this will create an additional incentive for suppliers to promote the installation of loft top-ups in more houses or through better offers, as it will make it more cost-effective for them to install."
She says the consultation will start by the end of the year, and changes will take effect from April.
There are also questions about whether Brown's claim that two million people will be helped this winter is achievable. Around 500,000 houses were insulated last year, and with installers already working flat out, industry experts suggest the figure is not achievable even if laid-off construction workers are quickly retrained to start work in the sector.
Neil Marshall, chief executive of the National Insulation Association, told Guardian Money that his body's phones have been running hot with people wanting to know how to move into the insulation business.
"Gordon Brown's high-profile announcement definitely prompted an uptake in interest. After years in the doldrums, it's great that the vital role insulation can play has at last been recognised," he says.

· If you are interested in Tesco's scheme, you can pick up a leaflet in store, go to tescoinsulation.com or call 0800 321 3456. For more information on the Warm Front programme, which is separate from the Cert scheme, go to warmfront.co.uk or call 0800 316 2805. The Energy Savings Trust website (energysavingtrust.org.uk) has a postcode finder to locate installers in your area. Call 0800 512 012. You can also contact your energy supplier.
m.brignall@guardian.co.uk