Yellow Fang
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What do you think of the Green Deal? I know there has not been much enthusiasm up to now, but I thought that with the Renewable Heat Incentive having come out, there might be in future. I am hoping to become a Green Deal Advisor. I did a Domestic Energy Assessor City & Guilds course a fortnight ago, and a Green Deal Advisor City & Guilds course last week. The Green Deal is actually different to what I thought it was, and actually seems like a pretty good scheme. It is a loan taken out to pay for home energy efficiency improvements. As it is a loan, it has to be paid back with interest, but the loan is tied to the property, not to the person. If you move home, the next tenant takes on the loan (unless you or they decide to pay it off). It's a loan that is paid off via your electricity bills, because nearly everyone has an electricity but not everyone is on gas. Therefore your electricity bills are likely to rise even though your heating bills should come down overall. Third, before you can take out a Green Deal, your home and your energy consumption is assessed to check that you won't be financially any worse off afterwards. If your energy savings would not exceed your Green Deal repayments, then you would not be able to Green Deal to cover that particular home improvement. However, you could get a Green Deal to cover part of the cost, if it was something like a solar hot water you wanted to install. Then you would have to find the rest of the up-front costs yourself, but then you could qualify for the RHI payments.
One of the things that disappoints me is that I thought it would be possible to become independent, or essentially self-employed, but I am not sure that is on. In principle, a customer should be able to take an assessor's report to any Green Deal Provider and get a quote, but in practice that is not the case. This is partly because the provider is not going to commit themselves to hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of improvements when they don't know who made the assessment. It is also because each provider has their own supply chain and cost data. Therefore the assessor needs the provider's software before he/she can make any recommendations. Also, it is doubtful where many clients would want to pay a Green Deal Advisor up front for his/her work. They would rather the provider paid them if they decide to take out the scheme. However this puts pressure on the advisor to behave as a salesman. TBF there is a big, long list of things you have to tell the client about the cooling off period, the Consumer Protection Act, the Financial Services Act, being free to take the Green Deal Assessment report to another provider, etc.
I got to say, not many of the people I met on the courses seemed very green. There were five people on the Domestic Energy Assessment course. One was a cavity wall insulator, one was a lad who was going to work for his father's building business, one was an estate agent, one was a heating engineer and the other was me. There were only four people on the Green Deal Assessment course. One worked for a charity, and TBF he was pretty green. The other two were a husband and wife and they were entrepreneurs. They were interested in setting up a business and making money.
The Green Deal has had some bad news coverage recently. Apparently there was a fund that was scooped out in about three days. Fraudulent or unethical dealing is suspected.
One of the things that disappoints me is that I thought it would be possible to become independent, or essentially self-employed, but I am not sure that is on. In principle, a customer should be able to take an assessor's report to any Green Deal Provider and get a quote, but in practice that is not the case. This is partly because the provider is not going to commit themselves to hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of improvements when they don't know who made the assessment. It is also because each provider has their own supply chain and cost data. Therefore the assessor needs the provider's software before he/she can make any recommendations. Also, it is doubtful where many clients would want to pay a Green Deal Advisor up front for his/her work. They would rather the provider paid them if they decide to take out the scheme. However this puts pressure on the advisor to behave as a salesman. TBF there is a big, long list of things you have to tell the client about the cooling off period, the Consumer Protection Act, the Financial Services Act, being free to take the Green Deal Assessment report to another provider, etc.
I got to say, not many of the people I met on the courses seemed very green. There were five people on the Domestic Energy Assessment course. One was a cavity wall insulator, one was a lad who was going to work for his father's building business, one was an estate agent, one was a heating engineer and the other was me. There were only four people on the Green Deal Assessment course. One worked for a charity, and TBF he was pretty green. The other two were a husband and wife and they were entrepreneurs. They were interested in setting up a business and making money.
The Green Deal has had some bad news coverage recently. Apparently there was a fund that was scooped out in about three days. Fraudulent or unethical dealing is suspected.
