Industry confidence in the Green Deal is melting away with the stark warning that the insulation industry will contract by almost half unless the Government reforms its flagship energy efficiency scheme.
The warning from the £700 million insulation industry was made in an open letter to Energy Secretary Ed Davey. It claimed 16,000 jobs in the industry are under threat in the next year, based on the Government’s own figures.
Subsidy hiatus
The IIF is claiming the number of people employed in the insulation sector will fall by 45 per cent from 36,000 to 20,000 in 2013 because of a hiatus between the ending of the Government existing insulation subsidy scheme, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT), and the full launch of the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO). The latter will see consumer energy companies providing £1.3 billion a year in energy efficiency upgrades for low income and hard to insulate homes under the Green Deal. But the CERT is set to close at the end of 2012, while the Green Deal is not expected to reach full-scale for another 18 months.