Wednesday 29 February 2012

Energy Saving Trust to Continue Advice after £30 Million Contract Awarded

The EST announced today it had been awarded the contract by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) following a competitive tender The contract, which will start from this April, will see the EST run a centralised telephone advice line, providing free and impartial advice to consumers on energy saving programmes, including the Green Deal, over the next three years. The Energy Saving Trust (EST) is to continue delivering its free energy saving advice service to consumers and businesses after being awarded this new £30 million Government contract.
The DECC announced in May last year that it would be ending core funding for the EST from April 2012 following cuts in public spending. The new advisory service, which will cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland, will support existing schemes such as the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) and Warm Front, as well as upcoming programmes the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). An EST spokesperson said the contract would enable the social enterprise to "continue to provide" the free energy saving advice services it is known for, but pointed out that the value of the contract was "quite small" in comparison to the grant it has received from Government in previous years.


"Having a central and trusted advice line will be crucial to ensuring people have all the right information about how they can save energy and money," commented Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker. A key new part of the service will be offering advice to consumers on the Government’s Green Deal, a national energy efficiency programme launching in October that will enable households and businesses to make their properties more energy efficient at no upfront cost. "The commencement of the new service in April will be an important step and I expect it to grow quickly over the next six months to become an essential part of Government’s delivery of its energy saving policies. The ambitious programme aims to insulate 14 million homes by 2020. "It will also be an important source of information for us on what consumers and businesses are saying as we move to launch of the Green Deal later this year.


This comes just in the nick of time as criticism of the Green Deal grows in relation to how it will, in reality, be able to live up to its promises. Hopefully having the EST on board will help with peoples understanding of how they can make changes in their energy efficiency and furthermore help to understand what the Green Deal is all about, something that many people currently are finding very confusing.

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