Our latest chart from December figures published by DECC and Ofgem with a bit or commentary above each. These charts all show absolute values for the month and are not cumulative.

The number of Green Deal Assessments was down very slightly in November. It’s too early to say if they’ve peaked but aside from Scotland, where you can get a refund if you carry out measures such as changing your light bulbs, the number of free Green Deal Assessments available is drying up. If it does level off at around 14,000 a month then it will take around 130 years to get through all the UK stock, and importantly will cause the 2,855 Green Deal Advisors to struggle to survive (5 per month). We’ll probably never get the breakdown but we’ve got to assume a lot of the assessments are due to ECO and residual free or subsidised assessments which will mask the true figures due to market demand.

The success of the Green Deal is not dependent on people taking out Green Deal Plans but on actual measures installed, but the lack of actual plans will raise a few eyebrows about the time and resources sunk into launching those aspects. The good news is that this month the number of live plans is up to just shy of 300. The bad news is that the number of plans started is only 50 odd more than in September and does constitute a theoretical maximum for those going live in the longer term. It also looks like Greg Barker’s 10,000 target by the end of the year is not even going to be 5% met.

And what about ECO?  Well, since the last update there have been various shenanigans going on – with a ‘strange’ correlation of these Energy Companies the furthest from meeting their targets bleating the loudest.  So what is the net result of the Government’s capitulation on ECO and the attempt at short term populism? Firstly the energy companies will not have to put so much of their resources into meeting their obligations and thus save a fortune in fines when they miss them. Secondly, those who can afford their bills will probably not notice the meagre savings and definitely will not remember them when their energy bills are even higher in 10 years time. Thirdly, those in the worst properties, often the most vulnerable will have much fewer opportunities for upgrading their houses and so will suffer even more as energy prices rise.

Of course there are flaws in ECO, but putting effort into resolving those issues would, in our opinion, been a better solution than slashing it.

Anyway, on with the graphs. There isn’t much point going into these in too much detail as its all going to change.  It will be interesting to see what happens as it is expected that there will be a wholesale review of the ECO pipeline with only the very cheapest programmes going through i.e. don’t count your ECO chickens before they hatch.

Highlights: the dip in solid wall installations in October has been righted. Removing the October solid wall figures, shows a fairly steady, linear and not massively impressive increase month on month.