‘Confusing and complex’: Citizens Advice warns weak consumer clean tech protections could harm net zero mission
Citizens are being disencentivised to make green improvements to their homes by a weak consumer protection regime for heat pumps, energy efficiency enhancements, and solar technologies, a new report warns
The government may have set out a bold vision for decarbonising the UK’s homes in this week’s long-awaited Heat and Buildings Strategy, but plans to turbocharge the market for domestic clean technologies could falter if consumers are not given confidence that expensive green home technologies are guaranteed to be good quality and protected from fraud.
That is according to a new report published this morning by Citizens Advice, which warns that consumer protections for heat pumps, solar panels, and household energy efficiency improvements are far weaker than those for other popular products on the market today, such as mobile phones, car insurance, and pensions. It warns the lax consumer protection regime could both encourage ‘cowboy’ operators and deter citizens from spending “significant sums” on making their homes low-carbon and energy efficient – investments that will be required by households up and down the country if the UK is to reach its net zero target.
Indeed, the report notes that a raft of different accreditation schemes covering heat pumps, solar panels, insulation, or micro-generation technologies in the UK – it counts 12 in total – confuses citizens at precisely the moment when they should be flocking to deploy clean technologies. It also points out there are no protections for consumers across the heat pump, micro-generation, and energy efficiency markets against scams, mis-selling or rogue traders; no set guidelines for installers; and no complaints process that guarantees an outcome for citizens.
Gillian Cooper, head of energy policy at Citizens Advice, stressed that strong consumer protections for clean technology purchases would make “the difficult process of making green improvements” less onerous for consumers and thus help advance progress towards the UK’s climate goals. “If the government wants to hit its net zero by 2050 target it’s going to need to make it as easy as possible for people to make changes to their homes,” she said. “Right now, it’s confusing and complex with people not knowing where to start finding a decent installer.”
The report, entitled The net zero protections puzzle, highlights the sheer scale of the challenge of decarbonising the UK’s notoriously inefficient housing stock means that the government should use every tool at its disposal to incentivise citizens to purchase green home technologies. It calcualates that installation of heat pumps will need to increase by 2,200 per cent to meet the government’s 600,000 a year by2028 target and points to modelling by the Climate Change Committee which suggests that solid wall insulation installations would need to jump by 3,025 per cent over the next four years to put the UK on track to meet its Sixth Carbon Budget in the mid-2030s.
Many would argue that a dramatic boost to the consumer protections landscape for clean technologies is particularly critical in the wake of the Green Homes Grant scheme, the subsidy scheme that was summarily axed by the government earlier this year after its short run was plagued by various administrative issues and a shortage of skilled workers. Citizens Advice, Which? and the Aldersgate Group of businesses argued this summer that the troubled scheme was further hampered by the emergence of a number of scammers and rogue traders seeking to take advantage of the subsidy.
With the current market still characterised by numerous over-lapping accreditation schemes and standards, Citizens Advice is calling on the government to create an accreditation and inspection body that enforces defined standards across a wide range of domestic energy improvements. The organisation should also have enforcement powers to act when companies do not meet their obligations, it said.
“People need to know how to find a trustworthy installer and that they’ll be protected if things go wrong,” Cooper said. “Establishing a single mandatory scheme is a key way in which the government can support the public to meet this once-in-a-generation challenge.”
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was considering a request for comment at the time of going to press. But with this week’s Heat and Buildings Strategy highlighting the government’s aim to install 600,000 heat pumps in homes by 2028, up from 26,000 installed last year, and the Net Zero Strategy underscoring how growing clean technologies markets is at the heart of the UK’s efforts to meet its net zero targets, Ministers could do worse than listening to Citizens Advice’s advice.
Numerous reports have set out how it is both the cost and the difficulty of installing green technologies that is slowing market uptake, while anecdotal evidence has pointed to how even green-minded households that are flush with lockdown-savings are struggling to find skilled and competent installers to provide them with heat pumps and other green upgrades. The government will be hoping the new boiler upgrade grant scheme and long term commitment to the sector contained in the Heat and Buildings Strategy will encourage installers to expand, but there is no question the introduction of a robust consumer protection regime that gives consumers clear access to information and assurances that they have some form of insurance if things go wrong would help both customers and those many legitimate businesses that want to accelerate the growth of the market. As the goverment embarks on the next phase of decarbonisation of the economy and works to deliver on its Heat and Building Strategy, it should jump at any opportunity to make the process of upgrading homes to make them low carbon and energy efficient as easy as possible.
