Private Low-carbon Investment: Green Finance Institute Report

Earl Russell Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot really respond better than by saying that my noble friend answered the point thoroughly. We at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero keep a close eye on skills needs. In fact, the whole energy sector has great potential for growth in really high-skilled jobs in the future. Since 2021 the department has invested over £28 million in skills and training, which has resulted in 33,000 training opportunities in retrofit, clean heat and energy efficiency roles. I take the noble Baroness’s point and we keep this issue under very close review.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, cold homes drive up ill health, our energy bills and our emissions. At least one-fifth of the UK’s CO₂ emissions come from home heating and our homes are some of the worst insulated in western Europe, with 27 million of our homes needing to be retrofitted. Does the Minister agree that property-linked finance makes sense? I ask him to look at it in relation to heat pumps, particularly with a view to bringing in enabling legislation and pilot programmes so that the Government can find the schemes that really work.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I agree with the premise of the challenge that we face. We responded positively, as do I, to the proposals made by the Green Finance Institute, which is why we are working on this seriously and discussing it with it, and we will be looking at the outcome of the pilots in commercial properties that the GFI is going to take forward in the next few months. But I have to point out to the House that this is not easy. Current experience suggests that unless you can ensure that a scheme is easy for people to understand and know what they are getting themselves into, and can offer competitive interest rates, it is not going to fly. We need to make this a credible scheme.