Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps he has taken to (a) protect Energy Companies Obligation (ECO) funding to March 2017 and (b) ensure that the funding available through ECO is reaching (i) the most vulnerable households and (ii) pensioners and elderly people.

These regulations will ensure that for the first time we have a long-term certainty for the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) to 2017 and will support an additional 620,000 households, and includes solid wall de minimis.

ECO delivers energy efficiency measures that make a real difference to those at risk of fuel poverty. Affordable Warmth is targeted at low income and vulnerable households on certain means tested benefits, including pensioners in receipt of Pension Credit. This part of ECO alone has delivered around 380,000 measures to over 300,000 low income and vulnerable households between January 2013 and September 2014. Another element of ECO, the Carbon Saving Community Obligation (CSCO), supports households living in low income and rural areas. This has seen 270,000 measures delivered (including interim measures reported by energy companies).

Draft Regulations to establish the ECO to March 2017 have been laid and were debated in Parliament in late November.