June 2013: A RE:NEW roll-out evaluation summary report has just been published by the GLA (direct link to document here). RE:NEW is the Mayor’s home energy efficiency programme originally launched in April 2009. The scheme has had various targets in place and currently RE:NEW Phase II is in operation. Much past detail on the Mayoral flagship carbon programme can be found from previous posts here.
The evaluation report sets out that:
- Following technical trials the roll out the programme across London operated from July 2011 – April 2012 and the “aim for the roll-out stage of project was to develop a ‘pan-London’ approach – with at least one RE:NEW area in every borough. This is the phase evaluated in this report”.
- 50,683 homes were visited under the RE:NEW programme and offered energy efficiency advice, energy and water saving devices, referred to as ‘easy measures’ [see footnote 4 of the report for the full list of easy measures offered]
- However, the proportion of homes visited for the installation of further measures energy efficiency measures from Government programmes such as CERT & CESP was only 3.05%
- The report goes on to say that “The focus of RE:NEW is saving carbon emissions and so for RE:NEW to be a success it is vital that referrals for installing further measures are made…It was anticipated that cavity wall, loft insulation and heating measures would be funded through the Carbon Emission Reduction Target, Warm Front or other funding levered in. …Whilst the take-up of easy measures and advice was high and a real success for the scheme overall, referrals for further measures, such as loft and cavity wall insulation were low.” p5
- Page 6 of the report is useful in setting out the common reasons for the low take up from referrals to installations – these included: discrepancies between identified measures and referrals reported from sub-contractors – where delivery agents felt that further training of their advisors would prevent discrepancies between identified measures and possible installations. Additionally, drop-outs occurred due to not all residents granted access for the follow up visit. Also contributing was the significant lag time between referral to installation
- “These issues affected the conversion rate from home visit to further installation measures, causing consistently low numbers across the programme. Almost all boroughs recorded a conversion rate of less than 3% and a number of boroughs did not progress beyond installation of easy measures.” p6
- P8 of the report onwards sets out a comprehensive series of programme recommendations which make interesting reading. Included is that the GLA spearhead a pan-London marketing campaign as a way to warm up residents.
Much more detail is set out in the report, included borough-level data tables in Appendix 1.