New scheme to train up 5,000 energy efficiency installers

The government will launch a £7.5 million competition to expand the supply of skilled energy efficiency installers, Alok Sharma has revealed.

The secretary of state for business and energy told a meeting of the House of Commons environment audit committee yesterday (10 September) that a Green Homes Grant (GHG) skills training competition is due to be launched next week.

Responding to concerns expressed by backbench Conservative MP Duncan Baker that the supply chain lacks sufficient capacity to deliver the £2 billion GHG voucher programme, he said the new initiative is designed to deliver skills training to 5,000 people.

Acknowledging that the GHG is designed to deliver measures “out of the door very, very quickly”, Sharma said the government wants to see “thousands” of organisations registered on Trustmark, a quality accreditation scheme for energy efficiency installers.

“We are ensuring that installers be accredited to Trustmark. Ultimately it will mean that people have confidence that they will have value for money.”

Pressed on the government’s future energy efficiency plans, he said the Cabinet’s recently established climate change implementation committee is doing “a lot of joined-up thinking” on the issue and further plans will be set out in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)’s heat and building strategy due to be published “later this year”.

“Ambition is important but plans to deliver on ambition are even more important.”

He said the Smart Energy Advice website, launched at the end of last month to help those thinking about accessing the GHG vouchers, has had 1.2 million unique page views in the last week alone, including 200,000 new visitors.

Responding to concerns that the UK is losing ground on developing hydrogen to other countries, like Australia and Germany, BEIS’ director general for energy, transformation and clean growth Julian Critchlow told the committee that the UK is doing a “lot of practical work delivering on hydrogen projects”.

“Far from being behind we believe, we are putting detailed and specific policy levers in place to deliver world leading hydrogen sector,” he added, pointing to the upcoming hydrogen strategy that the government is due to publish in the run up to COP26 at the end of next year.

Quizzed on the logistics of the delayed climate change summit, its chair Peter Hill said the government is “still planning” for it to be an “in person event” in Glasgow at the end of next year even though there are “high degrees of uncertainty”.