What can we learn from other countries?

I have been reading some of my favourite blogs this morning and looking for new information about what other countries are doing to reduce the energy usage of their privately owned properties. Whilst I was looking I found this: -http://www.energy-performance-certificates.org/blog/think-domestic-energy-assessors-have-it-bad. Its from Mike C's blog and is dated back in March of this year, Mike has tirelessly provided good, up to date information for DEAs and the general public with regards to the energy assessors industry within this country and is one of the people I admire.

"Australia’s Housing Sustainability Assessment Scheme (HSAS) launched in July 2009 to provide 360,000 homes with free energy assessments, allowing homeowners to qualify for an interest-free loan of up to AU$10,000 to pay for energy-efficiency improvements under its Green Loans Program, repayable over four years. " Mike goes on to explain that it was thought that this scheme would take over 4 years to complete and provide work for the assessors in Australia.

Fortunately the Australians did alot of things right such as:
1. Setting a fee (no undercutting or rogue traders over there)
2. Giving lots of promotion.
3. Only one accreditaton scheme.
4. Interest free loan to make the improvements (great idea and a good way to get people to carry out the improvements in my opinion)

Although there were also the problems with the fact that the accreditation scheme suspended new assessor registration and late payments by the government to the assessors. And once again those nasty training providers were at it again, the Australian government did not cap the amount of assessors needed leaving the assessors in much the same position as the ones here in the UK with too many assessors and not enough work - the only people to benefit from that have been (once again) the training providers.
What was nice to see though was this quote from the ASBA - "While it was not our role under the Federal Government protocol to limit the number of registrations, we became sufficiently concerned with the increased number of assessors seeking accreditation. Therefore we took the decision to limit the number of registrations pending while at the same time putting our concerns directly to DEWHA. "

Apparently though the assessors in Australia have a champion, who believe in speaking her mind clearly - Christine Milne, who is a Green Party MP. Its nice to see that they have some one fighting their corner.

In 2011 Australia is legislating for homes sold to have a certificate of environmental performance - I can only hope that they look at what has happened already with their assessors and limit the number accredited and continue to keep the fees fixed so that the assessors do not suffer the same fate as the DEAs in the UK.

There are many things that both countries can learn from one another and this is what I feel would help in both countries:
1. Set the fee
2. Watch the training providers
3. One overall governing body
4. Incentives to encourage energy saving
5. Promotion to encourage greater understanding of the certificate
6. An EPC should only be valid for 12 months - not 3 years for selling and 10 years for rental. It causes confusion.
7. Cap the amount of assessors.

Green Deal and assessors.

"The enormity of the challenge soon became apparent and the first meeting was barely able to scratch the surface of the task. The Green Deal is proposing that all households should be eligible for an energy assessment that will provide them with guidance on the investment choices that they can make and also give them behaviour change advice.

This will be the first point of contact that households will have with the Green Deal and the assessments will need to have integrity, independence, consistency and be of a high quality. Working out the funding model to achieve this, finding people with the skills able to deliver the assessments and ensuring there is a good level of quality control is a major task for policy-makers.

As we go through the process similar changes will appear at all other stages of the delivery model. What is highly encouraging is the level of Ministerial ambition behind the programme and the openness of DECC officials to external ideas and advice"

I have pinched the above from: http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/comment/2272705/developing-green-deal as I thought it was very thought provoking and made some very valid points.

As a Domestic Energy Assessor the bit that grabs me is the first point of contact that householders will have - who will it be? It goes on to say that there it needs to find people with the skills able to deliver the assessments and ensure that there is good quality control - to my mind it is obvious, the assessors should ONLY be DEAs - they are already over 50% trained, are CRB checked and are used to being professional within clients houses, it makes complete sense to use DEAs for this role!

As a home owner I am obviously worried about potential financial implications but it has been stated that the Green Deal will provide grants/links with energy companies to fund the work to make the UK more energy efficent.

Only time will tell!