PRESS RELEASE : Families to save on bills through new energy saving trials [January 2024]

The press release issued by the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero on 18 January 2024.

12 projects receive a share of up to £16 million from Green Home Finance Accelerator to help families improve their home’s energy efficiency.

Families will be able to access instant savings on their electricity bills through a new solar panel subscription service – one of 12 ground-breaking projects awarded funding today (Thursday 18 January).

Sunsave will receive £1.9 million of government funding to test its Electric Roof project, which aims to reduce the barriers to the widespread installation of solar panels.

Rather than an upfront cost of installing solar panels, homeowners will pay a monthly fee, covering their monitoring and maintenance. It will also include gaining access to ‘smart tariffs’ which offer households different electricity rates at different times of the day, increasing the savings available.

The 12 projects receiving funding today also include E.ON’s optimised Energy as a Service, receiving £1 million to pilot a one-stop-shop for energy advice and funding for up to 350 households for low-carbon technology such as heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage.

The awards form part of the Green Home Finance Accelerator programme, which aims to support new ways of giving families access to funding to improve their home’s energy efficiency.

Lord Callanan, Minister for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance, said:

When energy bills reached record highs, we stepped in to lessen the burden on hardworking families across the country.

But we haven’t stopped there and these innovative projects will allow more families to save money and cut emissions.

We are always looking to test progressive ways to make energy saving measures more accessible and affordable, allowing people to make their homes greener and warmer.

Projects to receive a share of the £16 million government funding also include:

• Perenna, which will receive £888,000 to develop a long-term, fixed-rate ‘green mortgage’ incentivising customers to make their homes more energy efficient by offering a reduced mortgage rate
• Chameleon Technology’s HTC-Up project, which will receive £795,000 to provide domestic homeowners and landlords bespoke green loans and cashback rewards, to help make their properties more energy efficient
• Scroll Finance Limited’s Glocers Project, which will receive £1.5 million to pilot a project that uses equity in a home to provide a loan that funds the upfront costs of installing energy saving measures in a flexible and affordable way

Emma Harvey-Smith, Programme Director for the built environment at the Green Finance Institute, said:

Delivering a range of innovative and affordable financing solutions will help homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient, lowering bills and reducing emissions. Developing and piloting new green finance mechanisms to ensure they successfully support as wide a range of customers as possible, and unlock barriers to retrofit, will enable more energy efficiency home upgrades at pace and scale.

The GFI continues to play a central role in developing the market for financing a net zero and climate-resilient built environment across the UK and Europe, by catalysing finance markets to deliver on ambitious decarbonisation goals and driving real-economy impact.

The winning projects will operate until February 2025, implementing and testing their products with homeowners across the UK.

The £20 million Green Home Finance Accelerator is funded through the £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.