UNITED SUSTAINABLE ENERGY AGENCY ANNOUNCES MERGER WITH NEF
Please note that United Sustainable Energy Agency has now merged with National Energy Foundation.
See our press release for more information or visit www.nef.org.uk
HECA is BACK...for good?
posted by Mark Saunders on 18 October 2012
tags: Green Deal , fuel poverty , energy efficiency , HECA , Public Sector , affordable warmth ,
In 1995, the year the original Home Energy Conservation Act came into being, Take That had a number 1 for four weeks with ‘Back for Good’ and just like Gary Barlow is back on our TV screens, so too HECA is back on the computer screens of council officers throughout the land.
No, you haven’t been asleep for the last 17 years. It goes to prove you just can’t keep a good Act down.
The original Act has now morphed into something more akin to a strategic tool for setting out future action to improve the energy efficiency of residential properties rather than the reporting tool it used to be.
With HECA DECC has formerly put councils back in the thick of contributing to some big national targets on carbon emissions and fuel poverty. Another hugely significant part of the revised HECA is the expectation that councils will adopt a clear position on the imminent Green Deal and ECO, so no pressure then.
Councils will need to have their HECA reports published on their websites and sent to DECC by 31 March 2013. The reports will need to be based on sound assumptions drawn from looking at data on many aspects of domestic energy use and will need to form the basis of future action which will be reported on every 2 years.
In September USEA hosted ‘HECA is BACK’, a short seminar on getting to grips with HECA attended by delegates from 27 councils from the south of England. You can view the HECA is BACK presentations on Slideshare.
USEA has also launched our new Home Energy Conservation Act strategy service for councils.
Just to stretch the HECA / Take That analogy to breaking point. Those of us who look back to old HECA with nostalgia will ‘Never Forget’ ( 3 weeks at number 1 in 1995) how those reports, annoying though they were, did help if only in a small way the cause of domestic energy efficiency. Let’s hope the revised HECA is more successful.
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