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PhD Thesis - FINAL SUBMITTED VERSION.pdf (3.77 MB)

Uncertainty in predicting the uptake of domestic energy efficiency measures: the case of the Green Deal

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posted on 2020-06-18, 15:57 authored by Karl Sample
The Green Deal was the flagship energy policy of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government (2010-2015). The scheme was designed to give loans to households who would otherwise not be able to afford the installation cost, thus removing one of the most commonly reported barriers. The key to the Green Deal was that the householder would, notionally, never pay back more in loan repayments than they were saving on their energy bills. This was known as the Golden Rule.

Public interest in the Green Deal however was muted, and, following a lacklustre uptake following the launch in January 2013, the scheme was scrapped in July 2015. This low level of uptake seemed at odds with the predictions that DECC made prior to the launch, including in the Green Deal and ECO Final Stage Impact Assessment (GDFIA) (DECC, 2012b).

This research set out to investigate how and why the differences between the prediction of uptake and the actual uptake were so different. Following DECC’s refusal to release the Green Deal Household Model (GDHM) for use within this research, information in the public domain and that gathered via correspondence was used to create a set of archetypes which were as close as possible to that used in the GDHM. Then, the Cambridge Housing Model (CHM) was used to estimate the energy savings for each of the archetypes under different retrofit scenarios before they were entered into an uptake model created for this research. The created uptake model aimed to replicate the published predictions of uptake.

It was found that the published documentation provided inadequate information for an effective recreation to occur, and therefore undergo rigorous scrutiny. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses were carried out on the created uptake model and showed that, due to the uncertainty ranges on the inputs, the range of predicted uptakes was very large; yet, the most probable level of uptake was very low for all measures.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Publisher

Loughborough University

Rights holder

© Karl J. Sample

Publication date

2018

Notes

A doctoral thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.

Language

  • en

Supervisor(s)

David Allinson

Qualification name

  • PhD

Qualification level

  • Doctoral

This submission includes a signed certificate in addition to the thesis file(s)

  • I have submitted a signed certificate