The Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation - consultation being conducted by the Department for Energy and Climate Change

In November 2011 the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) began a two-month consultation inviting views on the next implementation of the coalition government’s energy efficiency strategy – its proposed framework for a ‘Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO)’. The overarching intention for this framework is that it promotes a reduction in the carbon emitted by energy consumption in domestic and non-domestic properties through the creation of a ‘dynamic’ new market that will drive economic growth on the back of the envisaged property improvements: an open market, moreover, where ‘local businesses and community organisations (are) competing to deliver the best proposition for the consumer’. This briefing examines the nature of the consultation exercise about this framework and provides comment on some of the key issues that it entails for the housing sector