Energy saving trials receive Green Home Finance Accelerator funding

The Green Home Finance Accelerator: Pilot Phase has awarded an initial total of £14,303,262.33 grant funding to 12 projects across Great Britain.

The funding has been awarded to projects considered to offer an innovative approach to helping families save money through energy saving schemes.

Funded through the £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, projects included in the dozen chosen include Sunsave who were founded in in 2022 with the mission of making solar accessible to all UK households by launching the UK’s first solar subscription.

Rather than having facing an initial payment that averages £10k for a typical solar installation, homeowners will pay a monthly fee which covers 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.

E.ON’s optimised Energy as a Service, is 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.

Perenna 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. As part of the product offering, customers are also provided with a free home energy management system (HEMS). The product aims to overcome three major barriers to homeowner’s retrofitting – the upfront costs, the lack of incentive to overcome the perceived hassle, and the lack of understanding around what to do and how to do it.

Scroll Finance Limited’s Glocers (Green Line of Credit Embedded in Retrofit Services) Project 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.

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

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.’