Officials seek views on £5bn Warm Homes Fund for green tech and retrofit loans

The fund can be accessed by consumers, local authorities, community organisations, network companies, heat networks and companies offering innovative ways to finance building upgrades.

DESNZ is seeking views from installers, manufacturers, industry, consumer groups, local government, community groups and the public on the objectives and scope of the fund.

It is also seeking views on the opportunities and challenges of using government finance to drive the deployment of domestic solar, batteries, clean heat and energy efficiency measures, as well as specific use cases and target groups where the fund might have the most impact.

DESNZ pointed out that the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund already provides grant funding to the social rented sector to upgrade existing homes. This has “increasingly provided incentives to deploy low-carbon technologies”, in particular low-carbon heating.

However, it said that “there remain challenges to increasing the pace and scale of adoption and the opportunities to deliver further bill savings to even more residents”.

“We would be interested to hear views on what could help this deployment to occur at a faster rate,” it continued. “We think the finance provided by the Warm Homes Fund could play a key role in overcoming upfront cost barriers, enabling a programme of national renewal and upgrade of our social housing stock.”

The call for evidence will also consider how the fund could support non-domestic buildings, including voluntary and community sector buildings, mixed-use developments and smaller commercial sites.

DESNZ expects to set out the future direction for the Warm Homes Fund later this year.

Martin McCluskey, parliamentary undersecretary of state for energy consumers, said the Warm Homes Fund will “deliver financing that generates a return for the taxpayer”.

He said the public investment will also encourage “a step change in private investment [in] proven technologies” and will “stimulate the warm homes supply chain, turbocharging progress towards our home and building upgrades target”.