· Free boilers & home insulation offered to home owners struggling with fuel bills
· New pan-London support services for fuel-poor homes to offer health, insulation and income advice
· Launch of new Licence to power TFL train depots with locally-sourced, cleaner energy
· More solar power in London, including on TfL buildings
Hundreds of home owners struggling to pay fuel bills will be given free home energy improvements including boilers, heating controls and insulation worth up to £4,000 under a new £2.5 million package of fuel poverty measures launched today by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
Cold, damp homes caused by poor insulation, old boilers and lack of ventilation can exacerbate health issues including asthma and flu, and lead to more winter deaths.With an estimated 335,000 households living in fuel poverty, the Mayor is committed making homes warmer, healthier and more affordable.
The Mayor’s new scheme, launched today, will target some of the most vulnerable households who receive eligible benefits including home owners with disabilities, and older Londoners who live alone and may have problems accessing information on home insulation help, saving households on average £225 annually. Londoners can apply for Warmer Homes grants from today via www.london.gov.uk/warmer-homes
The Mayor is also funding boroughs to deliver a new London-wide referral service that will link people living in fuel poverty with organisations offering health, income and energy efficiency support.
The schemes are part of the Mayor’s £34 million Energy for Londoners programme which aims to make homes warmer and energy bills more affordable, workplaces more energy efficient, and supply London with cleaner and more local energy sources, like solar, in our homes and businesses.
The Energy for Londoners projects include:
Making homes warmer and more affordable. Alongside the new funding for fuel-poor homes, the Mayor will be setting up a new Fuel Poverty Partnership, formed of experts across the health, social and environment sectors to deliver long-term solutions to helping Londoners out of fuel poverty. The Mayor is also testing new and innovative ways to reduce energy bills down to near zero through whole-house ‘eco-refurbishments’ in a new Energy Leap project. The pilot scheme will refurbish 10 homes installing insulation, solar panels, heat pumps and other measures from this summer. The Mayor is funding the project which will be delivered with Sutton Housing Partnership, Genesis and Moat, and will test if it can be rolled out more widely across London. The Mayor will also tender for the delivery of an energy supply company for London, aiming to offer fairer energy bills to Londoners.
Making workplaces more energy efficient. A £10m commercial boiler scrappage scheme – the first ever in the UK – starting in the spring, will offer small businesses across the capital grants to replace old, inefficient and polluting boilers with new, cleaner boilers and heating systems which will also help improve indoor air quality, reducing harmful NOx emissions. This will build on the Mayor’s existing £4.2 million RE:FIT programme which supports London’s public-sector building managers to reduce energy demand and carbon emissions, improve air quality, and deliver large guaranteed energy savings for the public sector.
Boosting London""s solar energy. The Mayor has an ambition for more of London’s energy to be powered from local clean energy sources, aiming for 1GW of energy generated from solar by 2030. The Mayor has already launched a Community Energy Fund to help local groups develop solar panel projects on schools, community halls, andsport centres. Transport for London are set to expand their solar power usage and install energy efficiency measures across a variety of TfL owned buildings including bus stations and office buildings, in a new £4.5m refurbishment project. TfL will work with the company Engie on the major retrofitting programme which once completed will have the combined potential to provide 1.1MW of electricity, and help cut TfL’s CO2emissions by around 480 tonnes a year, the equivalent of boiling 16 million kettles. The Mayor will also trial a solar purchase scheme to reduce the costs of solar panels for Londoners through bulk-buying later this year.
Supplying London with cleaner local energy. London is the first public body to secure a junior electricity licence. During a 12-month pilot scheme, City Hall will buy locally generated cleaner energy and use it to power TfL buildings. The scheme, which went live in January 2018, will use energy bought from Peabody Services and Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE Heat Networks), to help power two Transport for London depots - Northfields in Ealing and Northumberland Park in Haringey. Both of the busy train depots service and maintain Tube trains round the clock. The Mayor is also helping both the public and the private sector to build larger-scale heat networks, including the use of local sources, like waste heat from the Tube, through a £3.5m Decentralised Energy Enabling Project to help make London cleaner and smarter.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: “It’s a sad fact that for many Londoners keeping their homes warm during the cold winter months is a luxury they simply cannot afford. My Energy for Londoners scheme aims to help those most in need with grants for new boilers, windows and home insulation to help cut fuel bills. I’m also working on a number of ambitious projects to generate more local clean energy to power our homes, businesses and communities.”
Samantha Edwards, a home owner from south London who received a grant for an upgraded boiler from a City Hall efficiency scheme said: “The new boiler has meant we can wake up in the morning and ensure we have hot water and heating, whereas before it was a bit of a lottery.”
Adam Scorer, Chief Executive of National Energy Action said: “Cold homes devastate the lives of around a million Londoners, extend queues for everyone at GPs and A&E as well as delaying the discharge of vulnerable patients from hospital. It is vital that we invest in prevention as well as treatment and so we are delighted to welcome the Mayor’s new Warmer Homes scheme.”