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Posts Tagged ‘Home Insulation’

Help with home insulation

Posted by Chris Hipkins on March 10th, 2010

I’ve been a pretty vocal critic of aspects of the National government’s home insulation programme, but I’m willing to give credit where it is due. The Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) have announced a new scheme that lets people spread their share of home insulation costs over 9 years as part of their rates. If the home owner sells up, the next owner picks up the extra rates bill. This is a good idea.

Under the government’s current deal, someone can get up to a third of the cost of home insulation paid for through a subsidy but they have to stump up the other two thirds (those on lower incomes can get up to 60% subsidy). If the GWRC scheme helps people to cover their part of the cost then that’s good.

I think there are huge benefits in having kiwi homes properly insulated. My critiscism of the Nats scheme isn’t because I think the goal is a bad one. I’m concerned they’ve cut too many corners and are jeopardising quality and fairness. There is more capacity in the market to insulate more homes, but because of the way the government have set up the existing scheme people are missing out unnecessarily, are getting a sub-standard job, or they’re missing out on the full value of the subsidy. If they fix those problems up, then the scheme would be well worth backing.

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Filed under: Energy, housing
7 Comments

Brownlee gets details wrong – again!

Posted by Chris Hipkins on March 3rd, 2010

The government’s great details man Gerry Brownlee was reported in the DomPost this morning (article not online) making more claims about the government’s home insulation scheme that just don’t stack up. An Otago University report has argued that the standard of insulation provided isn’t sufficient for homes in colder areas (eg. lower South Island), so Brownlee side-steps the issue by saying there isn’t the capacity to insulate more homes. Actually Gerry, that wasn’t the question! Even then, his claim isn’t true either.

249 businesses applied for approval to deliver home insulation and heating under the government’s scheme but only 60 were approved. I know of a number of businesses that meet the quality standards but were turned away because they weren’t big enough. Gerry ‘bigger is always better’ Brownlee argues there isn’t capacity to insulate more homes but that just isn’t true. If he wasn’t distorting the market by creating monopoly providers there would be plenty of capacity to insulate more homes.

Gerry Brownlee should take the concerns being raised about the scheme seriously. Last month an initial audit by EECA into the scheme said that 63 per cent of the insulation retrofits audited have “problems”, half of which are described in the audit report as “serious”. There have been a string of reports from providers who have had to lay off staff because they were excluded at the last minute. There are suggestions providers who are approved aren’t passing on the full benefit of the subsidy to consumers.

The government needs to look at all of these issues carefully. Brownlee can’t keep bluffing the details. We all want to see more homes properly insulated, but it needs to be done properly. Enough of the cutting corners and PR spin.

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Filed under: Energy
15 Comments

Brownlee’s shambles cuts jobs

Posted by Chris Hipkins on February 24th, 2010

One of the first things the new National government did when coming into office was scrap the $1b home insulation fund that the previous Labour government had planned. Later in the year they finally woke up to the huge value better home insulation can bring and announced their own scheme, albeit smaller. Personally I was pleased they’d seen the value in warming up kiwi homes, but as the weeks and months have rolled on, more and more of the rushed schemes weaknesses have been revealled.

One of the most concerning is the impact it has had on small specialist businesses. It would be natural to assume that a small specialist home insulation business delivering a quality product would stand to benefit from a significant expansion of the market and increase in the number of government subsidies available. Not so, in fact the opposite has happened. The government has arbitarily capped the number of providers, favouring big players like The Warehouse or Hire a Hubby, rather than small specialists. Of the 249 businesses that sought approval, only 60 got it.

I think this is totally unfair. Many of these businesses were previously able to access government subsidies and some had, in good faith, scaled up their operations, taking on new staff (many off the dole) in anticipation of the increased demand. I’ve had many firms tell me about how they’ve had to lay off staff because they can’t compete with the big providers who are getting government subsidies.

I’m very keen to see more homes insulated, and I’m pleased the government is putting some money into it. It’s a real shame that they aren’t doing it fairly and properly. It’s kind of ironic that the ‘pro-competition’ National Party seems to be going out of their way to distort the market and choke off any competition when it comes to home heating and insulation.

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Filed under: Energy, jobs
18 Comments

The shoddy home insulation scheme

Posted by Chris Hipkins on October 17th, 2009

In recent weeks I’ve been getting a constant stream of complaints about how shoddy the government’s Warm Up NZ home insulation scheme is becoming. To be clear from the outset, the Labour Party has been campaigning for better home insulation all year and we’d committed to a $1b investment before the last election. But it has to be done properly and all evidence suggests the National government are cutting corners.

One of the most common complaints I’ve been getting has centred on changes the Nat govt have made to the standards insulation providers have to meet to get the subsidy. For example, before October homes that had been previously fitted with foil insulation under the floor were having it replaced with cavity insulation (eg. polystyrene). The Nats have changed that so that now the foil will just be repaired, despite the fact that studies have shown foil to be a lot less effective.

Seems a waste to put heat pumps into homes that will lose a lot of that extra heat because they are poorly insulated (not to mention the huge power bills that could be racked up).

I’ve also had a lot of complaints from insulation and heating providers who have had their contracts abruptly ended. In some cases these firms had scaled up their business to meet increased demand, investing in capital and more staff, only to find the funding tap suddenly turned off. If they were getting the subsidy before the govt’s big push to warm up kiwi homes, why are they left out in the cold now?

I challenged Gerry Brownlee on some of this in the House this week. His response, as usual, was to attack me and deny everything. Gerry ‘Details Man’ Brownlee clearly has no idea what is going on in his own portfolio. It’s such a shame. What a waste to be insulating all these houses poorly rather than doing it right the first time.

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Filed under: Energy, environment
9 Comments