To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what the cost to his Department and its predecessor of (a) the Energy Saving Trust and (b) its contractors has been since the Trust's inception; to which (i) regional and (ii) local organisations the Energy Saving Trust contracts domestic and business consumer enquiries; how many complaints about its service the Energy Saving Trust and its contractors received in each of the last two years; what assessment his Department makes of the cost-effectiveness of the Energy Saving Trust; and what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Energy Saving Trust in reducing domestic and business greenhouse gas emissions. (262434)

The Energy Saving Trust is a private company limited by guarantee, and details of their contractors and complaints procedures are therefore a matter for the trust's board.

The Department grant funds the Energy Saving Trust year-on-year, supporting the valuable work in the domestic carbon abatement field. We do not fund the Energy Saving Trust for business consumer inquiries. The Department and its predecessors grant funded the trust annually as follows¹:

Analysis in the Climate Change Programme (March 2006) showed that the trust's activity is very cost-effective in terms of £/tCO₂. In 2007-08 the overall cost-effectiveness of the trust's work improved to £1.20 per tonne of lifetime carbon dioxide saved. The trust's influenced lifetime CO₂ savings have improved in 2007-08 to 21.5mt CO₂ compared to 16mt CO₂ in 2006-07. The EST's activities make an effective and respected contribution to our climate change ambitions.

¹ We do not have figures for Departmental funding from 1992-1996.