(2) by what date he expects the first payment from the £910 million home energy saving fund announced on 11 September 2008 to have been made.
On 11 September 2008 the Prime Minister announced the Home Energy Saving Programme which included a 20 per cent. uplift to the level of the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) and a new obligation, the Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP). These schemes operate as obligations on the energy suppliers (and the electricity generators in the case of CESP) to achieve carbon savings by encouraging households to take-up energy saving measures.
The figure of £910 million refers to the estimated extra investment suppliers and generators will need to make in order to deliver these additional obligations. No Government funding is involved.
In terms of CERT, Ofgem, the scheme administrator, does not collect data on energy supplier spend. However, based on the costs of the measures promoted by suppliers, we estimate that the overall spend by suppliers on delivering the 20 per cent. increase to the CERT obligations will be around £560 million. However, we expect the CESP to lead to supplier and generator investment of some £350 million by 2012.
The proposals for CERT and CESP are currently subject to public consultation.