‘Energy efficiency market is tricky to lend cash to’
Posted on 10 November 2013 by Vicky Ellis
The market for energy efficiency products is so “fragmented” it’s tricky to lend money to, says the man responsible for dishing out millions of pounds of government funding to the sector.
Gregor Paterson-Jones (pictured right), the Managing Director for the Green Investment Bank’s energy efficiency division told the audience at Energy Live 2013 this week: “Energy efficiency is a fragmented market, it’s challenging to apply funds there. Having said that there’s been an enormous amount of activity there.”
Asked why businesses are going for energy efficiency, he said: “Electricity prices are going up… the road to ignorance is paved with generalisations but in the UK specifically what we are finding is that prices and technology prices coming down have pushed people into thinking of implementing things they wouldn’t have thought about ten years ago.”
It’s telling that energy efficiency is becoming popular despite the lack of a specific subsidy for it, he added: “Think about it this way, energy efficiency per se is not an incentivised activity in the UK and most of the other technologies which have a carbon reduction effect are incentivised. So to say energy efficiency is not being embraced, well it’s not becoming economically viable to implement an entire energy efficiency technology in the absence of incentives.”
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Article source: http://www.energylivenews.com/2013/11/10/energy-efficiency-market-is-tricky-to-lend-cash-to/
