The supermarket says it will reclaim the cost through the government's recently announced programme of grants to tackle fuel poverty, which now affects 5.4m homes.
However, questions are already being asked about who the real beneficiaries of the programme will be. It has been suggested that when a profit-driven company such as Tesco becomes involved, the installers may be getting more out of it than the "fuel poor". Tesco admits this is a revenue-generating exercise, though it declines to say how much it will receive for each installation.
The main problem is that, in keeping with all the other government-backed insulation schemes, Tesco will not offer the service for free where the householder already has 6cm of loft insulation in place.
The Energy Savings Trust recommends that all households have 27cm of loft insulation. Because it is now almost impossible to find UK homes with no loft insulation, many question the value of the scheme in its current form. Up to 25% of a house's heat is lost through the roof.
A 70-year-old living on state pension would have to pay Tesco £149 to top up her loft insulation if she has more than 6cm in place. And the supermarket won't install anything if your roof has 15cm of insulation - just over half the recommended amount. Also, it has been pointed out by Friends of the Earth and Help the Aged, that these measures do little to help anyone whose home was built before the 30s and does not have cavity walls. They estimate that neither measure is possible in one-third of UK homes.
Add up all these points, and Gordon Brown's claim that up to 11 million low-income households would qualify for free insulation looks distinctly unlikely.
Ever since the government introduced the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (Cert) scheme, which requires power companies to invest in improving their customers' homes, Guardian Money has been contacted by unhappy readers turned down for extra loft insulation because of the 6cm rule.
The problem has been caused by the way the Cert scheme is calculated. For every home the power companies insulate they save an amount of carbon towards their three-year target. They get three-and-a-half times as many "points" if they can insulate lofts with fewer than 6cm in place.
With shareholders to please, there's little financial incentive for the power firms to top up a pensioner's home from 7cm to 27cm.
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1 comment:
This is an unfair attack on TESCO insulation who provide a good service. All the UK schemes, run by every utility company and the Heat Project (independent and the largest private scheme) make people pay a contribution. And why shouldn't they pay? The TESCOs deal is cheaper than B&Q by a long way. And you get a personalised service which I've never found with anyone else.
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