Significant Changes to the Green Loans Program

The following is an excerpt from a statement released by Peter Garrett's Office.

The Government will help over an additional 600,000 Australian households tackle climate change through a re-designed and extended Green Loans program.

That is on top of the 360,000 assessments already available under the program, of which more than 270,000 have already been booked nationwide.

The re-design of the program will include:

• the discontinuation of the less popular loans component next month to provide for the significant boost to assessment availability
• a new cap of 5000 assessors, allowing up to an extra 1200 trained assessors to contract with the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
• a weekly cap of 15,000 assessment bookings and a daily and weekly cap per assessor of three and five respectively to ensure greater quality and a more even distribution of work for assessors right around the nation
• changed booking arrangements allowing only individual assessors to make bookings.

 

These new arrangements will apply to the end of 2010.

A new Green Start program

The Green Start program will now commence from 1 January 2011.

This Program will remain directed at helping low income households and those most at need improve their energy and water efficiency and help tackle climate change.

The Program will also include a web-based assessment tool for all households.

This Program will include in-home sustainability assessments, providing an ongoing pipeline of work for home sustainability assessors following the Green Loans program.

Details of the program will be finalised in the coming months.

The wider implications of the above decisions are yet to be felt, especially as it is unclear how the directives will unfold. However, some key concerns of Green Professionals™ include:

• A limit of 5 assessments per assessor per week, while more than many were able to book previously, is a significant departure form the original expectations of many Assessors.
• The cap of 5000 assessors contracted to DEHWA will favour those who trained early and are already in possession of ABSA accreditation.
• Although Assessors can obtain up to 5 assessments per week, not all 5000 Assessors will be able to obtain this many as there is a national weekly cap of 15 000 assessments per week. 
• One other implication is that as the larger 'shonky' operators exit the market, potentially downsizing staff numbers, these registered assessors may enter the wider market. Thus the assumption that removing the large operators will free up large amounts of work may not be entirely valid. 
• We would like to understand the geographic distribution of the 5000 Assessors with DEHWA contracts. Will the remaining 1200 trained assessors to make contracts with DEHWA have to fulfill geographic criteria to ensure an equitable distribution of assessment capacity nationwide?

Positive repercussions may include

• As the market returns to a more leisurely pace, it becomes viable for Assessors to slowly build a viable Green Collar business around the sustainability assessment sector.
• For those who make the final cut of 5000 assessors, they will be in a better situation than if there were 11 000 assessors (the amount that received training). This will provide them with the possibility of sustainable work until such time as they transition to other projects or programs, such as Green Start.
• The additional funding, presumably gleaned from the discontinuation of the green loans component, will provide additional life to the program. (At 15000 assessments per week, this yields ~ 39 weeks of program time left) which takes us to late November 2010.

As always people, please leave your comments below.