§ Ms WalleyTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will give a breakdown of the budget allocated for energy conservation.
§ Mr. YeoThe budget for the Energy Efficiency Office for 1993–94 is £69.1 million. This is allocated as follows:
Programme £million/annum Best Practice programme 15.3 Low Income Households (including Home Energy Efficiency Scheme) 41.5 Energy Management Efficiency Scheme 1.7 Information and Publicity (including Helping the Earth Begins at Home) 8.8 Local Energy Advice Centres 1.8 The local energy advice centres are being administered by the Energy Saving Trust, implementing a partnership between the Government and electricity and gas industries. The trust is also developing other energy efficiency programmes, not financed by Government.
491WThe Government have also made available £3 million of supplementary credit approvals for local authorities to invest in energy efficiency on a capital partnership basis.
Several other Government initiatives also promote energy efficiency. These include the energy-related environmental issues programme which has a budget of £1–1 million in 1993–94.
The green house demonstration programme awards supplementary credit approvals for replicable demonstration projects on energy efficiency measures in council housing. A further £5 million is being allocated to 27 more schemes in 1993–94, bringing the overall total to £60 million.
Local authorities already spend a large proportion of the improvement budgets on energy related work. Housing renovation grants are often used to implement energy efficiency measures, but energy efficiency may be only one element of the work and is, therefore, less quantifiable.