Notice

Green Home Finance Accelerator: details of Pilot Phase projects

Updated 12 March 2024

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

The Green Home Finance Accelerator: Pilot Phase has awarded an initial total of £15,370,414.69 grant funding to 13 projects across Great Britain.

List of Pilot Phase projects

Lead organisation	Project title	Grant value
Arniston Ltd (trading as Snugg)	Green Home Hub	£1,995,204.03
Chameleon Technology (UK) Limited	HTC-Up	£795,131.42
City Science Corporation Limited	Buy­to­Let Decarbonisation System	£1,517,988.27
E.ON Energy Solutions Ltd	E.ON’s optimised Energy as a Service	£1,056,977.31
Energy Saving Trust Enterprises Limited	Retrofit Proposition Toolkit	£829,204.02
Escrow-Tech Limited	Carbon-Offset Adjusted Loan Rate Settings for Financing Green Home Improvement Activities (Carbon-Adjust)	£1,067,152.36
Living Places Earth Ltd	Built Environment Investment Analysis Service	£887,239.65
Parity Projects	Project Empower	£699,610.00
People Powered Retrofit Limited	A Credit Union One Stop Shop for Retrofit and Finance	£324,366.98
Perenna Bank PLC	Perenna Retrofit Mortgage & HEMS	£888,465.25
Scroll Finance Limited	Point-of-Sale Technology for Financing Retrofits and Energy Efficiency (POST-FREE)	£1,773,014.27
Scroll Finance Limited	Green Line of Credit Embedded in Retrofit Services (GLOCERS Project)	£1,551,642.75
Sunsave Group Ltd	The Electric Roof Project	£1,984,418.38

Details of Pilot Phase projects

Arniston Ltd (trading as Snugg)

Project title: Green Home Hub
Grant value: £1,995,204.03

Project summary

This project will pilot the Green Home Hub (GHH), a highly engaging digital consumer platform that guides and encourages homeowners along a journey of improving the energy efficiency of their home. It is underpinned by data-enabled components that were researched and prototyped during the GHFA Discovery Phase.

The GHH addresses the issues that deter homeowners from taking action: complexity, high costs, long paybacks, confusing grants, the lack of green finance solutions and shortage of reliable installers. The platform provides a highly personalised experience, helping users make appropriate improvements to their home at the right time. It helps users create an accurate and tailored plan, with cost estimates they can trust. The hub points homeowners to relevant grants and innovative financial products to finance their improvements, including carbon credits. Finally, it verifies changes and rewards homeowners for the progress made in improving their home’s energy efficiency.

Project partners

• Perenna Bank will be integrating their long-term fixed rate mortgage products into the GHH, simplifying the user journey and where appropriate improving the terms of the loan to reward customers for their green upgrades
• Scroll Finance will be developing and integrating their highly innovative Green Shared Equity Mortgage into the GHH, again simplifying the user journey and where appropriate improving the terms of the loan and verifications. Scroll’s Green Shared Equity Mortgage is a novel finance product and involves the lender sharing in the risk of house price uplift from the home improvement project

Chameleon Technology (UK) Limited

Project title: HTC-Up
Grant value: £795,131.42

Project summary

This project will pilot HTC-Up, a green finance offer which delivers homeowners and buy-to-let landlords a complete solution to accurately assess their home energy efficiency and recommends products which achieve maximum impact on energy savings. It has a tailored loan product to meet their needs and budget. It provides a clear and simple route to credible, approved suppliers who can install the low carbon technology and energy improvement measures. It will verify the home improvement measure has been installed and considers next steps to improve the property.

Project partners

• Chameleon provide the ivie bud solution to analyse energy use and recommend the logical next steps, validate that consumption has improved and run a rewards scheme
• NatWest offer the unique secured green loan with cashback offer finance product, support the rewards scheme and provide reach to engage mortgage owners across the UK
• FurbNow facilitate the supplier portal, linking customers to their installer and provide real-world checks to validate installations

City Science Corporation Limited

Project title: Buy­to­Let Decarbonisation System
Grant value: £1,517,988.27

Project summary

This project will pilot a system for buy-to-let landlords, providing a single point of contact to fulfil their retrofit needs.

Buy-to-let landlords have a need to decarbonise the properties they own through a combination of energy efficiency measures and transitioning heating systems to low/ zero emissions technologies. Those that own their own home can access grant funding and specialist finance products (such as green mortgage advances), whilst social housing providers can also access significant grant funding (such as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund). However, this leaves the private rental sector (which represents 20% of households) with limited support in improving the energy efficiency of their properties.

Via a web browser and app-based platform, users will be able to populate their property portfolio and associated finance, utilising open data sources such as Land Registry, Companies House, and the EPC database. Once populated, users will be able to choose their desired outcome (for example an EPC rating, or emissions rate), as well as any budgetary constraints. The system will then provide them with a tailored package of costed retrofit measures, specific to their property and desired outcome. Uniquely, the cost of these measures will be matched to the most appropriate financing solution from a broad spectrum of leading providers. Landlords are then connected to accredited installers in their area to carry out the retrofit work.

Project partners

• City Science, a specialist in digital energy efficiency analysis and modelling, will lead on the integration of the retrofit supply chain
• Property Master, a digital mortgage broker specialising in the buy-to-let sector, will develop and maintain the user interface, and embed the financial product offering into the solution (utilising their existing capabilities as a digital broker)

E.ON Energy Solutions Ltd

Project title: E.ON’s optimised Energy as a Service
Grant value: £1,056,977.31

Project summary

The pilot project will bring to market Energy as a Service (EaaS) for 350 households - a one stop shop solution making low carbon energy savings easy and affordable.

This proposition combines a long term (20 year) EaaS agreement with the consumer, delivered by innovative finance proposition experts Heatio Financial Services Ltd and will remove the upfront cost of the solutions (heat pump, PV and battery) and installation. The consumers will benefit from significantly lower energy costs for their home through the integration of optimised energy tariffs and flexibility/grid services.

Peace of mind for consumers is key and thanks to a guarantee on system’s energy performance through a ‘Fair Use’ Policy, ongoing support via servicing, maintenance, and breakdown cover and optimisation via the Heatio Home Energy Management system (HEMS) to ensure customers desired comfort levels are never at risk.

Although pilot deployment of the product is at the heart of the project, there will be the need to further showcase opportunities to refine the EaaS product/ proposition. Therefore, the project will be underpinned by a commitment to continuous expert market testing and consumer research to ensure delivery of a seamless customer experience, steered by the validation of customer needs already generated in the Discovery Phase.  This will be led by Energy Systems Catapult utilising the wealth of insights from participants within the pilot deployment, and will enable tracking of the market performance of EaaS and whether it can successfully overcome barriers to mass deployment. This valuable evidence base collected from thousands of customer interactions will continue to inform effective finance product design in the future.

Aspirational commercialisation targets based on detailed consumer research and market analysis reveal the immediate potential for EaaS, while further analysis of a variety of optimum business models will make up a vital part of the project to secure and sustain the opportunity post pilot.

Project partners

• E.ON Energy Solutions Ltd, Heatio Financial Services Ltd, Heatio Ltd, Energy Systems Catapult Ltd

Energy Saving Trust Enterprises Limited 

Project title: Retrofit Proposition Toolkit
Grant value: £829,204.02

Project summary

This project will pilot the Retrofit Proposition Toolkit (RPT), a suite of pre-configured digital services that will enable financial service companies, such as banks and building societies, to create an end-to-end retrofit proposition targeted at owner-occupiers and private rented sector (PRS) landlords, specifically those looking to improve their homes to EPC band C.

The core components of the toolkit will include education / awareness, tailored energy saving advice, installer finder, logbook creation, finance offers and verification and installation assurance services. The pilot will develop a platform to demonstrate the benefits of the toolkit to lenders, showing how they can draw on some or all elements of the toolkit to develop bespoke, retrofit propositions tailored to their brand, product offerings and customer journey. 

The project will work closely with a bank to integrate elements of the toolkit into their existing customer journey. It will pilot this integration with their customers to quantify the benefits and evaluate success. Additionally, the pilot will refine the commercial model and create the go-to-market strategy to deliver the RPT at scale.

Project partners

• Energy Saving Trust (EST) will be responsible for developing education and advice content for homeowners, overseeing the development, deployment and testing of the RPT and conducting the evaluation of the pilot
• TrustMark will be responsible for developing and documenting APIs to expose relevant information from their installer database and data warehouse, and providing verification and installation assurance services
• the Residential Logbook Association (RLBA) will be responsible for developing APIs to automate the logbook creation process and to expose building information from existing logbooks

Escrow-Tech Limited

Project title: Carbon-offset adjusted loan rate settings for financing green home improvement activities (Carbon-Adjust)
Grant value: £1,067,152.36

Project summary

This project will pilot Carbon-Adjust, a financing platform that integrates aggregators, home improvement agencies and finance institutions to help homeowners to benefit from the potential carbon offsets from their investments in energy efficiency. By linking rate settings adjustments to how much emissions can be offset, home/building owners will be incentivised to achieve more home improvement for less cost.

Carbon­-Adjust reduces the cost of home retrofitting by operationalising offset carbon emissions from homes. It incentivises homeowners to maximise access to cheaper credit in domestic energy efficiency improvements or home retrofits by linking loan rates to the amount of carbon emissions offset by the home energy improvements. It benchmarks, verifies and certifies retrofitting SMEs and offset carbon emissions.

Project partners

• Modirect Limited and Otaski Energy Services Ltd (aggregators)
• FF Furbnow Limited (home improvement agency)
• Lendology CiC (finance institution)
• Energy Systems Catapult (consumer engagement and business model)
• RFR Professionals International Group (process auditors)
• Surrey City Council (local council)

Living Places Earth Ltd

Project title: Built Environment Investment Analysis Service
Grant value: £887,239.65

Project summary

This project will pilot 2 new services to address critical information gaps, one for mortgage providers and one for local authorities. It will be based on a common underlying analytical platform which enables rapid analysis of large portfolios / areas of the built environment, allowing financial definition of the retrofit challenge in terms of costs, appropriate technologies and energy saving returns on a house-by-house basis across large portfolios / areas presented as a geographic information system (GIS) map layer heatmap.

For mortgage companies, the platform will identify the ‘Should-Pay’ early adopter customer subset.  This will enable targeted marketing of green mortgage products and provide ongoing customisable analysis for their customers and for the broader market to produce individual building business cases (retrofit plan and likely energy savings), to be delivered to potential customers as part of their standard workflow.

For local authorities (LAs), the platform will allow them and their advisers to analyse their whole geographic area.  This analysis will show total retrofit costs and how those vary street-by-street as well as the return on investment of a particular place-based retrofit investment. This will allow both LA-wide analysis to build internal and external consensus on the geographic retrofit journey, as well as specific outputs to identify individual demonstrators as a starting point for business case development.

Project partners

• SkenarioLabs provides the underlying technology solution that is being adapted for this product, alongside development and data science capabilities
• Eunomia provides project management capabilities
• Living Places provides strategic focus on developing products to accelerate scaled place-based decarbonisation approaches and will lead on stakeholder engagement, user testing and provide insights on the commercial models for product development
• the project also has support from Bristol City Council and London Borough of Hounslow to test the LA product, West Brom Building Society to test the mortgage provider product and ESRI to enrich the geospatial datasets

Parity Projects

Project title: Project Empower
Grant value: £699,610.00

Project summary

This project will pilot a One Stop Shop, Ecofurb, with national coverage of advice and quality assurance of retrofit installations. The service will provide free online advice, a range of paid-for advice options to tailor a whole house plan to the home and its residents’ needs, free financial advice and competitive quotes.

Through Ecofurb’s free online advice service, customers will be able to view and edit the energy performance of their home, and test options for improving their homes’ energy or carbon performance according to their budget and priorities. The online planner automatically tests the compatibility of options and calculates their combined cost and carbon benefits.

Once they have a package that they are interested in, the customer can choose whether or not to continue their journey with Ecofurb. They can submit their plan to get free financial advice, where relevant, and book an in-home survey and consultation with an expert advisor. That expert advice includes options from an energy assessment through to architectural drawings, air-pressure testing, 360° walkthrough and drone photography. The pilot will explore the level of advice recommended for different project types.

On completion of the Whole House Plan, customers will be offered the option of inviting Ecofurb’s partner installers to quote. If customers take up a quote, Ecofurb will provide quality assurance using its national team of retrofit coordinators.

Project partners

• advice expert Parity Projects has brought together finance partner Santander with organisations across the supply chain, including market-leading retrofit assessment and coordination provider CoreLogic
• start-up community energy advice provider Loco Home Retrofit
• established regional advice provider CSE. Knight Frank Finance will provide financial advice to customers where relevant, and market insights to the Ecofurb team

People Powered Retrofit Limited

Project title: A Credit Union One Stop Shop for Retrofit and Finance
Grant value: £324,366.98

Project summary

The project will pilot 2 Credit Union financial products to meet the demand for retrofit measures from households in 2 demographically and geographically distinct pilot markets.

The Green Home Improvement Loan will help householders making incremental upgrades to their homes to maximise the retrofit potential of these improvements using a simple, easily accessible lending product that benefits from appropriate advice and guidance from the Credit Union lender and access to a range of additional advice materials and offers.

The One Stop Shop for Retrofit product targets the early adopter, deep retrofit market, pairing a bespoke lending product with holistic advice and guidance, design and construction quality assurance. This product helps already engaged and committed clients to increase the scope and scale of their retrofit package, maximising energy savings and triggering earlier works. It will involve a seamlessly integrated retrofit and finance one stop shop offer and will be piloted by People Powered Retrofit in Manchester and Loco Homes in Glasgow.

Project partners

• People Powered Retrofit is leading the project and leading work packages on product and service design, advice and supply chain engagement
• Carbon Co-op is acting as a technology provider, offering ICT tools and processes to support monitoring and verification
• Metro Moneywise is a payroll credit union based in Greater Manchester. They will be issuing loans in this project and coordinating the Sound Pound consortium of 8 other Greater Manchester credit unions to do likewise
• Association of British Credit Unions Limited (ABCUL) is the UK federation for credit unions, they offer sectoral knowledge and links to their credit union members. They will be leading a work package on dissemination and learning
• Manchester Care and Repair are a Home Improvement Agency who will identify householders in need for loans
• Loco Homes are a Glasgow based One Stop Shop who will be testing loans in a Scottish context
• Julie Godefroy is a London-based sustainability consultant and expert in Building Renovation Passports

Perenna Bank PLC

Project title: Perenna Retrofit Mortgage & HEMS
Grant value: £888,465.25

Project summary

This project will pilot a long-term fixed rate mortgage product which offers homeowners a reduced interest rate if they make their home more energy efficient. As part of the product offering, customers are also provided with a free home energy management system (HEMS). The product aims to overcome three major barriers to homeowner’s retrofitting - the upfront costs, the lack of incentive to overcome the perceived hassle, and the lack of understanding around what to do and how to do it.

The new mortgage product will be aimed at homeowners who are interested in the benefits of a long-term fixed rate product, and in being rewarded for lowering their energy usage. Successful mortgage applicants will be offered the HEMS solution from Heatio which provides insights and advice tailored to their property. Once a customer completes a qualifying retrofit, their mortgage rate is switched to a lower rate and they benefit from lower monthly payments for the rest of their mortgage term.

The project’s objective is to test the appeal of the ‘green discount’ and its success in encouraging more homeowners to engage with retrofitting when they are starting their mortgage journey.

Project partners

• Perenna Bank will lead the project, design, launch and market the financial product, and iterate based on testing and feedback
• Heatio will provide home energy insights to customers via their HEMS solution and installation verification services to Perenna
• Energy Systems Catapult will conduct qualitative and quantitative research on the consumer experience of the proposition at key touchpoints

Scroll Finance Limited

Project title: Point-of-Sale Technology for Financing Retrofits and Energy Efficiency (POST-FREE)
Grant value: £1,773,014.27

Project summary

This project will pilot an innovative, purpose-built, point-of-sale finance platform ‘Green Finance Hub’ to be deployed for consumer retrofit energy efficiency and decarbonisation improvements. 

POST-FREE is a partnership between fintech Scroll, one of UK’s largest retrofit decarbonisation and energy efficiency contractors Sustainable Building Services (SBS), and retrofit energy efficiency and consumer engagement consultancy Sustainable Energy Services (SES).

SBS/SES manage all aspects of a PAS-2035 compliant retrofit journey, currently working in partnership with registered social landlords to deliver large-scale residential retrofit projects across the UK. 

SES will develop an ‘area-based’ approach, around existing SBS decarbonisation projects across the UK, to deliver POST-FREE to owner-occupiers and private landlords, implementing multi-channel customer acquisition campaigns across multiple regions. Existing resources in these areas will allow SES/SBS to cater to further demand for retrofits from the private market.

Deeply integrated in the SBS/SES customer journey, Green Finance Hub developed by Scroll will aim to reduce key financial and cost barriers to retrofit. Scroll has assembled an initial lender panel that can offer finance options for individual or package measures, and to enable ‘deep’ retrofit upgrades.

Through the Green Finance Hub, a range of finance solutions will be made available at the point-of-sale including Scroll Finance’s secured financing products, unsecured personal loans, specialist energy efficiency loans, buy now pay later, green mortgages, and further advance options. Eligible customers will have the ability to apply for energy grants (local and national) to seamlessly blend with the selected private finance option.

Project partners

• Scroll Finance Limited, Sustainable Building Services (UK) Ltd (SBS), Sustainable Energy Services (UK) Ltd (SES)

Scroll Finance Limited

Project title: Green Line of Credit Embedded in Retrofit Services (GLOCERS Project)
Grant value: £1,551,642.75

Project summary

The project will develop and pilot an affordable and flexible finance product - green home equity line of credit (Green HELOC) - to help homeowners fund the upfront cost of retrofit measures. Green HELOC will be delivered in an embedded fashion through retrofit partners SuSy, Furbnow, and Cosy Homes Oxfordshire.

The Green HELOC is a loan with an initial revolving facility secured through a second mortgage on the property. Funds are ring-fenced to approved installers and customers only pay interest on drawn funds. This feature facilitates an extended period of work – the facility can be used (and repaid) over time as required – particularly relevant for whole-house retrofits with sequential or multiple interventions.

SuSy is developing an app where customers will be guided through steps to understand the home’s energy profile using a combination of public / proprietary data sources and links to SuSy’s network of accredited installers. Cosy Homes and Furbnow have free-to-use plan builder tools on their websites, in-house retrofit coordinators, and supply-chain relationships to manage the end-to-end retrofit journey.

A finance calculator developed in the Discovery Phase will be embedded into existing consumer journeys of the retrofit partners. Customers can check eligibility, receive finance quotes, and interact with a bespoke cost-benefit dashboard to analyse the impact of measures and Green HELOC to their property.

Project locations / partners

The Green HELOC will be deployed in 3 pilot locations:

• Bristol as the primary location via consortium partner SuSy
• Oxfordshire via retrofit delivery partner Cosy Homes Oxfordshire
• West Midlands via retrofit delivery partner Furbnow with support from Energy Capital (part of West Midlands Combined Authority)

Sunsave Group Ltd

Project title: The Electric Roof Project
Grant value: £1,984,418.38 

Project summary

This project will pilot a residential solar subscription product, conceived during the GHFA Discovery Phase.  

Customers are concerned about their bills and would welcome solar as a way to reduce these, however, the upfront cost and lack of financing options remains a barrier. Long-term financing in the form of a subscription plan including monitoring and maintenance offers a way to mitigate these concerns. Battery flexibility and export value, if unlocked through smart control and innovative tariffs, improve the net savings of the product such that the customer is saving relative to the energy bill from day one. This pilot will wrap novel financing structures, improved install verification and the right hardware and technology into an innovative solar subscription solution.  

Sunsave’s solar subscription product will include: 

• informative consumer advice through personalized solar generation modelling and savings illustrations
• an easy-to-navigate purchase journey, removing the hassle associated with conventional solar installations
• a high-quality installation, verified through the use of novel technology
• attractive long-term financing
• a monitoring and maintenance package including proactive remote diagnosis, insurance and a guarantee of system operation for the lifetime of the product
• flexibility provision with the battery, to enhance the savings the system offers to the customer and help them get the cheapest energy for their home with solar

Project partners

• Sunsave will lead a consortium with AES, a leading national installation and smart metering company. The project will bring together installers, manufacturers, energy suppliers, grid aggregators, regulators, and funders to educate them on the current barriers to solar adoption and the potential solutions the pilot product offers