THOUSANDS of households across the West Midlands will see their energy bills and carbon emissions cut thanks to £34million of Government funding.
The funding, which was secured by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is set to be matched by a further £35million from registered social housing providers across the region, will treble the number of homes that can be retrofitted with energy saving technology and greener heating systems.
The work will be targeted at 3,000 homes social homes and properties owned by those on low incomes with an energy performance rating of D or below, supporting residents facing rising cost-of-living pressures and the region’s ambition to be net zero within the next 20 years.
West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, said: “Improving the energy efficiency of our existing housing stock is essential if we’re going to lower energy bills for local people and provide residents with warmer and better insulated homes.
“Whilst we’ve made a good start, the new Deeper Devolution Deal we’ve just negotiated with Government will enable us to go much further – opening up a more sustained flow of funding that will give us greater flexibility in planning and delivery as we build our supply chain, train up our retrofit workforce and establish the business models that will draw in the private finance that will help us really scale up our retrofit programme.
“Together we can harness the power of retrofit to tackle the climate emergency and lower bills for local people right across our region.”
The WMCA estimates that 1.2million homes across the region will need to be retrofitted to achieve the net zero target.
As part of its investment to deliver its net zero targets, the WMCA set up the ground-breaking SMART Hub initiative (Sustainable Market for Affordable Retrofit Technologies).
As part of the government-backed Pioneer Places programme, the WMCA is also looking at ways of attracting more private and public sector funding to decarbonise entire neighbourhoods.
