Home Sustainability Assessor

$50 Green Rewards to be Delivered

Fri, 21 May 2010 22:58:44 +0000

Delivery arrangements for the $50 Green Rewards to households have today been announced by the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Senator Penny Wong.

The Government will deliver the $50 Green Rewards to households that received a Green Loans home sustainability assessment on or before 11 May 2010. As announced in the Budget, the Government will not provide the $50 Green Rewards to households that received their assessment after 11 May 2010.

This measure is expected to benefit around 300,000 households, helping them to purchase products that will reduce their energy and water use.

Read the whole story here.

Good news from Penny Wong?

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:22:53 +0000

The Green Loans program has been discontinued and I’m very much hoping there will be some other form of incentive for people to get a Home Sustainability Assessment. The entire Home Sustainability Assessment scheme is in ruins thanks to Peter Garrett, but there is hope that Penny Wong will get it sorted out. Until then, I regret to inform my readers, but I will NOT be doing home sustainability assessments. I have, however, opened up this website for other Home Sustainability Assessors to advertise for free, so other active members will be joining in the coming weeks. Although I’m out of the picture for the time being, I hope to help others who are ready and willing to continue.

I will be focusing my attention on my computer repairs and web design businesses which are described HERE

New Solar Power and Hot Water Rebates

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:01:25 +0000

Some exciting news has come from the environment minister’s office. A new scheme called SRES, which stands for Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme, will be implemented in January 2011. In a nutshell, if you install solar hot water you will get a $1,200 rebate, and if you install solar electricity, you will get $6,200 for a 1.5 Kilowatt system. Both of those are more generous than current rebates and incentives, so it would probably be worth waiting.

To read the full announcement click here.

Feb 2010 Update to Green Loans Program

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:51:09 +0000

The following information was copied from http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2010/mr20100219.html

Significant Changes to Green Loans Program

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.

My Interpretation of the Above

Lots more Assessments have been funded
Assessors are limited to 5 assessments/week. This is not enough to live on considering expenses involved in insurance, advertising, travel, etc. I suspect (hope) this decision will be altered.
No more Green Loans! I don’t know what the Hon Peter Garrett MP was thinking, but the Green Loans is what motivated most people to get an assessment. We need an alternative incentive that makes it easier for people to implement energy and water saving modifications to their homes.

Summary: I don’t see how the program can become successful as it stands, but I expect we will see changes in the near future. My advice to home owners is get your assessment done so you will be ready to take advantage of any new financial incentives immediately as they’re implemented.