This is a guest post by energy and climate change consultant Paula Owen
Update: Our embedded version has now expired, but you can still watch the video here.
The government’s Green Deal for energy efficiency is a bit of a tricky one to describe to the uninitiated. Indeed, it’s sometimes hard to explain to energy savvy folk too!
So myself and the guys from explanimation.net created an ‘explanimation’ – a short animated film that explains a complex idea simply – about the Green Deal. We had our work cut out trying to explain the scheme in this way, puzzling over a simple way of explaining that the loan is attached to a house rather than the householders, or that people pay through their electricity bill for scheme that generally saves money on gas.
Why we need impartial communication tools
Currently there seems to be no clear, coordinated, communication strategy to get the word out there. And given the complexities of some features of this new energy efficiency scheme, one could argue that it is pretty crucial to the success of the scheme to start getting the message across sooner rather than later. With only five months to go before the feted launch of the domestic scheme in October, there is a huge ‘warming up’ exercise to be undertaken.
Leaving ‘the market’ to deliver the communications needed to convince a sceptical general public into taking up this scheme is a potentially risky strategy in our opinion. It has huge potential for confusion and mis-selling. There have to be clear, objective, non-partisan communication tools out there to help educate and inform.
Any comments or feedback will be gratefully received!
Find out more about the Green Deal explanimation
