Sofas, junkies, invisible snakes and intimate encounters

What's the future for Green Deal? What impact are changes to ECO having on the energy efficiency sector? And what have sofas, junkies, invisible snakes and intimate encounters got to do with any of it?

Yesterday, I attended a UK Green Building Council event: Towards Green Deal 2.0. Many familiar faces in the room, and some new, and it was a pleasure to say hello to so many colleagues and compatriots from the energy efficiency industry. Have a look at our Twitter feed from yesterday for a blow-by-blow account of proceedings, or read on for a potted summary:

Let's start with sofas, which came up twice during discussions. The first point was: most people buying a new sofa take out a finance package. They don't start their discussions at DFS by talking about interest rates, or payment terms, or how long the finance agreement will last. They start their conversation talking about their need for a new sofa. Too often when we're talking about Green Deal, we open conversations by talking about the finance mechanism. We don't talk about the actual need that is being fulfilled - whether that is for a warmer, more comfortable, modernised home, for energy self-sufficiency or for lower running costs. Many speakers and delegates made the same point: that the challenge now is to create demand for the underlying offer, not to create demand for financial products.

Russell Smith of Parity Projects took the sofa analogy further. Some people shop at DFS, he said, and some shop at John Lewis. It's important to understand the audience for the energy efficiency / Green Deal offer and make sure we are designing propositions and creating prices that will be attractive to different market segments.

On to junkies. Subsidy junkies. The phrase was used twice - once, in a mea culpa moment, by John Sinfield of Knauf Insulation, as he admitted that the industry has been reliant on subsidies and perhaps (putting words into his mouth) complacent. It was used again by Greg Barker during Q&A, along with a rather withering remark that the industry couldn't change its image as subsidy junkies just by hiring a new PR agency (his words, not mine). The greater point is this: the insulation industry is going through a painful transition (another one). It is having to wean itself off subsidies and encourage people to pay for its products and services in and of themselves. The glazing industry has done this for years - with mixed reputational results - so why not the insulation sector? It'll be a culture shift for many in the sector, and it'll tax the skills of marketing and communications professionals, but it's in the long-term interests of the sector to become more commercially sustainable and stand on its own two feet. (And don't worry, subsidies aren't going away completely....)

Talk of subsidies leads me to the invisible snake. Another beautiful analogy came from David Adams of Wilmott Dixon. He suggested that the world of Green Deal and ECO is like a game of Snakes and Ladders, and that the changes to ECO announced in December were like the snake we didn't know existed.

As for the intimate encounters, it turns out that Greg Barker has had a Green Deal Assessment done, and that he's watched a few in action. And he described it as "intimate". His point was a broader one about the value of the Assessment in raising awareness of your energy choices at home; it was great to see attention and credit being given to this stage of the process.

Away from the analogies, some key themes emerged from the discussion:

- Creating demand for the underlying energy efficiency offer remains a challenge. Perhaps we thought we were fixing the problem of demand by reducing the barriers associated with finance. But the lack of demand lingers and could cripple the sector and the Green Deal as a mechanism. Now, perhaps, we can really engage with this as a marketing issue, understanding more about how and why people improve their homes and how energy efficiency and microgeneration can fit within their thought processes.

- Creating scale affordably. We could try and scale the market by increasing subsidy - except that money for subsidies is hard to find either from Treasury or as contributions on bills. So creating scale has to be done in a way which taps into private finance. And it has to be done by creating demand (see above!).

- I mentioned the transition of the insulation industry. Another point that came up was around how we value insulation. For such a long time, it's been cheap, or even free, making it appear like a low-cost commodity. Now that the offer is changing and people are having to contribute the true costs - or use more expensive solutions in solid-walled properties - it's hard for the sector to make the case to customers.

- Complexity kills. Anything that can be done to streamline the service and the offer to customers has to be beneficial. The leg work of picking up Green Deal or ECO or cashback or whatever should happen behind the scenes, so that the householder is presented with a range of measures and a simple cost equation. The more subsidies, bonuses, targeted incentives etc that we add to the mix, the more we risk befuddling the one person that we really need on our side: the customer.

Plenty of talking points and some great debate, so thanks again to UK-GBC for organising the event. Let us know what you think by tweeting us: @se2limited.