The ‘Greener Home Reward’ scheme is available to Barclays residential mortgage customers, who register for the cash reward online and then use the money to pay for a selected home energy efficiency-related improvement.

Borrowers do not have to request additional lending in order to qualify for the Greener Home Reward scheme, with all new and existing residential mortgage customers eligible.

Different sums are available based on the improvement being made. For example, the full £2,000 is available for those looking to install air and ground source heat pumps, or biomass boilers. These cost an average of up to £19,000 and £17,000 respectively.

This drops down to £1,000 for those installing features like solar hot water heating or solar panels, and £500 for homeowners who add floor or cavity wall insulation.

The work needs to be carried out by a Trustmark-registered business or tradesperson, while Barclays said the data and insights it picks up from the pilot will inform its product development of other measures which support home improvements.

‘An immediate reward’ for energy efficiency upgrades

Dr Pete Brooks, behavioural economist at Barclays, said that it’s common for people to prefer smaller, immediate rewards rather than longer pay-offs further down the line, which can cause them to overlook the long-term benefits of such energy efficiency improvements.

He added: “To overcome this, our latest initiative helps provide a more immediate reward to our residential mortgage customers to help with the cost of making energy efficiency-related home improvements.

“Couple this with providing helpful information to consumers to help them make informed choices and we hope to encourage more people to overcome their human biases.”

Just last week Lloyds Banking Group and Octopus announced they had teamed up to offer select mortgage customers £1,000 cashback when installing cheaper and greener air source heat pumps.