Green revolution?

Last week the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called again for a “green revolution” and suggested that the UK could be aiming for an 80% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Hurrah. That sounds promising.

When it came to the CO2 footprint of our houses, he confirmed the commitment to make all new-builds to conform to a zero-emission policy by 2016. That’s good too.

The trouble is that once more we have a set of targets. While the second is achieveable, it’s only going to make a teensy difference to the first. What did he have to say to the vast majority of us here who live in most of Britain’s highly inefficient housing stock? Because unless we do something about that we don’t stand an iceberg’s chance in - well - most places, of meeting that 2050 target.

For us, he offered us a Green Homes Information Hotline. I don’t know what it is about hotlines; they’re usually a sign of a government on the slide. Cones hotline anyone? (Not to mention the fact that this looks suspiciously like announcing something they’ve already done as a “new initiative”).

One thing that’s become more and more obvious while doing this blog is that there is no shortage of excellent information out there already. There are shedloads of excellent sites and bloggers offering great hints and tips.

The problem is not knowing what we to do, but how to get it done. Most people are doing what they can already, turning down thermostats and switching bulbs, but most people feel they don’t have the kind of cash it takes to make old housing stock energy-efficient. On the positive side, Gordon is apparently offering five million homes free or discounted loft or cavity wall insulation. It’s good too that the Government service are offering grants through their Warm Front schemes. But whenever these offers are made, they usually only apply to a very small part of the housing market… usually as part-payments to the elderly and those on benefits. The result is the uptake on that is limited - because it still costs a lot of money to make your home truly energy-efficient.

I’m beginning to think there is a fundamental problem about the idea of offering energy-saving grants principally to those on benefits or the impoverished elderly. Aren’t they the ones who use the least energy?

Surely we should be finding a way to make households that squander the most energy change their ways. These are owned by people who are not going to do anything unless it’s worth their while. For the moment, the economics appear skewed against action. With average households already sitting on tens of thousands of pounds in debt, the savings they will gain from the investment of going carbon neutral don’t look to them to be enough to justify the extra debt.

For me the question the government should be looking at, in an era in which aveage UK debt is running at £19,000 for every man, woman and child in the country - how are you going to get families to shell out £700+ to have an energy-efficient boiler installed? Or £3000 to have a solar water heating system added? Plus the extra several grand to have wall, floor and window insulation upgraded?

Most householders are struggling with the short-term, let alone the longterm. Part of this is just their own lack of imagination, but the fact is, as yet, making old houses energy efficient is perceived as a very expensive business. The government is going to have to change both the perception and the reality of that… and soon.

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This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 11:42 am and filed under Energy saving tips, Carbon footprint calculators, Saving energy, Eco build, Eco politics, Co2 emissions, Eco bloggers. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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