Warm Homes: Campaigning for Warm Homes that don’t cost the earth
Andy Evans gave a talk at our March Green Fair about the FoE Warm Homes campaign. FoE both nationally and locally has concerns about the energy efficiency of our homes. He started with some background information about the problem. Twenty five percent of UK CO2 emissions from our homes and we have one of the highest home emission rates in Europe. This is partly due to having an aging housing stock and partly because of poor building regulation standards.
One of FoE’s concerns resonates with that of Insulate Britain. We have energy efficiency rating scales from A to G and the government has a target that by the middle of the next decade for homes to be C rated or above but we are due to miss this target at current rates.
Nationally the average rating is a D with privately rented homes being of the most concern. The underlying causes for other areas with the low scores is social deprivation and elderly people in reduced circumstances living in large homes. In the North West we are higher polluters than average.
To address this, LCR gained a £60 million grant to upgrade homes a couple of years ago. This is a positive scheme but at best it will only help a few tens of thousand homes. Also, most of this has been spent on solar panels. A more effective use of the money would be to insulate homes – lofts, walls and floor insulation so that homes retain heat. It has been estimated that the South of Wirral will need to spend £12 million per year between now and the middle of the next decade at 2021 prices to get emissions to C rating.
The Foe political element is to engaging the local council in doing something to help private landlords to improve their efficiency rating. This is something that LCC is currently putting in additional funding to support the infrastructure around achieving this.
Andy mentioned that at a national level, it could be more effective in the longer run to spend some of the money they are currently using to subsidize the cost of heating homes to insulate them instead.
FoE are currently engaged in local awareness raising about energy efficiency issues and the measures we can all take to insulate our homes, the benefits and the cost, grants available to support them. FoE is working with Schools, faith groups community groups and social media to promote this. For people on benefits there is a scheme called eco plus. Andy’s full talk is available below
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