Faced with ever-worsening news about the effects of climate-change, Greener living is well and truly on the political agenda at the moment. Often, though, implementing greener practise at home level can be confusing, costly or unfeasible.
Climate change presents a serious and immediate problem. The UK has already committed to cut emissions by a level of 34% before 2020, a promise made in 1990.
With this target in mind, a new strategy put forward by the Department of Energy and Climate Change aims to make it far easier for us to adapt our homes to suit energy criteria. There might even be some money it for us!
Ed Miliband, the government’s Energy and Climate secretary, hopes that “The Warm Homes, Greener Homes Strategy will remove the deterrent of upfront costs and reduce the hassle of the move to greener living.”
Working on a ‘pay as you save’ basis, the new strategy intends to reward green practise, rather than imposing punishments for failure to meet requirements. Milliband hopes that this will help create a “new alliance between energy companies and local authorities to help people in their communities, as well as moves to encourage landlords to stop ignoring energy wastage in their properties”.
Local authorities and energy companies are being encouraged to work together in helping consumers switch to greener styles of living. Specifically, the strategy proposes that 7 million eco upgrades will be carried out by 2020. Eco upgrades cover a wide range of the most important energy-saving criteria.
Often, energy-saving changes can be made for small cost. Insulating lofts and cavities, for example, can usually be done cheaply and painlessly. Insulated houses require internal heating less often. Resulting energy bills can be far lower. ‘Warm homes, green homes’ is the driving message issued by the Department of Energy and Climate, but this could also include a third message: ‘richer homes’.
In fact, figures published alongside this strategy suggest that savings could be as high as £380 per year. Well insulated homes will help achieve lower emissions as a country, but should also save homeowners considerable amount of money.
Other advantages of green changes on the consumer level are also highlighted. Such large scale changes would naturally create jobs. 7 million houses cannot benefit from eco upgrades without the workforce to carry out such work. In fact, the need could be high enough to create 65,000 jobs in the green homes industry.
Those with serious need for help in this area will benefit from specific assistance. Social housing is set to receive comprehensive eco upgrades from energy companies, including ‘smart meters’ which provide readouts of household energy usage for easier self-regulation.
Even with the appeal of increased efficiency leading to lower bills, making changes can still present difficulties. For those in owned housing, loans will now be offered specifically for green changes to ease the procurement of finance.Similarly, difficulties which often arise with landlords, where tenants have little leverage concerning changes to the property, will be specifically addressed in this new scheme.
Whatever your opinion on climate change and possible responses to it, improving the energy efficiency of your property makes sense. The ‘Warm Homes, Greener Homes’ strategy should make doing so easier than ever before. Remember to take out home and contents insurance to save more money.
How can insurance make our lives easier? This can happen in many ways and it begins with putting the policy holder’s mind at ease. We all have expensive or treasured possessions we would rather keep in our possession than lose to a thief or see it damaged at the hands of a clumsy individual. However, beyond proofing everything and going out of the way to install high tech security systems, insurance is a more manageable way of ensuring that life can return to normal should an unnecessary disruption occur. With insurance, you can sleep easy knowing that there will always be an easy solution to the problem.