Homes old and new leaking costly heat
TWO pairs of socks, a T-shirt, a smart shirt, a jumper, some slippers and occasionally a body warmer. It’s not a shopping list or the start of a collection for refugees, it’s what I have been wearing to work each and every day.
With all that clobber, it sounds like I work outside, which I don’t, or that I’ve moved to the Arctic, which I haven’t. But I do work from home, and with the price of utilities lately, I have developed an aversion to excessive use of my central heating when it’s just me sat at a desk in one room.
The fact that I have a job which is especially sedentary does not help, as typing on a keyboard doesn’t often generate a lot of warmth.
But the real problem, as I suspect it could be for much of the nation, is that my home is not particularly energy efficient.
It’s not that I haven’t tried: I have double glazing, a relatively new and efficient boiler, piles of that yellow insulation in the loft... but when you live in an ageing Victorian home, you are always fighting a losing battle.
With much of the country’s stock of housing built with a bygone era in mind – think of all the unused fireplaces across the nation – maybe this is not too surprising.
But what does surprise and disappoint in equal measure is when you find newer homes that are not much better in terms of energy efficiency.
Despite technology having moved on significantly since Victorian days, modern homes are still relatively poor at retaining the heat which is now created not from fires but gas boilers and central heating systems.
The problem is that the gas we use to heat our homes has rocketed in price, in part due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so our collective costs are soaring. Yet it could have been so much different.
In 2006, then Chancellor Gordon Brown unveiled plans to make every new home carbon neutral by 2016 – homes would generate as much of their energy, through renewable sources, as they would use in heat, light and hot water.
However, the regulations were axed in July 2015 following a famous statement by David Cameron – yes, we have him to blame again – that he would ‘get rid of all the green cr*p’ – in order to bring down energy bills.
In the subsequent years which have followed, thousands of homes have been built to lower standards, energy efficiency subsidies have been slashed, and onshore wind was effectively banned.
Early this year, an analysis said that, as a nation, our bills are £2.5bn higher as a result of these policies, while that figure is likely to be greater still as global instability has led to even higher gas prices.
With residents facing soaring bills as well as waking up to the facts of climate change, it seems to have come down to our local authorities, of all people, to take the bull by the horns.
Joint proposals announced this week have declared that new homes in Plymouth, South West Devon and the South Hams will have to be built with environmental considerations in mind – though whether this goes as far as making them carbon neutral is yet to be established.
I can only salute our councils for stepping up and trying to bring in the type of policy which should have been fulfilled long ago by central Government. But whether such a policy will be able to be applied, and not watered down by developers with an eye only on their profit margins, remains to be seen.
For now, it seems like the more likely reaction to our cost of living crisis by the Government is to give us a rebate on our council tax, instead of bringing in meaningful measures.
I’m not sure it will stretch to solar panels though, so maybe I will get some more pairs of socks.
In a Victorian home, you are fighting a losing battle. But newer homes are not much better