EMBRACE GREEN TECHNOLOGY TO TACKLE FUEL POVERTY

AN ESTIMATED 15 million households across the UK will be burdened by higher heating bills this winter as the energy price cap rises. Many of those homes are here in the Liverpool City Region.

This is because gas prices have increased hugely.

Along with the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit, a perfect storm will hit during the winter season. This is bad for wallets but can also, devastatingly, cost lives.

Why is it like this when it’s doesn’t have to be?

Thirteen per cent of households in

Liverpool City Region live in fuel poverty. Families can’t afford to heat their homes properly and have to cope with health problems like asthma triggered by living in damp, cold conditions.

This is miserable for individuals, but also has an impact on the region’s already overstretched health services.

With only 37% of homes currently well insulated in the Liverpool City Region, insufficient insulation is a key part of the problem and it can be fixed.

To protect poorer households from extortionate gas prices and reduce carbon emissions, we also need to rapidly move away from gas-fired boilers and embrace technology like heat-pumps that can do the job more cheaply.

To consign fuel poverty to the history books Friends of the Earth research shows that a whopping 47,535 homes need to be insulated every year within the city region over the next decade.

And at least 27,414 heat-pumps also need to be fitted every year.

There are real economic opportunities here. Proper investment from national government combined with decisive action by regional decision makers, including Mayor Steve Rotheram – who has taken an important step with the securing the North West Green Home Grant programme – could go a long way towards solving unemployment problems as we emerge from the pandemic and secure a greener future for us all.

This is a problem, but it can, and must, be fixed.

Alasdair Roxburgh Director of Communities and Networks Friends of the Earth