It’s time to talk energy

LAST Friday, I was given an opportunity to speak at the Wokingham Positive Difference business networking event. Among some excellent presentations on corporate social responsibility, I was reminded of a piece of advice that I haven’t heard in a long time.

“The best time to plant a tree,” the speaker told us, “was 10 years ago. The second-best time is right now.”

It isn’t tree planting season at the moment, but those words got me thinking, so much so that

I recycled the phrase at least three more times that day.

In the fight against climate change there are many things that I wish we had started doing ten years ago.

We all know that as a council we have taken some fantastic strides forward in terms of increasing our recycling rates over the last few years.

We have worked hard on tree planting, especially around our new housing areas, we have opened up some fantastic new parks and green spaces and recently we have introduced things like the recycled plastic curb stones as well.

An area where we need to make a lot of progress quickly is in energy, both in its usage and in its generation. A lot has been published about Wokingham Borough Council building our own solar farms, but this is just one of many initiatives in the works that collectively will transform energy generation and consumption across our borough.

I will be presenting one of these programs at the Executive Meeting tonight.

The Help to Heat and ECO scheme seeks to use money from the Energy Company Obligation fund and use it to pay for measures that will improve the energy efficiency of up to four hundred homes across Wokingham Borough this year.

Wokingham Council currently has 949 properties that are energy rated in bands E, F&G. This means that they are not very energy efficient at all. Older, private properties add almost 900 more properties to this number.

Unfortunately, many of these houses are occupied by some of the eldest, most vulnerable, most at risk or lowest income residents of our Borough.

For many of these households’ winter brings with it a choice between ‘Heating and Eating’. This is called ‘Fuel Poverty’ and it affects approximately 10.3% of all households in the UK.

Fortunately, with this energy-based ECO scheme we can help to alleviate the impact of fuel poverty for many of our residents, by funding and installing energy efficiency measures that can help dramatically cut the cost of heating those properties. If successful we will hopefully be able to help more households next year, and into the future.

This is the first of many social energy programmes that will be announced over the coming months.

Don’t forget that the Government’s Green Home Grants are available to homeowners now. You can assess your eligibility and understand what improvements can be made at your property as well as apply for funding by visiting www.simpleenergyadvice.org.uk.