Is this housing’s path to net-zero carbon emissions?
The prime minister’s ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution is aimed at achieving ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2050. In the housing sector alone the challenge is enormous: just to reach the government’s interim target for housing by 2035 means retrofitting 1.2 million UK homes every year to high standards. Will the government’s plan […]
The Budget was a kick-start, but we need to accelerate on home energy upgrades
In his summer statement Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced over £3 billion of funding to create green jobs, most of it focussing on the private sector where a Green Homes Grant will pay £2 for every £1 spent by owners or landlords on energy efficiency, up to a limit of £5,000. For those on low incomes, […]
Our homes are wasting energy on a prolific scale
Do you remember when housing associations were falling over each other to prove how ‘green’ they were? But since the recession and David Cameron reportedly telling his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” the funding has been cut and the social sector’s priorities have changed. Yet we all know that the linked […]
Happy new year
We’re behaving as if we had 1.5 earths available to us, and our behaviour is getting worse. Every year the Global Footprint Network calculates the date on which people use up one year’s worth of the planet’s biocapacity. In 2013 we achieved this on 20 August. This year we’ve done it a day earlier. In […]
If we don’t put the environment high on our list of concerns, it will
This longer than usual post is one of a series of essays on policy themes published by the Chartered Institute of Housing. Since it was elected on the promise of becoming the ‘greenest government ever’, the Guardian’s green-o-meter has been monitoring the coalition’s progress. Back in early 2011, it was still doing pretty well, but […]
Energy efficiency – are government policies working?
The government wants homes to be energy efficient and to cut fuel poverty – but are its policies working? It sometimes feels that there is more heat than light in government policies on energy efficiency. The wholesale changes made by the coalition mean that it’s been difficult to work out what impact policies are having. […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on