There has been
massive interest from across the UK
in St Albans District Council’s “eco-house” retro-fitted energy efficient
council house in Smallford, St Albans. 

Now the Liberal Democrats have announced
radical new national proposals that if adopted would make local privately-owned
homes more environmentally-friendly too and cut local resident’s fuel bills.

The Liberal
Democrat plans would:

·       
More than halve the amount of
polluting carbon emissions produced by homes in St Albans
and the surrounding villages;

·       
Make home insulation more
affordable for local people;

·       
Reduce fuel bills, lifting
pensioners and others on low incomes out of fuel poverty.

This will be
achieved by:

·       
Setting tough new GreenHouse
standards for new homes which would cut fuel bills and soon pay for
themselves;

·       
Creating a system of ‘energy
mortgages’, so the cost of energy efficiency measures can be repaid over the
long-term, using the money saved from lower energy bills;

·       
Placing new incentives on
energy companies, so they maximise their profits by helping their customers
become more energy efficient.

Improving the
energy efficiency of homes here in St Albans and across the nation is crucial
to combating climate change, as home energy consumption produces over a quarter
of all of our carbon emissions in the UK.

In 2004, the
latest year for which we have figures, homes here in St
Albans district produced an astonishing 372 thousand tonnes
of carbon dioxide. That’s 2.9 tonnes per person just for being at
home – before any car or air travel!  I
have already published my own energy audit on this website, and figures for my
own family’s domestic energy consumption make for sobering reading.

 I am really proud
of the example set by St Albans with the
Smallford eco-house.  It has shown what
can be done.  Now this new package of
proposals the Liberal Democrats are putting forward would reduce carbon
emissions from existing private homes by more than 60 per cent, and from newly
built houses by 95 per cent, by 2050. That is more carbon than is produced
annually by all the cars on Britain’s
roads. Locally it would mean 264,000 fewer tonnes of polluting carbon
dioxide from homes across St Albans district.

Millions of
people struggle to pay their fuel bills each winter, yet are unable to afford
improvements on their homes to make them more energy efficient. Creating a
national scheme of ‘energy mortgages’ will allow people to use the money saved
from having an energy efficient home to invest in the necessary improvements.

People are paying
high fuel bills because their homes too easily lose energy. Currently, British
homes waste an average of £385 a year in energy compared with Sweden. So our
proposals will help people save the environment and cut bills – it’s a win-win
for everyone.