Battle against climate change begins at home

The Conservatives' Green Deal would help to greatly reduce the 27% of UK carbon emissions that comes from households, writes shadow housing minister, Grant Schapps

Grant Shapps
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 11.49 GMT

Next month world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to thrash out a deal to tackle climate change. Reaching agreement at this UN summit will be the key to addressing one of the defining challenges of our century. But the hard work isn't just setting those targets, it's reaching them. Each country will have to set their own priorities to reduce emissions and here in the UK, we'll need to look close to home.
Twenty-seven per cent of all the carbon emissions in this country actually come from the homes we all live in. So it's clear that improving the carbon footprint of our housing stock is crucial if we are to meet our legally binding carbon reduction targets.
Part of the solution lies in making the new homes we build as energy efficient as possible and I enthusiastically endorse the concept of building all new homes at zero carbon. However, the fact remains that 85% of the housing stock that we'll be living in by 2050 already exists.
So, there is a simple and, once again, inconvenient truth – greening-up the 25m existing homes is essential. The efficiency of these properties has been largely ignored thus far.
Under a Conservative government however we will introduce the Green Deal. Every household in this country will be entitled to an allowance of up to £6,500 for energy improvements. Utilities companies, charities, social landlords will improve homes with no cost to the homeowner.
Healthy competition in retro-fits will create 70,000 new jobs and a £2.5bn marketplace, while consumers save money and most importantly 9.4m tonnes of carbon emissions are avoided. It's a great scheme, but that doesn't necessarily lead to great take-up. The key is to create a trigger for people to easily and quickly sign up for retro-fitting.
Imagine if you could walk into your favourite store, buy some clothes or do your weekly shop and then at the checkout, as you hand over your clubcard, the cashier offers you the prospect of permanently lower utility bills. There's nothing to pay, now or later. Your home will be retro-fitted and all you'll notice is that it costs less to heat and power it. Unless you enjoy burning money, you're going to love the Green Deal. Behind the scenes this retailer is working with the banking sector to fund the £6,500 spent on retro-fitting your home, resulting in home improvements like energy-efficient lighting, modern boilers, cavity and loft insulation.
Under a Conservative government you won't have to imagine this scheme, because the likes of Marks & Spencer and Tesco are already interested and more providers of all types will want to get in on the act. In future you'll be able to pick-up your groceries and green-up your home at the same time.
But living a greener life isn't just about the physical changes you can make to your home; it's about how you live in it too.
Even without retro-fitting our properties, there are plenty of things we can do to influence our energy consumption behaviour. Last year I installed a small device which sits on the window sill in our kitchen and constantly reports how much electricity we're using as a household.
This particular energy monitor is called a Wattson and it expresses itself £s sterling. Worryingly it let us know when we switched everything off, we were still spending about £700 per annum on powering our home.
That's the fridge, the freezer and those TVs and chargers which all prefer to go on standby, rather than off.
With the kettle and toaster on for a cuppa and sandwich the clever little monitor told us that our electricity bill could hit £7,000 per annum.
Now rather than filling the kettle to the top, we put just enough water in for cups we're making. Meanwhile, the kids spend their time hunting round the house searching out left on lights and Nintendo DSs which are charged but still plugged into the mains. Devices like this can really alter habits.
For the first time we also became aware that a TV or computer monitor left on standby costs around 15p per day.
With two, three or maybe four screens in the house that's a couple of hundred pounds per year.
Slashing the 27% of carbon currently emitted from our homes is a big ask. The Green Deal enables a combination of the physical and the behavioural changes needed to make a big difference straight away. It removes barriers currently preventing a domestic green revolution. It gives us a significantly better chance of meeting our Kyoto obligations.
As we head towards the Copenhagen summit the Conservative party understands that the solution to the global challenge of climate change truly begins at home.
• Grant Shapps is the Conservative shadow housing minister