An Insulation Taskforce
Millions of people are living in homes that are ridiculously expensive to heat. Green councillor Jamie Osborne describes how a Green Party administration in Norwich would tackle this issue
Millions simply cannot afford to heat their homes to a decent level. And that is because, with the UK having some of the oldest and least well-insulated housing stock in Europe, heating our homes is more or less a vain effort as the warmth goes out the roof, windows, doors, and walls.
The additional energy demand that having poorly-insulated houses creates (people need to use more gas to heat their home because half of it leaks out) is one of the factors that contributes to the current energy crisis.
Energy analysts ECIU estimate that slow action on insulating homes and fitting renewable energy in 2022 meant bills were more than £1,000 higher than they could have been.
Fuel poverty campaigners and researchers have pointed this out on a national level. They make the very common sense argument that if the Government is paying £80bn to help people with their energy bills – only for the energy they are paying for to be wasted through leaks – then in the interests of efficiency (let alone the health of householders) they should also invest in insulating homes.
The Government should be providing grants to help households with the cost of improving their home’s energy-efficiency. That would be money well-spent, improving cost ratios, as well as improving people’s health and creating green jobs. Investment in insulation is an investment to reduce waste.
Why the Government has been so slow and so lacking in ambition to address this need is a question that frankly boggles the mind.
But this lack of ambition is equally the case at local councils. I have spent the last two years at Norfolk County Council arguing for the retrofitting of houses – that is, insulation combined with installing renewable energy to bring bills down even further – to be a priority for all the councils in Norfolk.
Local authorities need to be investing in the training programmes needed to skill up an army of retrofitting workers who can tackle this problem.
They need to be working with housing associations, architects, construction firms and renewable energy installers to be finding ways of getting economies of scale and making upgrades to Norfolk homes more affordable.
They need to be proactively seeking finance and creating funding streams to enable retrofitting at scale, and they need to create the economic framework to ensure that the benefits from that work stay in the local economy.
Doing these things will not only help to permanently reduce fuel poverty and improve people’s health, it is also essential to address climate change.
Energy use in buildings account for about 23% of Norfolk’s greenhouse gas emissions, and we cannot cut that pollution without upgrading the efficiency of our housing.Looked at from any angle, investing in improving our housing is a win-win-win: for the climate, for the economy, and for health and fuel poverty.
That is why for this year’s County Council Budget, Green Party councillors are proposing the establishment of a retrofit taskforce with proper funding. The taskforce would focus local politicians’ minds and provide the investment to help make all our homes warm, clean, and cheap to run. It is a burning issue that Norfolk cannot afford to ignore.