Insulate a home and keep someone warm for life
By Mick Oliver - 05/03/2008
The front page article on February's Mature Times reports Steve Webb’s appeal for a dramatic improvement in home insulation and energy efficiency - yet the article (in common with most press coverage) then goes on to ignore this, and to restrict its comment to fuel poverty and pricing.
In Britain each winter we hear this concern about heating bills, the incidence of hypothermia among the old and the poor, and whether winter heating supplements on pensions are adequate. The Arctic Circle passes through Finland, yet they have no such concerns. They recognise the difficulty their situation presents and insulate their buildings well. Historically the standard of insulation in British buildings has been poor, and it is only recently that this situation has started to improve. One report as long ago as 1985 quoted a resident from an inner-city housing estate saying “people here have to live in a mistake”, where “heating is all-electric and heat loss is excessive resulting in large fuel bills and frequently debt.”
The consequences of badly insulated buildings are a high use of energy, high expense and possibly debt for those who have to use it – they are in effect heating the universe. However this energy is generated it will cause a correspondingly high production of carbon dioxide and other combustion products, with the global consequences we all know about. In Britain about 50% of all the energy we use is used in buildings, (with the remaining 50% being used in industry and transport combined). About one-sixth of the total energy (or one-third of that used in buildings) is used for space-heating and water-heating.
There may be some short-term merit in winter heating payments or adjustments to fuel pricing, but we have had these short-term measures since 1985 or earlier. There is little point in concentrating our efforts on these if we ignore the long term benefits of the actions which Steve Webb recommends.
Christian Aid once had a slogan: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for life.”
Can we draw the parallel: “Give people a winter heating payment and you heat them for a heating season, insulate their home and you heat them for life”.