Green Gordon? I Don't Think So.

Gordon Brown needs to do two things if he is really to “help householders go green”. First he needs to provide substantial sums in energy efficiency grants for homeowners, tenants and landlords so that they have an incentive to replace inefficient boilers, install double glazing and fit insulation. The £100m he promised yesterday via the Energy Saving Trust amounts to about £4 per household in the UK. By contrast, maintaining Trident costs £280m a year, the UK’s annual road building programme is just over £1bn, and Terminal Five at Heathrow has cost £4bn.

The second thing he needs to do is to introduce a national requirement for that anyone applying for planning permission to refurbish or extend properties has to put in energy efficiency measures in the whole property. This can be done via the Local Development Frameworks which all councils are currently preparing. Only if we use carrots and sticks will we seriously be able to deal with the problem of our existing energy inefficient housing stock.