UK homes to be offered eco-makeover

More than a quarter of UK homes are to be offered an eco-makeover, in a government bid to reduce household greenhouse gas emissions by a third before 2020.

Seven million homes will receive the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) makeover, which will include insulation installation, and free advice on small-scale electricity generation.

Low-carbon heating systems, including wood-burning boilers and solar panels, will also be encouraged.

Households account for 27% of the UK’s carbon emissions, according to Friends of the Earth (FotE).

The environmental campaigning charity supports the government’s measures, but is concerned they don’t go far enough.

Ed Matthew, head of UK climate change at FotE, warned that if the UK fails to “cut emissions from homes radically we have got no hope of achieving our climate change targets.”

He added: “My concern is they will not be investing enough money to take these homes to a high enough energy efficiency standard to insulate them from rising fuel prices.”

In 2007, Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute reported that only four in every 1,000 UK homes have “low-and-zero-carbon-technologies” installed.