Street leads the way to greener living

Tag : peapods

Bethany Lewis is a nippy defender for Farsley Vixens under-11football XI, but for the past six months her sharp eyes have beenfixed on a mantelpiece digital monitor at her home in Leeds.
Its flickering numbers show the cost of the household's power,minute by minute, and if it climbs up beyond a couple of pence anhour, Bethany wants to know why.
Her vigilance, matched in 63 other homes on eight streets aroundBritain with the word green in their name, underlies a dramaticclaim that simple good housekeeping could save Britain £4.6bnin domestic fuel bills.
"When I come in from school, I check the numbers," thenine-year-old says. "If they've gone up, I go to the telly to seeif it's been left on, so that the video's on standby. If it has,I'll unplug it."
Thousands of similar small acts have put the Lewises' street, GreenLane in the suburb of Cookridge, into the lead in the nationalGreen Streets competition. Halfway through the contest, which beganin January, the gently sloping double row of 1960s terraces, semisand bungalows has cut costs by 29.32%.
Its seven rivals haven't done quite as well - Manchester is bottomwith only 8.56%. But the Institute for Public Policy Research(IPPR) thinktank, which is monitoring the exercise for British Gas,calculates the £4.6bn - and a 20% fall in carbon emissions -from the eight streets' average score.
Energy use is moving rapidly up the political agenda as prices riseand put pressure on household budgets. Only last week one ofBritain's biggest suppliers, EDF Energy, announced that it wasraising gas prices by 22% and electricity by 17%. Its five majorrivals are expected to follow with similar increases in price.
Creative choices
"We need creative approaches to energy efficiency like this, if theUK is to reach its CO2 reduction targets," says Matthew Lockwood,senior fellow in the IPPR's climate team. Bethany's mother Janine,an insurance team leader, agrees - but adds that it isn't rocketscience.
"We've had a new energy-efficient boiler fitted as part of thecompetition," she says, "but what's struck us is that it's ourbehaviour which really makes the difference. Just the simplestthings, like drawing the curtains later at night in the summer andkeeping the lights off. Not putting the children's school uniformin the washing machine every day. Not leaving things on standby."
"And swapping our electric lawnmower for a manual one," adds herhusband Ian, a copytaker with the Press Association. "It's just asgood and it gives me a bit of a workout."
The Lewises have saved 27% on power bills so far - a handsomefigure but one that is dwarfed by the Neysari family at the top ofthe hill. You won't miss their house, say Ian and Janine, becauseit's got great solar panels on the roof. Gleaming in the July sun,they have reduced the last six months' costs by half.
"We're heading for saving £500 on gas alone this year, halfour previous bill," says Rebecca Neysari, an accountant currentlyat home with her hands full with three-year-old Cyrus andone-year-old Kiyana. The contest, which has equipped all 64entrants with energy-efficient technology, has also fitted thehouse with a new water tank and boiler and individual room valveson all central heating radiators.
Friendly competition
Child power rules here, too. "Cyrus is always telling me to turnthings off," says Neysari, wading through a roomful of mostlyclockwork or push-and-pull toys. Group support plays an importantpart too; there's friendly competition between the eighthouseholds, but much more in the way of swapping tips.
"We meet regularly to see how everyone's doing," she says, addingthat the one gizmo nobody in Green Lane likes is the one-cup kettledonated by British Gas. Halfway up the lane, immersed in hergarden's ranks of plump peapods and swelling onions, Shirley Carterdenounces it with vim.
"Hated it, I'm afraid," she admits. "I didn't consider it wasproperly boiled water, just not good enough for a proper cup oftea. I persevered for a while but we've gone back to the oldkettle. But I always put lids on pans now, which we didn't used todo."
She and Neysari share Bethany's fascination with the digitalmonitor, the smallest but most significant of all the extras fittedto the contestants' houses, from Greenway Road in Cardiff toEdinburgh's Colinton Mains Green. "It shoots up when you've gotsomething power-hungry on," Carter says. "Off you go, to find outwhat it is and do something about it."
Her list of tips includes solar-powered lights in the garden - forvegetable-watering at dusk, which was previously, expensively litby electric lamps round the Carters' ornamental pond - and asecurity floodlight over their conservatory. Like Neysari, who nowonly uses her top oven for the children's meals, Shirley is alsodebating the "cooking Scrooge" gambit: turning the oven off five to10 minutes before the end of the recommended cooking period,because it maintains sufficient heat.
Halfway through the competition, the IPPR is publishing three draftrecommendations. In keeping with the Bethany/Cyrus approach, thesuggested reforms are simple.
The first, says Lockwood, is extending the competition, central tothe Green Streets project, by offering £4m annually from theTreasury as prizes for similar inter-town energy-saving contests.Secondly, IPPR suggests recruiting a national force of energyadvisers similar to the British Gas experts who have been attachedto Green Streets.
"It would be impossible to replicate this competition's ratio ofone adviser for eight households," says Lockwood, "but if we hadone for every 20 streets, that would be 10,000 advisers."
IPPR puts the cost at £500m annually, against the£4.6bn saving on national energy costs, which currently totalabout £23bn.
The final reform would repeat on a national scale the £30,000British Gas has given to the eight streets to pay for new equipmentsuch as the Lewises' boiler and the Neysaris' solar panels. Greenmini-mortgages are suggested to fund, for example, a £524package for cavity wall and loft insulation. A three-year loan at a7% rate of interest would be offset by £395 annual savings infuel bills, the thinktank says.
And the whole exercise is not a return to the shivering, primitivepast, according to the Leeds energy adviser, Alan Pickard. "One ofthe most striking things has been how cosy everyone feels becauseof their new insulation," he says. "You don't have to suffer bysaving energy."