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- #CRC David Cameron briefed on concerns over green deal for homeowners http://t.co/rdX5pLla #news
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Posts Tagged ‘carbon emission reductions’
Hertford-based Riversmead Housing Association has called for “considerable changes” to Government’s Green Deal scheme, to help it support the poorest of its tenants.
Under the Green Deal, householders deemed as most in need of home improvements like loft and wall insulation in order to reduce energy bills, will be able to apply for money from a new Affordable Warmth Target fund.
However, the money will only be available to those who own or rent their home privately despite some of the cash originally coming affordable housing tenants’ energy bills.
The Affordable Warmth Target is an obligation on energy suppliers to reduce the heating bills of those most vulnerable to cold.
Riversmead’s Director of Housing Services, Chris Wright, said: “While we agree with the key principles of the Government’s Green Deal proposal, we feel that considerable changes are needed to make sure social rented tenants are not excluded.
Shropshire Council’s Cabinet approved a plan this week to install up to 30 solar photovoltaic (PV) installations on council owned buildings.
Councillors approved the £2.5 million investment which would produce 3,200 to 39,600 kilowatt hours of electricity each year, and generate annual income for the council under the ‘feed-in tariff’ (FIT) scheme.
For the council this will also achieve a reduction in its carbon emissions footprint, further saving on its ‘carbon tax’ liability under the CRC Energy Efficiency scheme, a Government initiative aimed at improving energy efficiency and cutting emissions in large public and private sector organisations. If all of the proposed schemes gain planning consent and Distribution Network Operators approval, they could cumulatively save 500 tonnes CO2 annually.
The Government had proposed dropping the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) payment by 50%, ie from 43.3 pence per kilowatt hour to 21 pence per kilowatt hour for 4 kilowatt power systems, with effect from 12 December 2011. That proposal has been ruled unlawful by the courts, but it is still expected to be introduced in the near future when the scheme is reviewed again.
UK supermarket Tesco has ditched its carbon reduction plan four years after pledging to label all of its 70,000 items with the accreditation.
Tesco has been featuring the Carbon Trust’s carbon reduction label on products since 2007, but is now saying the plan is too time-consuming and costly.
It expected other retailers to follow their lead giving the label “critical mass but it hasn’t happened”.
The company claims each product’s footprint takes several months to calculate; or about 250 years’ worth of research to ensure everything was labelled.
The decision comes as Tesco was ranked 93 out of over 2000 participants in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Scheme in the UK last year.
Sir Terry Leahy, then-CEO of Tesco, hailed the decision as the start of a “revolution in green consumption” when it launched in 2007 to much fanfare, despite fellow retailers being dubious about the extent of research involved in the scheme.
2012 is set to be a monumental year for Britain. Of course we are looking forward to the diamond jubilee and the Olympics, but it’s also the year in which we’ll launch the pioneering green deal, unleashing real competitive forces in the energy efficiency market.
Attracting more investment than ever before, the green deal will be the biggest home energy improvement programme of modern times, to tackle our draughty and expensive-to-heat housing stock.
In a world of increasing prices, market volatility and reliance on imports, we simply cannot afford to be wasteful with energy. Our homes are among the most inefficient in Europe and up to 4.1m households live in fuel poverty in England alone.
The time has come for a radical new approach to home energy improvement, moving away from pepper potting individual measures to whole house or property solutions.
On Tuesday we’re launching a YouTube video to explain the massive opportunity the green deal presents to industry and to businesses and people managing their energy bills. The vision is an ambitious and far-reaching one, putting the consumer in charge, with nationwide brands, small local businesses and community organisations competing to deliver the best offers. Competing not just on price but on quality and service and all underpinned by the highest standards.
New figures have placed Manchester City Council in the top five per cent of organisations across the country who have taken early action to monitor and reduce their carbon emissions.
The first annual Carbon Reduction Performance league table places the City Council in joint 88th place with neighbouring Salford City Council, out of more than 2,100 organisations which signed up to the government’s Carbon Reduction Performance scheme last year.
This means that Manchester and Salford together took joint third place of all the organisations across Greater Manchester which were part of the scheme.
Manchester Metropolitan University came in at number 59 and Kellogg’s was named at 90th, but joint first place went to Manchester United Limited.
Only three other local authorities across the country were placed higher than Manchester City Council, these were the Greater London Authority, Preston City Council and Blackpool Borough Council.
Some of the work the City Council has done this year to reduce its own emissions includes installing smart meters, voltage optimizers and low-carbon lighting.
Local builders could still face being squeezed out of the Green Deal market unless the Government ensures that small local building companies have an equal opportunity to offer Green Deal finance to their customers, warns the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) in response to today’s launch of the Government’s Green Deal consultation paper.
Brian Berry, Director of External Affairs at the FMB said:
“The Green Deal offers an enormous opportunity to transform the nation’s building stock to make it greener and more energy efficient as well as help generate thousands of new jobs in the building industry. It’s great news that the Government has listened to us and recognizes that SME builders are in direct contact with householders and are therefore well placed to advise householders on specific works that might be appropriate under the Green Deals. However, that potential is at risk if small building firms can only offer Green Deal finance by tying themselves to major companies. The danger is that the large energy and utility companies will hoover up the Green Deal market and squeeze out local builders which is very bad news both for the building industry and local economies. “
Video conferencing in the NHS is not only saving staff and patients time and money but is making inroads into the organisation’s huge carbon footprint.
The carbon footprint of NHS England was calculated to be 21m tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2010 – more than some entire countries. Among the measures proposed in last year’s NHS Carbon Reduction Strategy to address this issue was a reduction in travel-related greenhouse gas emissions, which account for about a fifth of the total. The figure is so high because, traditionally, clinical processes require patients and staff to meet face to face.
But a pilot scheme run by the NHS N3 network – the secure broadband service that connects 1.3 million NHS employees in England and Scotland – has already cut business mileage and emissions by providing high definition video conferencing as an alternative to traditional meetings.
N3′s Managed Video Conferencing Service, launched last year, has already achieved savings of more than £1m in the pilot trusts and reduced the NHS’s greenhouse gas emissions by 150 tonnes. Video conferencing is used to link staff and patients remotely, and has been of particular use in connecting consultants working in multidisciplinary teams, such as cancer networks or stroke clinics.
ASDA has joined the Freight Transport Association’s Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme which now represents more than 50,000 commercial vehicles.
Chris Hall, national transport manager for ASDA, said: “We continue to drive the focus into producing fewer, friendlier and cheaper miles and are delighted to be involved in this scheme. The opportunity to use this scheme to further develop our collaborative relationships in the industry and to set our agenda in relation to fleets and fuels of the future is vitally important.”
Members of the scheme provide fuel usage, fleet and activity data to help paint an accurate picture of the carbon footprint of the logistics sector.
Scheme members commit at a senior director level to participate in the scheme and to have their data independently verified by the FTA as part of the reporting process.