Research Projects

Green Streets

Email this to a friend Print Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit

Contact Email: m.lockwood@ippr.org

Introduction

The final Green Streets report is now available to download.

Emissions from household energy use make up 27 per cent of total UK carbon emissions. Finding ways of cutting these emissions is therefore crucial for tackling climate change, and meeting our emissions reduction targets for 2020 and 2050.

Many ways of reducing household emissions - such as fitting insulation, low-energy light bulbs or more efficient boilers - also save people money in the long run. Some measures, such as switching off unused lights or not leaving appliances on stand-by, cost nothing. Despite these potential gains, getting people to conserve energy is still proving difficult, and both energy companies and government are always looking for new approaches to promote behaviour change.

Energy supplier British Gas launched a unique social experiment called Green Streets to investigate the potential for improving energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions. In Green Streets, BG New Energy identified eight households (a mixture of British Gas and non-British Gas customers) in ‘Green-themed’ streets (‘Green Close’, ‘Green Avenue’, ‘Green Street’ etc) in eight towns and cities across Britain. The householders on these streets had their individual and collective energy efficiency and emissions audited and benchmarked at the start of the project, by trained energy auditors. The householders were then given a set budget to spend on energy efficiency measures, and set a target of 30% reduction of energy and emissions by the end of the experiment.

ippr evaluated the outcome of this exercise. We have provided an independent check on the data, interviewed some of the people taking part in the experiment, analysed the results, and drawn out lessons for policy.

britishgas