Whilst all the actions we can take to reduce our CO2 emissions are important, many of them have a relatively small impact on the 6 tonnes per year of CO2 emissions generated by the average UK household. Upgrading your fridge to one with an A+ energy rating will for instance save around 64kg of CO2 emissions per year according to the Energy Saving Trust.

This is not the case for CO2 tip of the day number 19. Insulating your house properly can save over a tonne of CO2 emissions every year - and dramatically reduce your heating bill at the same time. These figures are based on improvements made to a badly insulated 3 bedroom house, but anyone living in any form of accommodation of any size can reduce their emissions by ensuring their home is well insulated. The UK has a terrible record on insulation, so (forgive me for dreaming a moment) if we all followed as many as possible of the following recommendations, the effect on our CO2 emissions would be dramatic:

  1. If you have a loft, insulate it. Installing insulation 270mm thick or more could save a tonne of yearly C02 emissions in a 3 bedroom house.
  2. Wall insulation can have an even more dramatic effect. The cheapest approach is cavity wall insulation, where a special product is pumped into the cavity between the inner and outer walls of your house (most houses built since the 1920’s have cavity walls). This can save anything up to a tonne of emissions and costs around £500 for a three bedroom house.
  3. More expensive and more complicated, but with a possible emissions reduction of up to 2.5 tonnes is external or internal wall insulation.
  4. Double glazing is no longer a taboo subject either. There are now high quality solutions for every style of house, with the possibility to save around 750kg of CO2 emissions.
  5. Most of us have curtains, but when do we close them? More often than not, when we go to bed! During winter, close your curtains as soon as possible when it gets dark, in order to keep a maximum of heat in. If today you have blinds, but you are looking to improve your heating efficiency, it is well worth considering curtains.
  6. Draught proof your doors, etc. As much as 20% of heat loss in a typical home is via ventilation and draughts, but this is an easy to solve issue. Any number of products exist for blocking draughts on the sides and bottoms of doors, and equally around less obvious areas like cat flaps, or bathroom ventilation.

There is much discussion at the moment around the best way to encourage consumers to reduce personal CO2 emissions, with all the political parties weighing in with their latest proposals. One point that has emerged in various surveys, is that the public is more likely react to a ‘carrot’ approach than a ’stick’ approach - that is to say, most of us agree that we will work on this problem if we are incentivised to do so, rather than if we are punished for not doing so.

To my mind, insulation is an area where incentives could easily be put in place, with some form of reduction in stamp duty or even tax relief on mortgages for houses with low emissions. In spite of the current rumblings in the financial markets, the UK housing market remains strong, and people move relatively regularly, making this an incentive for important improvements that could have a major effect on emissions, and that could have a real and immediate effect on UK CO2 emissions.