Reducing energy consumption has to be part of a sensible strategy. In this respect the quality of the housing stock in Britain is absolutely appalling. Go around any housing estate built in the 1970's or earlier, and you will find large numbers of houses with no proper roof or wall insulation, single-glazed windows and horrendously inefficient heating and hot water systems. It was just the same in the office I worked in at the University of Leeds (single glazing, freezing cold draughts from badly fitting sash windows in the winter, poor insulation in the loft conversions, so the rooms on the top floor were absolutely boiling in the summer....). You would think that an organisation run by supposedly intelligent people would be able to do their sums and work out that insulation is a worthwhile investment and actually makes the working environment more pleasant, but these issues just don't seem to have penetrated the conciousness of most decision makers in Britain.
Now, you might think that global warming will make this problem go away (warmer climate = less need for heating). Unfortunately if average temperatures go up much in Britain, the response of many people will be to install air conditioning.....which uses more energy. It will never occur to them that decent insulation, controlled ventilation and heat exchangers could solve the problem without using any net energy at all.
Many houses out in the country here in Sweden are heated either by direct biofuel (wood pellets), which has a zero CO2 loading and is also extremely efficient (and because the pellets are made locally, the transport energy cost is low) or by electricty coupled with ground circulation heat-exchanger systems. With a heat exchanger you get approx. 3kW heat for every 1kW electricity used and as a bonus, half of the electricity in Sweden is generated by hydropower. Coupled with much better insulation, it means that a house here in Sweden uses less energy than a similar house in Britain, even though average temperatutes are much lower (-30 C is not uncommon and -15C is average for much of the winter) and the average CO2 loading is much less. Gas (the fuel of choice in Britain for domestic heating) may be efficient at the point of use, but it of course is a non-renewable resource and requires a huge distribution infrastructure.
In Swedish towns, many houses are heated directly by piped hot water, with a large amount of the energy coming from either industry or rubbish incinerators. For example, in the nearest town to where I live there is a big steel works and a huge heat exchanger captures the low-grade energy from the cooling system of the rolling mill. This in turn powers the domestic heating for a substatial proportion of the houses in the town. That's win-win for everybody. The steel mill sells on the energy and reduces it's energy cost, the people of the town get cheap heating and the environment wins out because of efficient energy use.
So...the first thing the decision makers of Britain need to do is to go and look at some other European countries and realise how hopeless energy policy has been in Britain. Then they need to get going on a range of measures to encourage energy efficiency. For example, instead of handing out winter fuel allowances to pensioners, send folks round to insulate their houses better. Make insulation materials zero-rated for VAT, etc. etc.
Mark
