Why Labour should make energy efficiency their top infrastructure priority

 Melting into a sweaty puddle in a boiling hot office it’s easy to forget the winter, and the fact that every year, thousands of people die from living in cold homes. But they do, and it’s a national scandal. Millions more can’t afford to keep their homes warm, and suffer not only from the cold, but from the myriad physical and mental health problems that fuel poverty brings.

The UK has some of the worst insulated homes in Europe. So it’s no surprise that as gas prices soar, fuel bills are playing such a significant – and growing – part in the increasing cost-of-living crisis.

The Government has just released its draft fuel poverty strategy in an attempt to deal with this. Long awaited, it comes too little, too late and it’s full of weak targets and caveats. Despite stating that fuel poverty is a priority, the new strategy has neither the vision nor the ambition to deal with the problem.

There is a solution though, and it isn’t rocket science. Making energy efficiency the UK’s top infrastructure priority and embarking on a major, publicly-funded energy efficiency programme to insulate every home in the country, would save the average household £300 on their energy bill and bring millions out of fuel poverty.

But that’s not all. Such a scheme would boost GDP, and modelling shows that the economic benefits would outweigh those of almost any other kind of Government investment. It would also bring money straight back to the treasury – the German KfW Bank’s energy efficiency scheme is estimated to have brought in €3 to €4 in Treasury income for every €1 invested.

A large-scale insulation scheme is the only infrastructure programme that could create jobs in every constituency across the UK: well over 100,000 of them according to analyses. Energy efficiency also significantly increases energy security by reducing fossil fuel imports, and will help us to hit the carbon emissions reduction targets set in the Climate Change Act – Labour’s most important environmental achievement in its last term of office.

It won’t be cheap, and a secure funding stream is absolutely vital for success but the economic policy outlined at last weekend’s National Policy Forum allows a future Labour government to borrow for capital expenditure. And this would not only be a fantastic example of responsible investment that will bring significant economic benefits; it would also prove that Labour is serious about preventing social ills – particularly those which afflict the poor – rather than paying for their effects. Fuel poverty-related disease presents a huge cost to the NHS, and the Chief Medical Officer has said that every £1 spent on energy efficiency would bring about 40p in NHS savings. No one has even tried to quantify the economic cost of work days missed due to fuel poverty-related illnesses, or the cost to society of children failing at school because they keep getting sick and missing lessons, or have nowhere warm to do their homework.

A major insulation programme would do, in spades, everything Infrastructure UK says major investment is meant to, and which the country needs so badly: strengthen the economy, create jobs, and increase living standards. So it was heartening to see Labour Peers officially backing Lord Whitty’s energy efficiency amendments to the Infrastructure Bill just before the summer recess. One might wonder though why the Government didn’t put energy efficiency in the Bill in the first place? It isn’t big and shiny, and doesn’t make opportunities for minister photo-calls in hard hats and hi vis jackets. But surely there’s no better candidate for investment than the very fabric of our lives: the homes we live in.

Labour’s energy efficiency Green Paper is due to be released very soon.The party must be wary of trying to cash in on their opponents’ weakness on the issue by coming out with something only slightly better. Environmental, fuel poverty, and business groups have made clear they will be happy with nothing less than an ambitious programme to insulate all homes occupied by those on low incomes to a good standard by 2025, and a persuasive loan offer for those able to pay for it themselves. Our expectations are high, and I very much hope we won’t be disappointed.

Sophie Neuburg is an energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth