Article for December Parish Magazine

How Good is Insulating your Loft?

If you’ve ever measured your carbon footprint you will know that keeping your home warm in winter makes up a large chunk of it.  So pretty much anything you do to cut down on heating fuel will make a big difference to your contribution to climate change.

Here are the numbers:

350 kg *CO₂e outlay for a three-bedroom house

Minus 35 tonnes CO₂e over 40 years

The energy used to produce the insulation material will be paid back by the energy you save in less than 6 months saving a whopping 35 tonnes over the life of the insulation.

Money-wise, even if there were no grants to help pay for you to insulate, it would still be well worth doing financially, with a £500 investment paid back in 4 years.  However, grants are available, through your energy-provider (just phone them up and ask them what they pay for).  These make it also worthwhile financially to top-up insulation to the maximum recommended (270mm) and put in cavity wall insulation.

Insulation is a no-brainer.  If you do one green thing this year, this is the one to do.

And as well as insulating your house, why not insulate yourself and your family so you can’t help but turn down that thermostat a degree or two?  Thermal vests make great Christmas presents!

Ruth Jarman

Data and inspiration from How Bad are Bananas? – The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee