Changes Start with... THE SPARK "at the heart of the alternative west country"

Posted by: Vicki on 01/02/2011

Where Bill talks about his initial attempts to make his new home greener.

We love our little cottage in Stroud, but it’s not very energy efficient. We thought in the move from a big, draughty Bristol flat (see bottom photo) we could try and go greener in heating our new home. We have a combi gas boiler, which is supposedly the most efficient gas boiler, but it hasn’t been serviced in a while and may not be functioning at its best. And of course gas is a fossil fuel and therefore not sustainable, or so we thought, because the vast majority of the gas supplied in Britain is imported from places like Russia now that North Sea gas has run out, right?

 

First we thought about installing a wood-burning stove (we are currently using a borrowed electric cooker in the kitchen). Wood can be collected locally and can be sourced from forests that are constantly replenished, but the price of wood has actually doubled in the last 12 months. We will also need to build a wood store and there isn’t much space for that. The alternative is to use wood pellets, but that needs a feeder system that takes up valuable space in a small kitchen. The more efficient systems also need much bigger water tanks, and again we do not have the space for that. The stoves can burn coal, but that is another fossil fuel that is not being replenished, so that’s out for us.

 

So what about generating some of our own energy through solar and wind? Our roof has two dormer windows, so electricity-generating PV is out, but we could still have a solar hot water system on the roof. That would also be good in summer when we don’t necessarily want to fire up the stove. The house and garden face south west, so it is possible to place some PV panels in the garden, but that would mean sacrificing growing space. Solar energy is still quite expensive and we would have to spend over £10,000 to have any decent payback. A small wind turbine is a no-go as they are still disappointingly inefficient.

The upshot is that we were facing a bill of something like £20,000 to heat our water and radiators without using grid electricity or gas. We sat down in our living room depressed at the thought of the expense, but then we noticed our first energy bill. We switched to Ecotricity last year as we wanted to have as much of our energy from sustainable sources as possible. The Stroud-based green energy company has invested in wind and solar farms and has recently moved into green gas, which is made from organic waste, the sustainable alternative to fossil fuel gas stored in the Earth for millions of years. So it turns out we can run our house on green electricity and gas after all!

 

We’re going to get a gas cooker next week.

 

(Note: There are other green energy companies in the area, including Good Energy in Chippenham and Ovo in Cirencester)

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