Why are you doing that?

When people ask it is not easy to give the short answer they expect.

• For the sake of the grandchildren

• because we care about climate change

• because we want to do something useful

• to prepare for the future

All these are true but to understand why it is worth spending £40,000 pounds of our own money you would need to know more.

Background

I came across the problems which are said to relate to climate change in relation to desertification in Kazakhstan. It appeared to me most important to try to find out how widely the problem might affect the world and what remedies had been proposed.

I took the only Open University Course available at that time on Climate Modelling and searched the internet for useful newsgroups. I found the Yahoo group ClimateConcern and have been a member for many years. I receive about 10 to 20 emails per day from them and enjoy the debate as they try to separate the truth from the hype.

I also receive the Reuter Planet Ark which gathers climate news stories.

I have become a volunteer in the Eco-renovation work of the Oxfordshire Climate X Change, based at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University.

I study at least one hour per day to build my web site http://U3AClimateStudy.pbwiki.com which now contains over 1000 authoritative extracts and articles.

My conclusion is that my grandchildren are likely to face increasing problems which have their root in the greenhouse gas emissions which have increased dangerously during the past 50 years due to the lifestyle and ignorance of my generation. We want to play our part to remedy this situation.

The science, the politics and the public

My studies indicate that the only safe climate for us is the one we used to have. My ideal would be firm government action to generate energy from renewables and restrict our consumption to restore a safe climate at any cost.

This is unlikely at present because scientists still discuss how bad the disaster might become at various points in the future. Politicians cannot act decisively in a democracy without the understanding and support of the public. The public do not rate the climate problems highly compared with their immediate well-being.

By the time the public are awakened to the danger, by an event like the flooding of London, it will be too late to develop a plan from scratch and to put it into practice.

The government is clearly testing the water, with projects like eco-towns and the tightening new building regulations but has not shown its hand by legislating energy standards for existing homes, cars and aircraft.

What can one family do?

We are convinced that there are key things which need to be done by a few families before the government can tackle the problem. We want to be one of those families. For example, the government cannot legislate to cut emissions from existing homes without some evidence that their proposals will be successful. We want to test out one probable scenario for the future and write up our experiences in sufficient detail to be of use to others.

The Zero Carbon House

The scenario we anticipate is the government legislating to achieve very low or zero carbon emissions for the whole country. Residential emissions will be the first to be tackled as the methods are clearer than with the transport or manufacturing sectors and they represent about a third of all emissions. Houses need to be warm so the options are limited. One of the best in our view is for all electricity to be produced sustainably and then used economically in ground source heating. Waste heat could also be recovered by a heat recovery and ventilation system. The ground source technologies have been common in Scandinavia for 20 years and ventilation systems are common in North America.

Ice Energy alone have installed more than 3000 ground source heat pumps in UK but none of these have been written up from the DIY installer's point of view and its efficiency measured.

Efficiency is the key for the future as sustainable energy will always be in short supply unless nuclear fusion or some new technology comes to the rescue. Efficiency (COP) is the ratio of energy out to energy in. Developing high efficiency equipment and methods will be most important if energy rationing is introduced.

Our house is a typical 3 bedroom late 1960's house with solid floors so if this can be turned into a zero carbon house economically it will bring hope to owners all over the country and help to form a viable government strategy.

Financial Strategy

Home improvements can usually be justified in part by the increased selling price which can be expected. We feel it is unlikely that we could expect more than an additional £10,000 from the eco-improvements. However major repairs to the flat roof are needed, the boiler is ageing and extravagant, and the internal arrangement is poor so a larger project, adding a 4^th bedroom, breakfast room and extending the kitchen, might bring the house into a higher price bracket to recover the investment. Looking at the market in the area it looks as if we might recover our larger investment that way.

How wrong can we be?

We can be wrong about the final value of the property. We can be wrong about the government action to make electricity from renewable resources, although they are pledged to cut emissions by 80% by 2050. We can be wrong about the speed of change in the climate. We can over run our cost estimates.

We can't be wrong about the dangerous rise in greenhouse gases or the resulting dangerous acidity in the oceans.

In any case we feel we must do what we can.

Betty's viewpoint - Why indeed?

We have been planning this for two and a half years and sometimes getting very down and frustrated. I personally do not understand all the technical side of climate change but we love our children and grandchildren and want to do our small part in leaving a legacy (not necessarily money) for them to have a world to enjoy. Our grandparents and parents sacrificed a lot in WW2 to give us a good start in life.

As things progress I get more and more excited about the project. Friends and family think we are mad at our age and we should be enjoying cruising, golf, etc. We can still enjoy these things and lots more but remembering also we are still responsible as seniors for the place we live in.

Whatever happens it is an adventure we both believe in and we are writing our experiences in a diary which may be of use to anyone attempting a similar project. It may even assist future government legislation.