United Kingdom

hideshow 9 child comments

[–] ctry21@sh.itjust.works 3 points 51 minutes ago

The weird thing is, the Tories kind of tried this but bungled it so badly it would be too politically toxic to try again for a while. They had the ECO4 scheme for free and discounted cavity and solid wall insulation, but no requirements for the companies providing the insulation to be certified or deemed reputable. So a lot of cowboy companies sprung up to take advantage of the free money, installed it poorly, and now the horror stories on social media scare people off cavity wall insulation and external wall cladding entirely.

We had this devolved in Northern Ireland rather than taking part in the GB scheme, and in a very rare case of our assembly being competent you can only get the grant through specific companies that have been vetted in advance.

parent

[–] Naich@piefed.world 15 points 5 hours ago (6 children)

It's difficult because the money to do this would go to a wide range of companies and people who have no influence on governments. It's the oil barons who can blast money at lobbyists who have the government in their pockets.

hideshow 6 child comments

parent

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 hour ago

My local city in the US had sent people to do energy audits and gave a slight discount on the next month's electric bill if you let them in.

They would tell you where you needed more insulation and sealing. The city offered rebates for various types of insulation and energy related overhaul.

The city owned the local utility and they determined it was way cheaper to help reduce energy consumption than to scale up production

parent

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 17 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

No I mean not tender for private contracts to do this. Actually do this in a nationalised way.

Setup a department, NIS (the afore mentioned National Insulation Service), with the motto warmth at the point of use, build a workforce that goes town by town coldest to hottest parts of the country and adds the required missing insulation to however many homes need it starting with low income homes.

Everyone is so keen on nationalising everything so why not kickstart this and do some good. I say the same thing about home building. Set up a government home building project entirely run by government employees funded by the state. I can understand how there would be NIMBY protectionism against that (can't build that here you'll lower the value of my mansion) but who would argue against insulation?

hideshow 4 child comments

parent

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

I love it. It makes sense if your goal is to improve the lives of the public and save money long term.

What it doesn't do is improve GDP (this would actually have a negative effect) or enrich more billionaires. That sort of thing doesn't tend to play well in this country.

hideshow 3 child comments

parent

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 3 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

😥

hideshow 2 child comments

parent

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 2 points 51 minutes ago*

To be fair, I say this not to demotivate you, but to point out that the problem isn't innovation, or money, or as many in this country seem to think, immigrants. It's not even landlords.

The problem is that we've organised our society around the wrong incentives. If we're serious about fixing this problem (and I think your "NIS" is a great idea!) we have to approach it with the understanding that building an NIS must start ith abandoning our bad models and ridiculing those that insist it can be done within the existing system.

We don't necessarily need a communist revolution, but we do need to be honest about Why We Can't Have Nice Things and begin the work of building systems that allow for them while dismantling ones that prevent them.

parent

[–] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

I'm sure it's the fault of the Romanian and Slovakian cleaners, or the family who run the takeaway place I pop into late at night when I'm stumbling home from the Witherspoon's

parent

[–] Waterpumpee@lemmus.org 0 points 2 hours ago

Envy on landlords. Why get real estate owners something for free? On the other hand as a home owner i dont understand why or how i should spend to insulate my home for 150k.

Renters will be hit by this too as landlords need to raise rents to cover the cost.