Get Norfolk Greener, a climate action campaign by final-year UEA students, is pressing all nine Norfolk MPs to sign the Warm This Winter pledge to show their support for faster action on the energy and climate crises.
It is estimated that over 1 in 10 households in Norfolk are living in energy poverty. High energy prices are liable to damage physical and mental health, and to force people into difficult choices, or even into debt.
Get Norfolk Greener, a project coordinated by a group of final year students at UEA, highlights the urgent need for upgrading homes to increase efficiency, and for improving public access to cheap renewable energy in order to reduce the need for polluting fossil fuels. They want to see more political action at national and local levels to find solutions to the high cost of fuel and the threat of climate change.
Warm This Winter pledge
A coalition of forty leading UK charities is demanding immediate action from the government to mitigate energy poverty in the winter ahead.
Get Norfolk Greener is encouraging householders in all Norfolk constituencies to ask their MP to sign the following pledge:
I pledge to keep my constituents warm every winter by urging the Government to rapidly expand home retrofit schemes, support the swift deployment of homegrown renewables to speed up the net zero transition away from volatile fossil fuels, and provide further financial support to vulnerable households. I will work alongside Parliamentary colleagues to ensure the Government goes further to tackle the energy crisis at every available opportunity, including upcoming fiscal statements and the Energy Bill.
Signed, …………………….. MP
The Warm This Winter website is tracking which MPs have so far signed the pledge, and further encourages individuals to email their MP to ask them to support the amendments advocated by Warm This Winter.
Huge savings for householders
The UEA climate campaigners are promoting the Affordable Energy Calculator which enables householders to discover how much money they could save with a policy of home upgrades, insulation and heat pumps.
Commenting on the Calculator, reader of the Get Norfolk Greener website Ivo says: “The Affordable Energy Calculator told me I could save over a thousand pounds! As a student at the UEA, this would really help relieve the financial pressures during my studies. I’d urge everyone to contact their MPs and get them to sign the pledge!!”
Fuel poverty in East Anglia
Government statistics collected in 2021 show that in the East of England 12.3% of households were living in fuel poverty, with the most severe deprivation in North Norfolk, Great Yarmouth and Tendring districts.
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) are warning that energy bills are set to rise yet further in 2023/24. Houses with poor energy efficiency will suffer the worst. The cost is borne by the householder, of course, but also by all of us, because of government subsidies via the gas price freeze. The ECIU uses four typical scenarios to illustrate how the effect of the rising cost of gas in each case. The analysis shows that both the householders and the government (so we, the taxpayers) make savings when homes are well insulated and/or using net zero technologies.
