Tax Breaks for Green Living?

Greens hail ‘Green Living Initiative’ as step in right direction

A report commissioned by the environmental think-tank, Green Alliance has been hailed by the Green Party as a forward step.

‘A Green Living Initiative’ calls for an integrated package of measures linking tax incentives to clear information and advice in order to raise public awareness of environmental concerns and ways in which to tackle them.

Specifically, fiscal measures such as council tax reduction for households that insulate their lofts are linked with wider information about the need for energy efficiency.

The Green Party has long called for such government intervention in ‘greening’ our lives. It has successfully promoted energy efficiency in public building through council regulation and would like to go further and apply the same rationale to transport policy.

Whilst welcoming the report’s highlighting of these issues, it warns of the Government’s record of lack of clarity of information on energy issues and of the dangers of a lack of a supporting infrastructure for any changes to take place.

The ‘Green Living Iniative’ is available at www.greenalliance.org.uk

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Your Comments

Surely this will help. People who want to improve their energy efficiency (or just want to keep warmer in winter) but cannot afford it/cannot justify the cost are more likely to do something with such a financial incentive? Others may well decide that the cost of increasing insulation will be outweighed by the long term drop in council tax (obviously there would currently be a drop in energy bills anyway, but many people don’t seem to see that!). Increasing energy efficiency will help us to achieve targets for production of renewable energy by allowing us to close down power plants which are no longer required. For example: “It has been estimated that if every household in the US replaced just three of its incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving designs and used them for five hours per day, it would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 23 million tonnes, reduce electricity demand by the equivalent of 11 coal-fired power stations and save $1.8bn.BBC News

Incredible and powerful incentive if it’s true!
A.B

grownupgreen - 19/02/06

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