CAN YOU CUT YOUR FUEL BILLS BY 25%?

You need to spend quite a bit of money on your house to cut your fuel bills by over 70%, but it can be done: see the Old Home Super Home project. The house on the left on the webpage is in Balsall Heath, a two minute walk from my house, where John has achieved 75% savings to date - and his plans to improve the energy efficiency of his house are not complete.

The first 25% is relatively easy to achieve. Unless you live alone and have already changed your lifestyle to minimise all inessential use of light and heat in your home, you should be able to achieve around 25% savings with minimum costs. My neighbour, Saifer Rehman, achieved 35% savings without great expenditure: see my blog of July 31st last year "Role model for cutting CO₂".

Two weeks before I wrote about Saifer's savings I mentioned, in my blog, plans for a High Street Energy Advice service in Birmingham. The planned start date for this project was April 1st 2009 and last July I hoped that we would hear news of the start date "...before the summer holidays." We heard nothing. More holidays have passed by. Now for the good news: the project has Cabinet approval and the start date will soon be announced.

Once recruitment and training of paid staff and volunteers is complete, three centres will provide Energy Advice: Northfield Ecocentre, Saltley & Washwood Heath Practical Care Project (73 Alum Rock Road, B8 1LY; 0121 327 8377) and Moseley Community Development Trust.

SusMo will be encouraging all Moseley residents to make full use of this service, to help them to save energy and record their achievements - this will make a big difference to our chance of winning the next Green Streets prize of £100,000 (see my blogs of November 20th "SusMo wins prize for Moseley" and the 27th "Delivering the Green Streets project and winning the next prize"). At the SusMo meeting this week at the Hamza Mosque, members of the Mosque said that they intend to encourage local residents to do all they can to reduce their fuel consumption, and provide their meter readings to measure their success.

Will Moseley churches and Moseley community organisations follow this example? SusMo looks forward to hearing from them.