Hackney residents feeling heat of rocketing fuel prices
Discussion focused on Hackney's high levels of fuel poverty. Photograph: Antonio Curcetti
We’ve reached the point where families are being forced to make choices between buying food, buying clothes for the children, and putting the heating on.
The severe impact that rocketing fuel prices are having on Hackney residents was highlighted at a packed public meeting at Shoreditch Trust on 27 February organised by Hackney and Tower Hamlets Friends of the Earth.
Hackney residents aired concerns about the expense and difficulty of making homes energy efficient, the power of the ‘big six’ energy companies who are paying seven-figure bonuses to their executives whilst failing to invest in green energy, and the inadequacy of the Green Deal and the green investment bank to tackle the problem.
Hackney South and Shoreditch MP, Meg Hillier, pledged her support for an amendment to the current Energy Bill, calling for the electricity supply to be ‘decarbonised’ by 2030 and for greater investment in ‘green’ jobs.
Martyn Williams of the Energy Bill Revolution, a campaign calling on the government to use revenue from carbon taxes to tackle fuel poverty directly, and Hanna Thomas of the East London Green Jobs Alliance, a local charity training up young people for employment in the ‘green’ sector, also spoke.
Discussion focussed on the high levels of fuel poverty in Hackney. Martyn Williams talked of the impact that cold homes have on children’s development, health and education, and on the well being of the elderly, who are put at greater risk of heart attacks, strokes and bronchitis.
He reported that research with Mumsnet has found that “one in four families have cut back on food in order to be able to afford the heating, and [are still] living in a cold home.” He said tweaking fuel tariffs or cutting fat cat bonuses are not the solution – we need to use less fuel.
The government’s Green Deal, through which tenants take out loans to pay for energy saving measures, is just not working. Meg Hillier commented that: “It’s not surprising that the take up is low because it is very complicated to do,” while Hanna Thomas described it as “not actually a policy or a regulation, but a market mechanism.”
Meg Hillier highlighted the need to:
- Overhaul the energy market and “break the stranglehold of the big six by making it easier for other entrants to come into the market”.
- Abolish Ofgem and “remodel it into a much tougher watchdog that could really tackle all those energy price increases”.
- Encourage co-operative generation of energy at a micro level.
- Remodel the Green Deal by getting large social landlords to deliver it.
She voiced her support for the creation of ‘green jobs’ in areas like Hackney, saying:
“We can satisfy some of the worries that some in industry have. We need industry in this country, but if we’re clever about it we can have green industry, and have more green jobs as well because we can get more research and development on how big industry gets greener and that actually creates more demand for greener products.”
Hanna Thomas described how ‘green jobs’ can also help address issues such as high levels of unemployment among young people – a pressing concern in Hackney:
“We define a green job as one that has a living wage, that has opportunities for further training and that has environmental stewardship at the heart of it. So we don’t define it as purely renewables or engineering. We’re looking at entry level jobs that young, unemployed people can do, like insulation or fitting solar panels.”
The crux of the problem in Hackney is our chronically poorly-insulated housing stock. All members of the panel agreed that energy efficiency, rolled out on a street-by-street basis, is the only long-term solution. Martyn
Friends of the Earth’s Clean British Energy Campaign is about cleaning up the energy system, freeing us from dependency on costly fossil fuels and creating thousands of ‘green jobs’ in renewable energy.
For more information see foe.co.uk/cleanbritish energy.