A national scheme has been launched to upgrade household heating systems, cut carbon, save money on fuel bills.
Up to 125,000 households in England with working "G-rated" boilers can now apply through the Energy Saving Trust for a voucher which will entitle them to £400 off the price of a new, modern "A-rated" boiler or a renewable heating system like a biomass boiler or a heat pump.
The Government's Boiler Scrappage Scheme has already triggered some companies to complement, and in some cases match, the offer and it is expected others will follow suit. This will extend the scheme to many more householders and safeguard work for the heating industry.
The Boiler Scrappage Scheme aims to:
It is estimated that, compared with a normal winter, the UK's homes and offices leaked an extra £1.2 billion worth of heat during two weeks of the cold weather spell in January.
According to consultancy Faith+Gould, part of Atkins engineering group, the extra costs were the result of buildings which are already inefficient at keeping in heat struggling to cope as temperatures plunged.
Estimates by a team of carbon management and energy engineering experts show that the residents of an average poorly insulated three bedroom semi-detached house will have spent an extra £37 on heat in the two week period.
If all 22 million UK homes had been forced to spend the same as the average house, keeping temperatures at 20C inside with average outside temperatures of minus 2C, the country would have spent an extra £962 million on heating bills.
Those living in more heat-efficient homes will have spent less - around £23 more than usual. Around 9.2 million UK homes are classified as "hard to heat" and would have performed worse than the average property.
The team calculated a further £284 million could have been lost trying to keep the UK's two million offices warm, even though most of them are in cities where outside temperatures are generally warmer.
