Many words have changed their meanings over the years, some dramatically over relatively short periods – anorak, spam, wallpaper, distressed, wicked, lunchbox – others more subtly. Take the word ‘environment’, or more specifically ‘saving the environment’.
In the 1960s, saving the environment probably involved collecting litter. Wider pollution concerns followed in the 1970s as our view of the world was lifted beyond the streets and parks immediately around us. Some scientists believed that if we did not reduce visible air pollutants, then these tiny particles would reflect the sun’s energy and global temperatures would plummet.
Cause and effect began to manifest themselves in the 1980s as certain animal species were threatened by the impact of human activities. So saving the environment focused on the plight of these endangered species and the talk was of mass extinctions. Scientists have observed mass extinctions from evidence in rock and fossil records, but define them as occasions when 90 per cent of species are wiped out.
Carbon emissions, global warming and climate change caught on in the 1990s, albeit with the slight hiccup as a few consecutive dry Summers in England had scientists stating that some streams and small rivers had ‘dried up forever’.
Come the new millennium and saving the environment has gone truly global, a world problem founded on our absolute reliance on fossil fuels – the subject of world summits, huge popular demonstrations and rafts of new regulations, taxes and red tape.
But more significant is that the environmental rallying call can now be applied to almost any product, however tenuous its link with the environment. Saving the environment has finally arrived – we know this thanks not to my brief and rudimentary late 20th century history lesson, but because it has entered the world of the consumer.
So the question is whether a ‘green mortgage’ makes as little sense to today’s house buyer as it would have done to a financial adviser of 40 years ago, who would have simply failed to understand the concept.
Predictable
A quick study of what is available turns up a couple of predictable and established names. The Co-Operative Bank offers customers the knowledge that the companies it deals with are committed to preserving the environment. For as long as you have your mortgage, the bank will make a payment every year to Climate Care, an organisation dedicated to helping solve global warming. The Ecology Building Society has arguably the most credible offering, promoting sustainable housing and communities in the broadest sense and provides mortgages for properties that give some form of environmental payback. Even conversions or renovations can qualify, as to reuse is better than to demolish and rebuild.
After that there are a handful of lesser players with commitments to offset by investment elsewhere, or by tree planting. And therein lies the problem – in a crowded market with dozens of committed organisations determined to gain your business, between them offering hundreds of different products and many claiming to tailor arrangements to suit individual borrowers – is there any sense in restricting your search to just a handful of providers?
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It is not difficult to imagine that by limiting your search you will ultimately be disadvantaged – so assuming this effect amounts to a 0.5 per cent on the borrowing rate, then on a mortgage of £100,000 this would cost you £500 per year. Either taken over the life of the mortgage or used to borrow more from the cheapest mortgage provider, this gives you a ‘budget’ of between £7,000 and £10,000 to ‘do your bit’.
Real and lasting changes
With that amount of money you can consider some real and lasting changes that you know will be effective, because you did them yourself. So if the roof needs insulating, then do it. If the windows and doors are drafty, then replace them. If the boiler is old and decrepit, then change it. If you have any money left over or these fundamentals are already sound, then consider some renewable forms of energy. Direct solar hot water and ground source heat pumps top my list.
If, in the back of your mind, you are thinking this ‘budget’ came from a saving you would probably have found anyway and so it is money you never really had – then bear in mind that the next time you sell your house you will almost certainly have to provide an Energy Performance Certificate. This will recognise the improvements you have made and affect its marketability accordingly. It may even make it more valuable.
