Stop wasting money, use less energy

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, has recently unveiled details on The Green Deal which aims to enable households to improve the energy efficiency of their properties with no upfront costs. By insulating homes and incorporating other energy saving measures the government estimate that around 14m homes could pay on average £94 a year less for energy.

Around a quarter of all the UK’s carbon emissions come from energy use in homes with a similar amount coming from businesses, workplaces and industry.

As a householder through the Green Deal you will be offered interest free loans for the energy saving measure(s) you are purchasing, which will be paid off by small additions to your energy bill over the lifetime (warranty) period of the product, upto 20-25 years. A £150 cashback will be offered as an incentive to encourage your participation.

Currently the green deal looks to include the most obvious energy saving measures which include cavity wall and loft insulation, condensing boilers and micro generation technologies such as solar PV.

However, what about exterior blinds? Exterior blinds, in particular external roller blinds and screens are an effective way to insulate the transparent parts of a building – the windows, which represent a large portion of heat loss from a home. In fact, windows can account for 25-30% of all heat loss from your home.

Exterior blinds keep your home warmer by providing another layer of insulation to your windows, improving the thermal performance of your glazing. Heat loss from a single glazed window can be cut by as much as 50%, whilst double glazing ‘U’ value can be improved by around 35% when using a sealed external roller blind system. This will in turn reduce your energy bills not to mention your buildings carbon footprint whilst also making your home quieter.

Additionally summer overheating will become a thing of the past as exterior blinds prevent solar heat build up. Whilst most residential buildings do not have air conditioning installed, creating a comfortable environment is important to our health and well-being. External blinds will help to avoid the use of energy hungry portable air conditioning units which can use upto 3 times as much energy to cool a room down by 1 degree centigrade than a heating system uses to warm a room up by 1 degree centigrade – interesting fact!

For more information on the energy saving benefits of exterior blinds just browse through the array of information contained on this site, or use the search facility to look for articles containing specific words or topics you are interested in.

Related articles you will find of interest include:

• It’s all about ‘U’
• Improving the thermal performance of windows

To find out more information specifically on The Green Deal visit the DECC (Department of Energy & Climate Change website here