Greens plan to insulate 200,000 more homes

The Green Party has launched the first part of their plan to create thousands of clean green jobs by extending the Heat Smart home insulation scheme to a further 200,000 homes by 2014.

"Retrofitting our aging housing stock to make homes warm and energy efficient has been one of the smartest investments we've made," Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman said today.

"We worked with the National Government in 2009 to establish the Heat Smart home insulation programme and it has already made over 100,000 homes warmer and drier with another 100,000 still to come.

"We would make it a top economic priority to extend the scheme to insulate a further 200,000 homes, for a total of 400,000 homes insulated by 2014.

"This is a priority that we would work collaboratively with the next government to achieve.

"Our new programme will save the average household $144 per year on their power bills," said Dr Norman.

Extending the Heat Smart home insulation scheme to a further 200,000 households will cost approximately $350 million and employ 4,000 full time equivalents (FTE) directly, and over 10,400 FTE including wider indirect effects on employment.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) calculate the benefits in terms of energy savings, reduced doctor's visits, and fewer days off work sick. Based on EECA's analysis of completed homes, the Green Party has estimated that extending the programme by 200,000 homes would create additional benefits of more than $70 million per year, well over $1 billion over the lifetime of the homes.

"With the benefits outweighing the costs by a factor of three to one, insulating another 200,000 homes is a smart investment, creating green jobs that help shift our economy onto a more sustainable footing," Dr Norman said.

Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei said it was one of a number of affordable and practical solutions that would make a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of kiwi kids.

"Cold damp houses are miserable to live in. They're expensive to heat and lead to higher health costs and kids missing school," said Ms Turei.

"Extending the home insulation programme complements our plan to bring 100,000 children out of poverty by 2014."

Mrs Turei said that plan included mandatory standards for rental properties to ensure they were warm and healthy for the 375,000 New Zealand children who live in rented accommodation.

"Our programme will give support to landlords to insulate their rental properties so our poorest families can live in warm homes," said Mrs Turei.

The home insulation scheme is one component of the Green Party's economic policy to be announced on September 21.