Villagers build greener Britain, home by home

HOVE, England -- When Jeffrey Marchant and his wife, Brenda, power up their computer, turn on a light or put the kettle on to boil, they can just about watch their electric bill rise.

A small box hanging on the wall across from the vase of flowers in the front hall of their tidy Victorian home displays a continuous digital readout of their electricity use and tells them immediately how much it will cost, helping them save energy.

Turn on a computer, and the device -- a type of so-called smart meter -- goes from 300 watts to 400 watts. Turn off a light, and it goes from 299 to 215. At 500, the meter is set to sound an alarm.

"I've become like one of Pavlov's dogs," Brenda Marchant said. "Every time it bleeps, I think, 'I'm going to take one of those pans off the stove.' I'd do anything to make it stop. It helps you change your habits."

Through a host of small efforts like this, people like the Marchants have reduced their carbon footprint by half in the past five years and turned Hove -- along with neighboring Brighton, with which it shares a local government -- from the archetype of a traditional British seaside town into the prototype of a green village. Their efforts are gaining traction in the region, and recognition around Britain, as a model of easily replicated ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The British government is debating a plan to put some version of smart metering on all 46 million gas and electricity meters in the country's homes.

In an era when movie stars build $5 million eco-mansions, local families have made their old Victorian houses eco-friendly, too.

But they have done it through inexpensive and nearly invisible interventions, such as under-roof insulation, solar water heaters and hallway meters, that leave their homes still looking like old Victorian houses.

"When people talk about an eco-house, they picture a sleek house in the countryside with solar panels and wind turbines. Well, good for them. But that's not how the average person lives," said Mischa Hewitt of Britain's Low Carbon Trust, a nonprofit group.

The trust helped organize a series of eco-open houses on weekends to let residents of neighboring Brighton show what they had done.

"What's more important, what we're encouraging, is to take old properties that were not built for energy efficiency and turn them around to save carbon, save energy and save money," Hewitt said.

Brighton was voted the most sustainable city in the country last year by the British research group Forum for the Future, and its politicians recently made reducing carbon emissions a high-profile priority.

While most governments use the relatively high emission levels of the 1990s as a base line to measure emission reductions, Brighton is trying to make a 20 percent reduction from 2006 levels by April 2012.

The city has taken measures like expanding bus services and promoting housing developments that do not permit cars. But about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from private homes, and so every household is encouraged to do its part to meet the ambitious targets.

That is why officials in Brighton decided to sponsor eco-open houses this year.

Jeffrey Marchant, a retired customer service representative for the local power company, admits to a lifelong obsession with household energy, born of thrift rather than green consciousness.

"I'm like one of those fellows who stands at the station spotting trains, only what I do is electricity," he said.

Even today, a meticulous handwritten chart on his sitting-room wall documents yearly electricity use since the 1960s, recording how the birth of each child from 1975 to 1982 -- Phillip, Catherine and Helen -- affected the home's average daily electricity consumption.

In addition to adding a smart meter, the Marchants made two structural modifications to their home of 20 years, installing a solar water heating panel on a back roof ($6,400, after a local grant) and placing 12 inches of insulation under the roof, which Brenda Marchant rolled out in the eaves herself (cost: $600).

But they have made dozens of behavioral changes as well. Brenda Marchant, for example, has a lovely chandelier in the dining room with regular light bulbs. She turns it on only for dinner parties now -- "We girls hate the light from those low-energy bulbs," she said -- and uses a fixture with energy-conserving bulbs for day-to-day needs.

She now washes most laundry at 86 degrees, instead of 140. She resumed using her pressure cooker for vegetables, after the smart meter revealed its energy efficiency.

"We didn't start out to reduce our carbon footprint -- we've staggered from one awareness to another," Jeffrey Marchant said.

"We're not talking rocket science. We're talking simple things."

A small number of countries, such as Sweden; states, such as California; and companies have also been experimenting with smart meters in homes in the past few years, generally with success.

The British government will require that all medium and large businesses install smart meters within five years and will decide this year whether to mandate them for private homes as well. While the simplest meters, such as those used here, merely inform customers of their electricity use, more sophisticated versions monitor gas use as well and even report readings back to power companies.

"Smart meters have the power to revolutionize people's relationship with the energy they use," the Conservative Party's leader, David Cameron, said in a speech supporting the plan before Parliament in June, reflecting a government that had become ever more conscious of energy and the environment as well.

Two years ago, when Kaufmann applied to put a solar panel on his Victorian roof, Brighton officials said no. "They said it had to look like a red tile, which of course wouldn't work," he said.

"They didn't think about energy, just architectural conservation." The council eventually relented.

Now, he said, to get one of the grants for solar heaters, you have to get up really early in the morning to wait in line, because they are all quickly taken. "Here," Kaufmann said, "the mind-set has switched."