Britain's 'Green' Homes to be Boosted

The number of "green" homes in Britain could be boosted by half a million within a year through a new service designed to help consumers reduce their carbon footprint.

Greenhelpline.com, which went live on Tuesday, allows people to search environmentally friendly energy tariffs and source local food producers.

The site has been developed by environmentalist Alex Lambie and energy price comparison service energyhelpline.com, with aims to convert 500,000 homes to electricity from renewable resources within the next 12 months.

"There's so much confused messaging about what 'going green' is: there's an overload of information, and it's often contradictory," said Lambie.

"For a slight [cost] increase - as a worst case scenario - you can go green and have an immediate positive effect on the environment," Lambie told Reuters.

Currently, just 150,000 households are on green energy tariffs, of which there are around 17 at present.

Switching to green electricity can cut the average household's annual carbon footprint from energy consumption to four tonnes from six, and save them up to 145 pounds per year, the website says.

There are some 25 million householders in the UK - half of whom have never switched energy supplier.

The Church of England, recently celebrated the first anniversary of the launch of the Shrinking the Footprint campaign, a response to the General Synod's charge to the Church to engage with climate change and work on reducing its carbon emissions.

Last month, it published a booklet called How Many Lightbulbs does it take to Change a Christian, a guide designed to encourage Christians to play their part in helping stop climate change through making small changes to their daily lives.

At the launch of the campaign, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said: "For the Church of the 21st century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice. It is therefore central to what it means to be a Christian."