How Green Is Your House?

Making your French home more eco-friendly means you’ll be doing your bit to save the planet, and it’s an opportunity to save yourself some money too. Robin Gauldie investigates the options available and the potential savings

- Robin Gauldie

Last month I looked at how feasible it is to live completely off-grid in France, and while making your home completely energy self-sufficient might be too radical for most of us, a mix of renewable power and conventional energy is a very viable option. Installing solar panels, geothermal heating and a biomass-burning furnace will reduce your carbon footprint, and in the long term, it will also cut your fuel and electricity bill.

In the Montagne Noire, north of Carcassonne, where I have a home, I see a lot of windscreen and bumper stickers bearing the slogan ‘Nuclear power: no thanks’ in a variety of languages. However, most of my neighbours seem able to compromise their knee-jerk opposition to nuclear energy in return for electricity prices that are among the cheapest in Europe. Some of my less techsavvy greenie visitors from the UK praise France’s ever-more-ardent love for clean, carbon-conscientious trains and urban transport, and are crestfallen when I point out that their hired electric car is, for all practical purposes, nuclear powered.

NUCLEAR POWER

More than 80% of my electricity is nuclear-generated, according to my EDF bill. It’s not easy being green when there’s so little financial incentive to change. And, of course, many would argue that nuclear power is in fact the only realistic solution to the problem of curbing carbon consumption – at least in the short to medium term.