Fuel prices are on the rise, and all potential political parties pledge to reduce carbon emissions. These factors will start to affect just how we live. Installing renewable technology in our homes will increasingly become more of a necessity. There are pilot schemes in place with some local authorities already. For example, solar panels have been put up on roofs, some have had ground source heating installed, and a few have had wind turbines placed in the garden.

Certain Green pressure groups are suggesting that homeowners whose properties score low on their Energy Performance Certificates (grades F and G) should be legally prevented from selling their property unless they raise their score. Scores can be raised by simply improving the homes energy efficiency. To actually raise a home’s EPC score, solar panels or renewable sources of heating should be used.

With more demand for solar panels the price of them is coming down. Years ago your average builder would not have known what a ground source heat pump was, they are now familiar terms.

What are renewable technologies? There are five basic renewable sources of energy, they can (in most cases) be harnessed for heating and lighting in your home.

SOLAR (heat from the sun)

SOLAR THERMAL heats your water via roof top collectors. They are at their optimum use during the spring and summer months. They can supply between 50% and 70% of a family’s hot water needs. Over the years the efficiency of these solar thermal collectors has been steadily increasing, with better materials and better methods of heat transfer, and their image has transformed from a haphazard and unreliable technology for super-greens to a hi-tech, integrated system providing reliable hot water for most of the year.

PHOTOVOLTAICS light from the sun which can be transformed into electricity. Panels use silicon crystals to generate electricity from sunlight. Panels are lightweight and can be fitted even on flat roofs (mounted at an angle to get maximum benefit). Although this technology is expensive, it is seen by many countries as the best way to produce renewable electricity: Germany has invested in a massive programme of installing panels on domestic homes and its pv industry now provides jobs for more than a quarter of a million people. Spain is installing large-scale pv collectors in its central plain, making use of the brilliant sunshine it receives.

WIND Turbines that transform wind energy into electricity. It is now fairly well accepted that for a wind turbine to be of any use it needs to be pole-mounted, away from the house (which creates turbulence which disrupts the action of the turbines). In addition there is a sharp loss of energy when the DC current the turbine produces is converted into AC current that a building uses.

However, if you live on exposed land in a rural area and have a large garden or paddock, then a 15 metre-high turbine could helpfully add to your renewable energy supplies. Wind turbines can help during the winter, when winds are stronger, and when solar technology is at its weakest.

AIR SOURCE/GROUND SOURCE This involves using compressor technology working in the reverse way to that of a fridge. Air/ground source pumps take heat out of the air or soil to heat water tanks and radiators. Air source heat pumps can work down to outside temperatures as low as -6 degrees and are useful when people have small gardens as ground source heat pumps require coils of piping (about 80 metres) being buried at about 1 metre's depth under the garden. This obviously requires much disruption to the garden and is generally undertaken alongside other building work such as an extension or re-landscaping the garden. An alternative for small gardens is a vertical borehole going straight down which is then filled with pipes; this is more expensive.

A home with heat pumps requires more electricity to run the compressor unit but the efficiency justifies the extra electricity needed. For air source heat pumps, for every one unit of electrical energy, three units of heat are produced. In ground source heat pumps, the efficiency is higher: about 1:4. Many homeowners choose to install pv panels at the same time as installing heat pumps so the extra electricity used is offset by the panels.

WOOD This is a renewable energy source as it re-grows. Wood is also carbon neutral; CO2 produced when burnt is cancelled out due to the CO2 absorbed by the tree as it grew. Wood has been used to heat our homes for millennia and is now making a comeback in its posh new green form called biomass. The easiest way to add wood to your energy mix at home is to open up that old fireplace, get the chimney swept and install a super-efficient wood-burning stove; you can even get ones with enough space on top to heat a pan of water; larger versions also include ‘back boilers' to heat your water and a number of radiators.

HYDRO As a country we are not very adventurous when it comes to tapping into our water power. There are a few who are using water turbines to produce electricity for their homes. There are an estimated 20,000 private water mill sites in the country, of which only a few dozen have installed turbine generators. These can be converted to provide a home's entire electrical needs.

It is estimated that 100,000 homes across the UK now have some kind of renewable energy source.