Better Marketing Needed to Push Zero Carbon Homes

New reports highlight that many homeowners are sceptical of making green developments, and paying for green features in their home.

The Energy Saving Trust and the Zero Carbon Hub are calling for a marketing plan that can help to promote zero carbon homes, making them more appealing to homebuyers who currently see them as experimental.

The information, found in ‘Marketing Tomorrow’s New Homes’, makes proposals that will mean zero carbon homes will not be marginalised and labelled as ‘green’.

One of the plans is to encourage small steps of installing green features across homes around the country, rather than radical changes, so that energy efficient homes will slowly become the norm.

The report also states that homebuyers don’t understand the whole zero carbon proposition, and are wary that there are political motivations behind promoting these green developments.

Though green developments include widely accepted measures such as installing double glazing to reduce the heat lost through windows, they also encourage measures such as solar panels and wind turbines that are less accepted. As such, homeowners are unwilling to pay for sustainable features which they believe to be untested on the broader housing market.

The report also highlights the fact that the language used to promote green housing needs to be changed if it is to get more homeowners aboard.

Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the Zero Carbon Hub, announced these proposals, saying that ‘it is vital that we create a positive public perception’ of zero carbon homes in the future.