Cameron signs up Tesco and M&S to lead green home push

David Cameron has today fleshed out Conservative plans for a national £20bn programme of green home makeovers, revealing that Tesco and Marks & Spencers have agreed to play a central role in implementing the scheme.

Under the scheme, which was first unveiled at the Conservative Party Conference in October, private firms would undertake energy efficiency and green energy improvements worth up to £6,500 to around six million homes. Households would then enjoy reduced energy bills with the businesses that carried out the work taking a cut from the resulting savings.

According to Conservative Party figures, the installation of basic energy efficiency measures would result in savings of £360 a year with households keeping £240 of the saving to themselves while the remaining £120 would be paid back to the company funding the initial work.

The pay back period would run for between 15 and 20 years and payments would be made through the building's energy bills rather than by the individual homeowner, ensuring that people can move house without having to continue to pay for improvements they no longer benefit from.

In an interview with the Guardian, Cameron said that he wanted to launch the programme from "day one of a Conservative government", revealing that agreements were already in place with M&S and Tesco.

He also confirmed that a number of councils and London Mayor Boris Johnson have also provisionally signed up to the scheme, adding that he expected them to play a key role in identifying the areas that could benefit the most from green home improvements.

Both Tesco and M&S were unavailable to comment on their involvement in the proposed plan at the time of going to press.

The flagship proposals will form the centre piece of a Conservative environmental policy that will aim to better incentivise people and businesses to cut carbon emissions, Cameron said.

"If the environmental agenda becomes limited to well-suited politicians stepping out of aeroplanes on to tarmacs, telling people how to live their lives and sounding like everyone else will just have to sit in a darkened room, wearing woollies with the lights turned off and the heating down, we are not going to get anywhere," he told Guardian.

"People do not like being lectured. You have to take people with you, and the way to do that is to connect individual behaviour and rewards, and help people see the advantages of going green. We have to have carrots as well as sticks."

Labour slammed the new proposals as a "green con", accusing the Conservatives of making unfunded commitments at a time when they have pledged to slash the UK's deficit. The initiative also closely mirrors a number of aspects of the government's planned green home loan scheme, which is meant to be trialed from next year, and similarly encourages homeowners to cover the cost of energy efficiency improvements over time using the savings from energh bills.

In the interview, Cameron also criticised the Prime Minister's perceived efforts to position himself as a peacemaker at this week's Copenhagen Summit, but committed that any Conservative government would push for a robust legally binding deal to be signed as soon as possible next year and would support the £1.6bn in climate funding offered last week by Brown as long as it came from the aid budget.

He also downplayed speculation that he would face increased opposition from Tory backbenchers sceptical about climate change if elected. "A very small number of people take a different view on the science, but the policy is driven by me, and that is the way it is going to be," he said.