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I’m just a tiny little box, stuck onto a wall, you probably walk past me several times a day and possibly haven’t even noticed me? I sense the air temperature throughout the day and then send messages to your heating system to change the temperature of your home. If you turn me down I can save both carbon emissions and money … have you guessed? ... I’m a room thermostat! What do you reckon – do you think I'm amazing?
Can you have a hunt around your home to find me - your heating thermostat? When you’ve found me – you could ask your parent/carer if they can show you how I work.
The Young Climate Warriors challenge this week is to turn your thermostat down by 1 degree. You might need to wear an extra jumper, pop on a woolly hat or wear socks in bed – but you’ll be helping to combat climate change. Turning your thermostat down will mean that your heating system is not having to work so hard, and so is not using so much fossil fuel energy. Are you up for the challenge?
STOP… PRESS… If each Young Climate Warrior’s household turned down their thermostat by 1 degree, for a year, your Young Climate Warriors team would have saved carbon emissions equivalent to taking over 290 flights from London to New York. Go on, give it a go!
HIT THE RED BUTTON to let us know if you decide to take the step of turning down your thermostat!
How we heat our homes is going to have to change. Over 85% of UK homes are heated by natural gas – a fossil fuel.
New technologies like smart meters are helping us to heat our homes only when needed. Completely new ways of heating our homes are being developed – such as ground source and air source heat pumps, hydrogen heating, heat networks and bio-mass and bio-gas boilers. Insulation is improving, enabling us to reduce our heating requirements – within walls, on walls, in ceilings and integrated into glass. New homes are now being designed as ‘zero carbon’ or ‘low carbon’ - they are positioned and designed to make the most of the sun’s energy – trapping heat from the sun and then storing it until it is required. How we de-carbonise heating our homes is one of the toughest climate change challenges for scientists and policy makers.
Watch this space – as you grow up there will be all sorts of new inventions to help us change how we heat our homes. Just this week the UK Government announced it's Green Industrial Revolution - including aims to develop a town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade, and to install 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028. Would you like to be working on these sorts of projects? Maybe, in the future, you could?
Please remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON when you have turned down your thermostat by 1 degree.
