Passage Three

A new low carbon home in Hawkhurst, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, built with the latest green technologies is expected to slash energy bills by around three quarters.

Town & Country Housing Group will monitor the performance and the use of all of the technology in the house, which is in Fieldways, Hawkhurst. They will also get feedback from the tenants after the first year to find out what it was like living in the house. It is hoped that the lessons learnt from this will show how the housing association can reduce energy in both its new and existing homes.

New residents Joanna and Thomas Clarke and their four-month-old son Finley will benefit from extremely low fuel bills. Solar tiles on the roof provide electricity and hot water; it also features high levels of insulation, low energy light fittings and a rainwater harvesting system. A ground source heat pump provides heating and tops up the hot water and a grey water recycling system, reuses water from the washing machine and bathing for watering plants and flushing toilets.

As a result it meets Level 5, the second highest level of the Code for Sustainable Homes, the efficiency rating against which all new homes are assessed. A typical two-bedroom house costs around £1,200 in energy bills; this house will cost around £300.

Town & Country invited Mr. and Mrs. Clarke to officially declare their new home open at a special ceremony on Friday 2 July. They cut a ribbon made out of electricity bills to symbolize the energy bills they will be cutting in their new home.

The ceremony was attended by guests from councils and other organizations from across the South East, keen to see how the technology could be used in their local area. The house, which cost £205,000 to build, was built on land already owned by the housing association and was carefully designed to blend in with the character of the other homes in the street.

Town & Country's acting development director Colin Lissenden said: “As a responsible landlord, we have built this house as a demonstration of renewable energy technologies which will help to reduce the impact of the fuel price rises that would affect people on lower incomes significantly in the future.”

“Not all future developments will achieve such an excellent energy rating, the lessons learnt from this project will be valuable and enable our homes to be more energy efficient.”

In Paragraph 1， the word“slash”can be best replaced by ________.

The Clarkes will just need to pay extremely low fuel bills because________.

What is true about the architectural style of the low-carbon house according to Paragraph 6?

According to Colin Lissenden, the purpose in building the low-carbon house is to ________.

In the passage, the author's attitude towards low-carbon house is ________.