Carbon-neutral home 'would be exempt from utility bills'

The 3 x 3 x 3m home is intended as a technology demonstrator and includes a selection of the best commercially available products sourced from some 20 industrial sponsors.

The so-called Cube project was devised by Dr Mike Page, a lecturer in cognitive psychology at Hertfordshire University’s School of Psychology, who originally graduated in engineering from Oxford University.

‘I got interested in the intersection of engineering and psychology in relation to the environment — getting people to change their behaviour is a very difficult problem, especially when it involves investment in capital, even if they’re going to get their money back,’ he said.

‘I do of lot of consultancy work with companies that are trying to cut their carbon emissions, and one of the problems is that they don’t know what’s available to them or what can be achieved with certain technologies, so I wanted to put together something we could take round the place and show what’s possible.’