Residents' triumph on Green Lane

All the streets chosen to take part had green in their name

A street in West Yorkshire has won a British Gas competition to cut its energy consumption.

People living on Green Lane in the Cookridge area of Leeds cut their gas and electricity use by over a third.

The street was one of eight UK roads taking part in the experiment to see who could cut their energy bills the most over a year.

The winning street will receive £50,000 to spend on making a community project more energy efficient.

Residents in each place, all streets with the word green in their names, were given £30,000 last January to spend on domestic energy saving equipment, from light bulbs to cavity wall insulation.

Once you start doing things like not putting the TV on standby, it soon becomes second nature

Resident Paul Atkinson

Six months into the project, the Leeds street was shown to be out-performing all others and had collectively reduced its CO2 emissions and its energy consumption by nearly 30%.

By the end of the experiment, houses on the street had cut their consumption by 35%.

Paul Atkinson, who lives on the winning street with his wife Karen and two children, said he was "astonished" after cutting £1,000 from his annual electricity and gas bill.

Mr Atkinson said: "Small measures really make a difference and once you start doing things like not putting the TV on standby, it soon becomes second nature."

Three streets taking part in the competition were:

Greenend Road, London
Green Street, Manchester
Green Lane, Birmingham
Green Lane, Southampton
Colinton Mains Green, Edinburgh
Green Park Road, Plymouth
Greenway Road, Cardiff

Residents on the street must spend the £50,000 prize on making a community building of their choice more energy efficient.

Matthew Lockwood, from the Institute for Public Policy Research which analysed the results, said: "The UK has steep carbon reduction targets of 80% on 1990 levels by 2050."

He added: "We were surprised at the commitment of the green streets householders in showing how we might meet them.

"Nine in 10 of the homes we will live in by 2020 have already been built, so we will need creative approaches to keep carbon reduction front of mind during a recession."