The eco-home that could cut family fuel bills by £800 a year

According to its makers, the four-bedroomed townhouse will be the first environmentally friendly family home to be mass-produced in Britain and is designed to cut energy bills by up to 80 per cent.

That could save a typical family of four more than £800 a year in fuel costs.

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Developers are building on the eco-friendly dream by creating a house that's entirely free from carbon

However, one crucial detail - the price - is still missing. The builders say it is too soon to estimate the cost of producing the design commercially.

The prototype Sigma house, unveiled yesterday, is one of the first to be awarded a "near-zero" carbon emission certificate by the Government.

It gets five out of six stars for energy-efficiency under the Code for Sustainable Homes. Even during construction, relatively little carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere.

Although other designs have achieved a zero-carbon rating, exempting them from stamp duty, the Sigma is expected to become the first to be built in numbers over the next three years.

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"This is the first commercially viable home to reach five stars - and by the time the first are built it should have become six stars," said Stuart Milne, chief executive of the Sigma's Scottishbased creators the Stuart Milne Group.

"It's not quite zero-carbon, but it's a lowcarbon house.

"In a development of 50 homes with a communal wind turbine, it could become zero-carbon. It will cut somewhere in the region of 60 to 80 per cent off your energy costs."

Although the home is heated by a gas condensing boiler rather than a more fashionable biomass burner, it is designed to be as warm as possible in winter but cool in the summer.

"In a normal home, the air is replaced around ten times every hour," said Mr Milne.

"So you are heating the air and letting it escape.

"Here, the air is replaced just once an hour."

Last week Gordon Brown, the prime minister-in-waiting, announced plans for 20,000 carbon-neutral homes.

Inspecting the Sigma at an exhibition of sustainable homes in Watford, Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said: "A quarter of carbon emissions come from our homes. That is why zero-carbon homes are so important.

"We need a complete revolution in the way we design and build our homes."