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The average property churns out around 5,500kg of the ozone-damaging stuff each year, which is about the same as a jumbo jet making the return trip from Manchester to New York - twice.
Making your home greener would have an impact not only on the planet but also your pocket.
Until now the major housebuilders have made only token gestures, many not even putting in the minimum amount of loft insulation and only a small percentage of new homes being rated as "very good" by the Building Research Establishment, an independent body that assesses new homes.
But things are changing. Along with tighter government regulations, the need to provide a eco rating in your Home Information Pack and the recent sharp rises in fuel prices has helped focus attention on alternative sources of renewable energy and the price of power in the future.
But should you be demanding a wind turbine on the roof or geothermal power underground, solar panels or photovoltaic, double-glazing or triple?
Step forward Barratt, big boys of the housing world, building 15,000 properties a year and just as confused about the new eco-technologies as the rest of us.
Eco-village
To make mass-market sense of it all they have built an `eco-village' of seven family homes fitted with varying combinations of wind, solar and geothermal power as well as micro combined heat and power units.
And over the next 18 months, Dr Tony Sung and his Manchester University team will be evaluating which work the best.
David Pretty, of the Barratt Group said: "When we started exploring the energy saving and energy producing options available we were frustrated by the lack of clear, researched data and decided the only way to progress was to do it ourselves.
"There was no point installing systems until we know which are most efficient, which work best in tandem and which the public are prepared to pay for."
And there's the bottom line. Who is going to pay?
The eco-kits installed on the smallest test house, a two bed semi, cost £15,400, but estimated savings are only £263 a year which means you would never recoup the initial costs. Different systems installed on a three bed detached cost half that, £7,700 and the pay back is an annual reduction in bills of around £359.
Both would substantially reduce harmful CO2 emissions by a third.
Pretty believes while most buyers want to play their part to help the environment they may baulk at the costs and believes the government should make building land available with an eco discount.
He said: "Most buyers are very very keen on environmental features but not so keen when they find out how much they cost. The state is this country's biggest land owner and if the government were prepared to sell off land at 25 per cent of its market value we could incorporate all the environmental features they want to help meet their reduction targets and even make them affordable for first time buyers."
Incentives
Other incentives for buyers could be reduced council tax bills or a more flexible approach from banks and building societies prepared to add the cost of energy saving measures onto a mortgage.
So why can't the developers pick up part of the tab?
"It's a balancing act," admits Pretty. "We have to consider shareholders as well as housebuyers but we are the first developer to have funded anything like this."
The fact that the test houses look like any other suburban Barratt development was deliberate. "We wanted to test the systems on the type of conventional housing still favoured by the majority of British buyers," said Pretty. After years of pushing UPVC the windows in these houses are made from softwood from managed sources, all the white goods are A-rated and there is dedicated waste recycling.
They are trying two types of wind turbine, solar panels that heat water and others that produce electricity that can be sold back to the grid if there is a surplus. Rainwater is being stored underground and could provide almost a quarter of a household needs and the latent heat of the ground is being used to provide under floor heating and heat water.
They apparently considered sheep's wool for insulation but thought that may be a step too far for conservative house buyers.
The houses are built around an eco-conscious courtyard on one section of Buckshaw Village near Chorley and while they will not be lived in, they will be open as show homes with visitors being quizzed on what they would like to see in the homes of the not too distant future.
Dr Sung said: "There is a lot of evaluation to be done here and I am very excited about what we may find. We are still a long way off being completely self sustaining but home owners can make a difference."
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