Andrew Cooper was elected to Kirklees council for the Green Party in May 1999 and has been re-elected three times in the Newsome Ward. Last year he was recognised in the Independent on Sunday's list of the top 100 environmentalists and was the only councillor on the list. He proposed the UK's first universally free insulation scheme, which will see more than 50,000 Kirklees homes insulated by the end of 2010. In 2000 he initiated the council's Renewable Energy Fund, through which Kirklees will become the leading authority in the deployment of micro-generation technologies with more than five per cent of the UK's solar capacity in the borough. In 2008, Cooper successfully obtained funding for the Kirklees RE-Charge scheme which provides householders with renewable technology for their homes with no upfront costs or monthly payments.