And that assumes that the same type of skilled labour is required for both house insulation and turbines, - it clearly isn't.
Agree - the original argument is flawed. We can do both, and we need to do both.
We should start with the low hanging fruit - suitable new builds and suitable existing properties (regardless of ownership) where the owner is keen to have the work done. If I have better insulation in my private house, I benefit from lower bills. Everyone else benefits because I am taking less power from the grid.
Do I expect the government to fund improvements to my home? No, but it's unlikely I'll pay the full cost of the upfront improvements myself. This would require me to take out a loan and I don't know if I'll live here long enough to see a return of my capital through lower bills.
How I would do it have the work completed at very low cost to the home owner, but the government takes a share of the money saved through lower bills. This money would go back into the central fund to pay for the next lot of improvements. And if you had solar panels, the government rather than home owner should benefit from any surplus electricity.
And I agree with
@Bletchleyite, if someone is able and willing to do the work themselves, the materials should be provided free of charge, along with some basic training/advice about what's needed and the best way to go about it. I imagine this approach would deal with a significant volume of loft insulation because some people would do their own house, then may help relatives to do theirs. Obviously this wouldn't work for more complex measures like installing solar panels.
In parallel, the government should be really pushing insulation of public buildings and local authority/housing association properties etc.
Somebody up thread objected to paying for other people's home improvements, - a typical self-centred argument in the insulation debate which the Conservative government seems to particularly warm* to, clearly not recognising that eventually we will all pay for the support both in energy/food that some of those in leaky homes will need, but it will also include yet another poverty-induced hit on the NHS.
The argument about paying to improve other people's homes is a bit like saying you shouldn't pay towards the cost of the education system because you don't have children, or you shouldn't pay towards the NHS because you're personally fit and healthy.
We need a change in mindset - yes insulation would improve my home, but it also improves the country as a whole by meaning less energy is being used. This, in theory, should lead to prices falling (or not rising as quickly) due to lower demand. Obviously one house won't make a difference, but tens of thousands of houses would. The Net Zero target is the government's, for the whole country, and widespread insulation will help them achieve it. If very cheap insulation was widely available then it wouldn't add to the value of my house because the next purchaser could simply have the works completed at a low cost to themselves.