Notes from EST's Green Neighbourhoods workshop

I've just returned from the Energy Saving Trust's Green Neighbourhoods workshop.  Here are my notes.  These notes are quite rough around the edges but they will hopefully shed some light on what happened at the workshop... if you'd like me to explain anything in more detail then please post a comment at the end of this post and I'll do my best to elaborate.

The workshop was held today (Friday 20.03.2009 1pm-5pm) in Westminster.

Overview of the EST's Green Neighbourhoods scheme

• The EST's Green Neighbourhoods scheme will aim to provide a grant plus a zero-interest loan plus other funding.

• The project is gearing up now. Pilots are running. Not sure when the project will be rolled out nationally.

• GN will aim to help up to 100 neighbourhoods. Total budget might be £5M? Maybe 15 households per neighbourhood; £4k per house. But don't know how much money will be available. Originally the fund was £10m but that has been cut by the government, partially because of the overlap between GN and the Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) run by the Department for Energy and Climate Changes's (DECC).

• Aimed at able-to-pay owner-occupiers; not social housing (which is covered by DECC's CESP)

• Aimed at “hard to treat” homes where “hard to treat” means solid walled or off mains gas. The existing Carbon Emission Reduction Target (CERT) scheme is addressing the “easy to treat” homes so the EST's GN must address the hard to treat.

• Target is for a 60% reduction in CO2 per household. Measure over 2 years using smart meters (electricity, water, gas, oil will all be metered. Data is viewable by homeowners and is also sent to utilities). Homes which already have some measures installed will not be penalised, the 60% reduction is relative to stock average. (e.g. if a house already had some solid wall insulation installed then that would contribute to the 60% reduction). The aim is NOT for the full 60% reduction to come from just the EST funding.

• The £4k per house from the EST will be leveraged against other funding to reach £15k per house. Match funding. The homeowner will be expected to put in a large chunk of money.

• “Whole-house approach”

• Hoping to bring in CERT where possible for appropriate measures (e.g. loft insulation). GN wants to be a facilitator to help bring in other funding.

• The EST GN is a demo programme. It will not compete with CESP.

• 65 people subscribed to today's workshop.

Some of the GN staff at the EST:

Ken Brady, Programme Manager.

Tom Chapman, Assistant Prog Manager

Positioning

Although GN is a community approach, contracts will be with individual households.

The “communities” can be quite a loose organisation. No need for a formal constitution. People can drop out at any point. The community needs a nominated group leader. But you mustn't rely on a single person because they could move at any point. Possibly a designated 2^nd person.

Feedback from pilots

high level of commitment is required.

Householders mostly put in £5k of their own money. There is a choice of taking up a zero-interest loan. The loan payback is not formally linked to the energy bill savings. Details are still to be sorted out. Loans will probably be unsecured loans. Loans are given to the individuals not to the property (the process of taking this loan out is faster and easier than a loan against the property)

Overview of pilots

Still early days. Nothing has been installed yet and no money has changed hands yet. 39 applications from 3 areas. Planning to start installing measures this year. Working with about 15 households from each community. Householders contribute about £5k.

There wasn't an open call to find pilots. Ken found communities through word-of-mouth. Ken met with 6 communities and decided to go ahead with 3 communities.

Worked with a group leader from each community. Both groups were already well established.

Surveys were completed on the households. Tried to combine surveys to reduce impact on the individuals. Needed 3 surveys: heating, insulation & smart meters. Of the 31 properties, all have had smart meter surveys (water, gas, electric smart meters will be installed which talk to the suppliers; householders will have access to their data). All SM installations should be complete by april.

Reports will be produced around Summer.

The solid walled insulation surverys took half a day each and looked at all potential issues (damp problems, radon, flooding etc). Also considered external wall insulation.

Costings for solid wall insulation seem quite high. About £3-6k for internal; about £6k-8k for external. Contractors are very nervous about giving costings for internal insulation; the industry is on a learning curve.

The majority of the properties are solid walled.

Looking at solar thermal, boiler upgrades, loft insulation.

Lots of interest in a zero-interest loan.

The EST Advice Centres will play an important role in providing advice to the communities. But this isn't perfect. Will look to work with other organisations who could provide support.

CESP is not going to tackle able-to-pay owner occupiers of hard to treat homes.

Thames Gateway might match the GN funding. Eg if GN provides £5m nationally then TG will provide £5m for the TG area.

CESP has £350m, regionally based, a fuel poverty programme. Really important in driving costs down.

Examples of community projects

• Sadberge parish plan

• sustainable Haddington, Scotland. Installing insulation measures. About 170 households signed up to take action.

• Cornwall home health project. Taking people whose homes need cold and damp issues fixed and installing energy efficiency measures. Project has been running 6 years.

• Bro Dyfi community owned wind turbines

• Northern Ireland EST advice center and Derrygonnelly Community. The EST usually get a 5% response rate to the advertising they send out but they got a 35% response when working with the Derrygonnely community. Working with existing communities is clearly a good strategy.

Community Action for Energy was oversubscribed. Working with communities is really important for the EST. Want to see thousands of community projects, not least because there are good community-building.

How can the EST help communities at the moment?  Carbon calculator. What are the priorities for saving energy for the community?

GN is trying to develop communities which will show the rest of the country where the future lies.

Green N. is gearing up at the moment. Will provide more local outreach, primary through the EST's existing advice centres but then by working with other local organisations to provide advice. Community advisers. Funding advice. The EST will bring in funding from the government. Will have to be more adventurous in terms of finding funding.

EST GN info service will launch in June. But don't know when the first call for funding will be.