workshop

we're holding another community workshop on Saturday 2 May at the Chronic Love Foundation on Rye Lane, arrivals and light refreshments at 1.30pm, workshop running from 2-5pm.  This workshop is focused around the theme of energy use and sustainable energy supply, looking first at the national picture and then Southwark and Peckham.  As before, there will be lots of opportunities to talk with other local people and share your ideas.

Location: Chronic Love Foundation (CLF) Art Cafe, 1/F Bussey Building, 133 Rye Lane, Peckham, SE15

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.