Rural Community Carbon Network

I had an interesting discussion with Rod Yeoman recently - he is the Environmental Projects Manager with Impact Housing Association in Penrith.

Impact is working with National Energy Action (NEA) to establish Impact Affordable Energy; an Energy Services Company (ESCo) in Cumbria to tackle fuel poverty through a range of environmental methods.

They have successfully secured an Innovation and Good Practice grant (sponsored by the Housing Corporation), which will support their approach to tackling fuel poverty.

“By developing environmental responses to fuel poverty, Housing Associations could significantly impact on climate change within existing stock and beyond, whilst providing direct economic benefits to low-income communities.”
Impact Affordable Energy

The regional Energy Services Company (ESCo) for Cumbria will provide:

• Energy audits and advice for residents in fuel poverty
• A domestic energy management service
• Energy efficiency and renewable energy measures for individuals or clusters of dwellings
• Bulk buying and onward sale of carbon-abated fuel supplies from mainstream suppliers
• Community-based renewable energy production and distribution

Rod is also developing plans for 2 district biomass heating schemes in Lakeland villages.

Both these models are being undertaken as pilot schemes and will create a replicable approach for other villages around Cumbria and further afield, that wants to develop renewable energy project in this way.

Rod is keen to ensure as many people, groups, villages and housing associations know about this as possible - so please spread the word!

If you have any feedback or questions, please post a comment to this post.

Rod at Impact Housing Association can be contacted on:

07769 905284

The O2 Energy Saver Fund is a joint initiative between O2 and the Energy Saving Trust. It has been designed to help local communities of between 10-25 households to install energy saving measures in their home that will help in the fight against climate change.
If an application is successful a “hit squad” will be sent into individual’s homes to install priority insulation measures.

For more information on the initiative please see the CAfE website:

The Energy Saving Trust also runs the CAfE (Community action for Energy) programme. CAfE is a network of people who share a common interest in community energy projects and ideas. Membership of the network is free and by joining you can keep up to date with news on community-based energy initiatives, as well as hearing about funding opportunities, training sessions and other news from the network.

Finally public sector and not for profit organisations can apply for funding through the Low Carbon Building Programme Phase 2 (managed by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) which offers funding for micro generation technology.

As I mentioned earlier, the RCCN has made it through to Stage 2 of the NESTA Big Green Challenge. We are very happy about this as we feel that joining people, ideas and innovation up is really important in inspiring and supporting action; we are pleased that NESTA recognised this. Now, after an informative workshop session in Birmingham and 4 hours spent chatting through our initiative with our lovely adviser, plus many many hours spent writing the detailed project plan - the final application has gone to NESTA. Fingers crossed now.

Some Challengers will get an opportunity to pitch their idea to the NESTA team and judging panel in July (I am imaging something like Dragons Den, but hopefully less scary) - with successful finalists (there will be 10) being announced thereafter.

Good luck to all the Big Green Challengers!

In its tenth year now, the New Statesman New Media Awards highlight the positive impact of new media technology on public life - and the Community Carbon Network has been nominated within the ‘Innovation’ category - which “recognises social technologies, people or organisations that make an impact and improve our society through the use of new media technology.”

The nomination is here and you can leave a comment or star rating too.

communitycarbon.net is an initiative developed by ruralnet|uk, the rural regeneration charity.  ruralnet|uk (and other collaborators) were also nominated for a New Media Award last year, for the Open Innovation Exchange.

Or are you thinking about starting one?

There are many groups and villages out there doing great stuff to collectively reduce emissions but at present these groups cannot network effectively with one another.  We can support communities to do this and can provide free training, web space and the support service ‘Experts Online‘ to those that want to be at the heart of collective community action.

If you are thinking about starting a project, you will be well aware of how important the right support is and how valuable it is to be in contact with other villages that are doing the similar things.

If this is the case, please comment on this post or call me (Sam) on 0845 1300 411.

Before Christmas I entered the Rural Community Carbon Network in to NESTA’s Big Green Challenge.

From over 350 initial applicant, I am really pleased to tell you that we have been selected to go forward as one of 100 projects that have made it to Stage 2 of the competition

This means that we are a little bit closer to winning - but we can also benefit from accessing NESTA’s team of advisers and attending some workshops.

We will know if we have made it to Stage 3 in October 2008.

Take a look at the other projects and groups who have made it to Stage 2 here.

Following on from my last post about the successful Collaborate|2008 convention, you can now watch Simon and Paul talk about the online Community Carbon Network over here at the Collaborate site (just scroll down to Simon). Thanks to David Wilcox and Paul Webster, the many highlights of the day have been captured using a live stream from David’s mobile phone- very clever stuff!

Take a look at some of the pictures of the day over here at flickr. Or follow the Collaborate Tweets from Twitter.

Yesterday, I was at Collaborate|2008 in Dunchurch near Rugby - this is the ruralnet|uk convention which was jam-packed full of people wanting to be inspired, learn more about collaborative tools and take away a new idea or contact. If you could not make it, check out the video streaming that happened live, straight to the website.

The IT team at ruralnet|uk have been working flat-out over the last few weeks to unveil the ‘Community Carbon Network‘ - which is the foundation for the online community of climate change groups. It pulls all the useful information which is ‘out there’ and being created by communities and organisations in isolation - and brings it all together in one place, for the benefit of the community. To underpin this and help ensure that all the good stuff people are doing is accessible, we will provide a free weblog to communities that want to share what they are doing with others.

The next step is to organise a one-day training session with a group of communities that want to get online - or enhance their online presence. The benefits to being able to openly share knowledge and experience throughout a networked community are enormous; it will help new groups to contact people who have ‘been there and done that’- as well provide the opportunity for more established groups to share with others what they have learnt in a much more efficient and collaborative way.

Please do contact me (Sam) on 0845 1300 411 if you are a community interested in benefiting from a network of other like-minded communities.

On Monday I took the train up to Chester for an event organised by Tracey Todhunter, which provided some really practical action planning for community energy saving projects. The day was also facilitated by Susi from The Federation for Community Development Learning. The audience consisted of communities and local authority representatives and there was some really interesting and challenging discussions; how do you engage with the community? how can we tackle apathy? what tools can we use to support community action?

There was lots of opportunity to talk to people about what they are doing and what challenges they are facing and how they can be overcome! I met some very inspiring people and learnt a lot about the practical issues that face many community champions.

 I have just come across funding pot:

Bio-Energy Capital Grants Scheme - Round 4 Open to Applications with a total fund for 2008/09 of £4 million.

The scheme aims to support projects that will:

•     deliver capacity on the ground to create an initial market for biomass fuel, installation equipment and services, to stimulate the UK renewables industry;

•     provide learning benefits that will help accelerate the industry and achieve more efficient and cost-effective use of biomass for heat and electricity;

•     contribute to the UK’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing renewable energy.

Community sectors in England are invited to apply, including schools and charities BUT householders and individuals are not eligible.  Capital grants of up to £100,000 per installation are available at a variable rate of up to 40% of the difference in cost of installing a biomass boiler or combined heat and power (CHP) plant compared to installing the fossil fuel alternative.

The community sector may apply for single or multiple installations of:

• heat boilers with a rated output of less than 45kW thermal, fuelled by biomass other than wood;
• heat boilers with a rated output of 45kW thermal or more, fuelled by any eligible biomass;
• combined heat and power plants of any size fuelled by any eligible biomass;
• anaerobic digestion plants of any size fuelled by any eligible biomass where the primary purpose is the generation of heat or CHP.

The deadline for applications is 20 May 2008.

Subject to funds being available, there will be a further application round in autumn 2008 and several rounds in 2009 and 2010.