Rural Community Carbon Network

We apply to Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is one of the largest independent grantmaking foundations in the UK. The Foundation make grants to organisations which aim to improve the quality of life         for people and communities in the UK, both now and in the future.  They like to consider work which others may find hard to fund, perhaps because it breaks new ground, appears too risky, requires core funding, or needs a more unusual form of financial help such as a loan.

One of the current funding priorities of the Esmée Fairbairn Environmental programme, is 'Low Carbon Economy''. We believe that the innovative RCCN meets the aims of the 'Low Carbon Economy' funding priority particularly well, by addressing an idenified need - and gap - which will support existing grass-roots community action to take the lead in reducing carbon emissions through a collective and sustainable approach.  The RCCN initiative has been in development for over nine months and as such, it has gained significant support; from communities, agencies and other climate change programmes. 

We will hear from Esmée Fairbairn in September 2007.

Support provided through RCCN

The RCCN has received praise from Ashton Hayes community group for providing the type of support and information that will be integral to the initiative once it is up and running.

Tracey Todhunter from Going Carbon neutral Ashton Hayes writes:

"The Going Carbon Neutral project will be having a meeting in September and I know that the information you have provided will be very useful to us in deciding how best to proceed with the project - especially as we are looking to pursue our microgeneration  plans. I hope we finally get to meet at Ruralnet Conference in October and I can thank you personally for all the support you have given the project."

Providing funding information is just one of the resources that community groups will have access to as part of the RCCN and we are very encouraged by this feedback from Tracey.

CoRE Project receives the support from One North East

One Northeast To Fuel Social Enterprise's

Lower energy bills, cleaner fuel and income for local communities could be on the horizon if a visionary North East business with environmental objectives meets it goals.  Community Renewable Energy (CoRE) is a social enterprise covering the North East which works with the voluntary and community sector to develop renewable energy systems. Now they have just received backing from the region’s bosses to allow our communities to play a bigger role in the efforts against climate change.

Ashton Hayes support the RCCN

The Cheshire village of Ashton Hayes (pop. 1000 approx.) is aiming to to become the first small community in England to achieve carbon neutral status. The village want their children and future generations to know that they tried to do their bit to stem global warming and encourage other communities to follow suit.

The profile of Ashton Hayes is growing (they met Graham Norton the other week!..see blog), and they are finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil the many requests they receive for help, advice and visits.  They see the RCCN as the way forward for knowledge transfer and support amongst community energy projects, nationwide...meeting a real need.

Tracey Todhunter has detailed this support of the RCCN in an email;

We are very excited that Gary Charnock has kindly agreed to attend ruralnet|2007, our annual conference, in October as a panellist to a discussion about community energy projects.

Ashton Hayes meet Graham Norton

The 'Going Carbon Neutral' village of Ashton Hayes were interviewed during the Live Earth concert at Wembley on 7 July 2007.

The BBC interview with Graham Norton (left) ended up being a two-stage affair due to interruption from the Black Eyed Peas! Project originator, Garry Charnock (second from left) and Golden Lion landlord, Barry Cooney (third from left) were joined on the set by Zac Goldsmith of the Ecologist Magazine (right). The BBC also showed a clip from the Live Earth Film 'The Village Green' by Inigo Gilmore.

RCCN Presentation at collaborate|2007

The RCCN Project was presented at ruralnet|uk's collaborate|2007 event in Rugby on 28 June 2007. It was received very enthusiastically especially by the type of organisation who it would seek to support. Tracey Todhunter from Ashton Hayes was in the audience and contributed significantly to the discussion. She said that RCCN "was just what they needed".

Simon Berry and Tracey met afterwards to go through the RCCN in more detail. We are expecting Ashton Hayes to express their approval of the initiative formally in a letter of support.

Below is the Powerpoint file used for the presentation. Goto Slideshare if you'd like to download the original powerpoint presentation.

We apply to Defra CEEF to tackle rural fuel poverty

Our application went into Defra Community Energy and Efficiency Fund last Friday (the 13th July ...unlucky, for some - not us though, hopefully!).

We have applied for funding to deliver the aspect of the RCCN which will address fuel poverty in rural areas.  National Energy Action research [Rural Fuel Poverty, March 2005] reported that less than 10% of Warm Front grants are claimed by people living in rural areas, even though 27.5% of all fuel poor households are located there. According to the interim report ‘Quantifying Rural Fuel Poverty’ [William Baker & Ian Preston, Centre for Sustainable Energy, interim report for Eaga Partnership Charitable Trust] the take-up rate of Warm Front grants in urban areas is over twice the rate in rural areas across 5 regions (4.4% and 2.0%, respectively).  Funding from Defra CEEF will enable activity to start taking place which will highlight fuel poverty within rural communities and provide resources that will help to eliminate it, through the grass-roots RCCN approach.

We will hear if we have been successful late August.

We hear from emda

Sam spoke with Stuart Creedy earlier today and was told that emda will be undertaking some scoping work in follow-up to the Community Renewables Initiative and will not be in the position to locate the capital funding towards the RCCN.

Disappointing news - but Sam will remain in contact with Susan Meech at emda and hopes to work collaboratively with emda in the future.

UKVillages Come on Board to support the RCCN

We are really pleased to announce that UKVillages are supporting the RCCN - and will be helping us to collect data on the existing community energy projects as part of the mapping exercise.

Launched in April 2000, http://www.UKVillages.co.uk is now widely recognised as the national and local community website for the UK, providing a fully interactive home page and tailored portal for over 31,500 villages, towns, cities and suburbs in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.