Transition Town Totnes
With just a few days to go before the deadline for entering the Big Green Challenge, here’s an inspiring story of how one town is preparing for a low-carbon future.
Transition Town Totnes is part of the Transition Network – communities that are working together to create a local timetable for reducing carbon emissions and dependence on oil. Through a range of working groups, Transition Town Totnes organises energy reduction projects that are fun, engaging and inspiring for all members of the community.
Projects in Totnes have included running renewable energy workshop, installing 50 rooftop solar water heaters and hosting an art exhibition with an environmental theme. Another initiative is the Totnes Pound, a local currency system that aims to encourage local trade and strengthen the local economy by keeping money circulating in the community.
The original Transition Town was Kinsale in Ireland and the initiative has now spread as far as Australia and New Zealand. You can find out about all of the towns involved at the Transition Towns Wiki.
If you’re interested in starting up a transition intiative in your town then check out the Transition Network conference which takes place in Cirencester from 11-13 April 2008.
Carbon Connections conference
Next week Carbon Connections will be hosting a conference to explore the topic of how knowledge transfer can stimulate low-carbon innovation.
Carbon Connections is a £3.5 million investment fund based at the University of East Anglia which aims to find new and sustainable ways of reducing carbon emissions. It drives low-carbon knowledge transfer and innovation by creating links between universities and industry partners.
The conference will showcase the 27 low-carbon innovation knowledge transfer partnerships already established. Visit the Carbon Connections website for case studies of some of these projects and if you want to find out more about the Carbon Connections conference then check out the preview podcast.
Newcastle – CAfE Conference – 29th November
The Energy Savings Trust has an offshoot, the Community Action for Energy, Café, which does exactly what its name suggests. I went to its annual conference in Newcastle in November and had a great time (while telling the delegates about the Big Green Challenge).
Mark Lynas sketched why he thinks humanity is now writing a collective suicide note – but we should not sign it. Instead we take much more radical action to reduce emissions. So we should have the maximum emissions around 2015 with steep declines afterwards. To get there, we need to take a wide range of measures, from tradeable carbon quotas to widespread use of electric cars powered from renewable sources. He was optimistic because there was now more local activity around climate change, such as Ashton Hayes or the 250 groups working on climate change in the South West of England. To make a big difference all that was needed was to mobilise a critical mass in a community. It wasn’t necessary (or possible) to get everyone to sign up.
We then heard from three inspirational projects, Sanford Housing, Ashton Hayes, and Community Buildings. Jim Noble of Sanford talked about their mutual housing cooperative with 130 members where they had renewed kitchens, installed solar water heating, and a biomass boiler. Tracey Todhunter gave us the Ashton Hayes experience. This is a community of 1000 people who announce their household carbon footprints in their front windows! For Tracey it was important to show how people could live a good life and have a low-carbon footprint. It was definitely not about wearing hair shirts.
Arthur Scott from National Energy Action described how they helped to save energy in community buildings. An important knock-on effect was that any cost savings were then likely to be spent in the local area. We then heard about Personal Carbon Trading from Simon Roberts, Centre for Sustainable Energy, Bristol. (See his and Joshua Thumin’s report for Defra, (A Rough Guide to Individual Carbon Trading )
It’s a complex topic. But Simon did a terrific job of explaining the advantages and the disadvantages. The principle is simple. Everyone gets a set carbon allowance every year. Each time they pay for fuel, or a utility bill, or buy a travel ticket (bus, train or plane) they surrender part of their carbon allowance. So if you want to use more carbon than your allowance one year, you have to buy the extra you need from someone who is using less.
The beauty of the scheme is that it provides a mechanism for reducing overall carbon use. The Government sets a total for everyone in the country, and divides that by the population to get an amount of carbon that each person can use. The next year, the Government reduces the overall amount and carbon use comes down. But while personal carbon trading is a great idea, would it ever work in practice? What’s needed, according to Simon, is a large scale trial to see if it could work. A group of people sets a carbon allowance for their members. Those that needed more could buy extra from other members and the money that’s raised could go into energy saving measures or renewable energy kit. Maybe some entrants to the BGC could be testbeds for these ideas.
