Last month we considered ways to support and encourage householders to cut their domestic energy use. This month we’ll focus on the other key areas that make up our carbon footprint – emissions related to travel, and to the indirect emissions we are responsible for through the goods and services we consume.

first, a note of caution

Working with householders keen to cut their carbon footprints, I’ve discovered that even the most committed people can struggle when it comes to making changes to their transport and consumption choices. Unlike domestic energy use, which can be in part “blamed” on the property you live in, travel and consumption is more closely associated with the individual themselves – so people can be sensitive to any perceived criticism of their lifestyle choices. Secondly, in order to make a significant reduction in their footprint, households may feel they are being asked to “give up” things – their holiday in the sun, their second car, seeing their loved ones, or eating out of season strawberries. Finally, to achieve significant cuts the changes may require major decisions such as a change of job (or moving house) to reduce a commute.

By avoiding the opportunities for people to feel judged in their current choices, emphasising the gains, rather than the losses, and accepting some ideas will take time to bear fruit, you will hopefully be more successful in the long run. Remembering the nightmare of taking small children on flights is an easy way to remind myself of how much more pleasant our holiday journeys are since we stopped flying as a family, and we’ve discovered some fantastic UK holiday destinations.

travel

Travel makes up over 20% of the average carbon footprint – but this can vary widely – not just between households, but also for the same household from year to year. Variations in commuting distance, holiday destinations and preferred modes of transport can have a big impact in our overall footprint, so there’s more to low carbon travel than simply advocating a car-free no-flight policy. Taking a “hard line” approach can also alienate those you are attempting to influence. A good place to start is by pointing out the different strategies we can use to reduce out travel emissions, namely:

• reducing the miles we travel

Why ski in Colorado when there’s fabulous snow in the Alps? Shop locally rather than schlepping to an out-of-town supermarket. Cut your commute by switching to a job nearer home – or moving to a home nearer your job – or slightly less dramatically – find an exercise class nearer to home.

• reducing the number of journeys we make

“Is your journey really necessary?”, a question posed to wartime travellers continues to be relevant in a carbon-conscious world. With the advent of Skype and video conferencing it’s now possible to “meet” face-to-face without leaving your living room. With commuting accounting for around a fifth of the distance, working from home a day or two a week can significantly reduce commute miles.

• shifting to lower carbon modes of transport

Different forms of transport result in different average emissions per passenger kilometre. From high emission to low, the scale runs: aeroplane, car, train, bus, coach, cycle, walk (for full details check out the Travel Carbonbusting Instant Expert in the resource library). By persuading people to shift along the scale to less carbon intensive forms of transport, they can significantly reduce the impact of their journey.

It was Margaret Thatcher who once said, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”  And although few people would ascribe to that sentiment, we can all too often reach for the car keys when the bus or train is a viable alternative. If we can help residents learn about the alternatives, we can encourage them to leave the car at home. For example, Low Carbon West Oxford distributed maps to all local residents highlighting local bus and cycle routes, to encourage uptake.

To compare different transport options, try the on line Transport Direct tool, which gives a nice visual comparison of different transport types, or the Travel Footprint website is a comprehensive travel calculator. Direct.gov’s website is a good portal of transport related tips, facts and figures.

The Sustrans and Cyclox website has a wealth of cycling related information and the Man in Seat 61 website is the guru for European train travel.

• improving the efficiency of the vehicles we drive

For many, giving up the car, is more than they can contemplate. So, our focus is on persuading people to have the most fuel efficient vehicle possible, and then using green driving techniques to get the most miles possible out of a tank of fuel. Of course the easiest way to half your carbon footprint from  a car journey is to give someone a lift. The Green Car Guide provides reviews of the latest fuel-efficient cars.

• activities 

• ^·Promote car-free day on 22 September.
• Organise a greener driving course for residents.
• Encourage lift sharing – Oxfordshire carshare offers a matching services for drivers and passengers.
• Promote accessible/family-friendly cycle routes around your town or village. Sustainable Wallingford have published leaflets promoting local routes, and have organised family friendly rides. See the Sustrans Oxfordshire pages for safer cycling routes near you.
• Pool cars – set up a carshare scheme in your area. Organisations already operating in Oxford include Zipcar and Commonwheels.
• Organise a “staycation” event – to help people learn about the fantastic things they can do right here at home, or to share information about brilliant holiday destinations in the UK.
• Encourage employers to make offices cycle-friendly, ensuring bike racks and showers are available. Some employers have a regular visiting bike mechanic, to help staff keep their bikes safe and well maintained.
• Lobby for actions that will improve the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in your area.  Dean Court CAG for example are currently campaigning for a cycle route out to Farmoor and Eynsham.

More information about the impact transport has on our carbon footprint, group activities and actions people can take are available in the resource library (CB3 Travel resources).

consumption

The goods we buy, the services we use and the food we eat, all contribute to our indirect carbon footprint – indirect in that the emissions are generated in the manufacturing, supply chain and disposal of all this stuff, but nevertheless ultimately our responsibility as we created the demand for the item.

In his book How Bad are Bananas Mike Berners-Lee looks at the carbon footprint of everything from disposal nappies to a full stop. However, calculating the carbon footprint associated with any single item is notoriously difficult because of the slightest change can have an effect. So an identical pair of socks produced by the same company may have different overall carbon footprint, depending on where you purchased it and how you eventually dispose of it when your toes wear through the end. There’s more information about the carbon emissions associated with our food and the stuff we buy in the resources library in the carbonbusting resources  CB4 Food Instant Expert and CB3 Travel Instant Expert.

• food

Dan Betterton writes a blog dedicated to food Setting up a sustainable food project on the Hub with information about lowering your food-related carbon footprint and ideas for working at a community level, including apple days, community meals and more.

• goods and services

Bag-for-life campaigns have done much to highlight the waste associated with single-use bags – yet all too often the focus is on the bag rather than its contents. The old mantra reduce, reuse, recycle  – and preferably in that order – continues to sum up all there is to reducing your consumption based carbon footprint.

• activities

• Run a recycling bin challenge stall at a the summer fete – challenging people to see who can correctly sort a pile of rubbish in the quickest time – with time penalties for incorrectly sorted items.
• Encourage resource sharing, for example by setting up a lending circle on Ecomodo, an online service that enables people to lend or loan items.
• Run a Bring-and-Take, or swapshop to enable residents to put their unwanted items back into circulation.  Simon Kenton’s blog on Setting up and running a climate change group will give you lots of ideas on organising events.
• Swishing – or a clothes swopping party – is becoming a popular way to bag yourself a new outfit. These can be organised in someone’s home for a few friends or in a larger venue for a local group. Participants are invited to bring along a number of pre-loved clothes and accessories. Set up a changing area, provide some refreshments and the evening turns into a mini fashion parade that that slightly too-tight t-shirt becomes someone else’s best new top.
• Refashioning workshop – rework old clothes into new items: a quick Google produces hundreds of ideas for breathing new life into old clothes.
• Set up regular stitch and bitch session – gather around a kitchen table or get together in your community centre and have a gossip as you sew on buttons and darn your socks. If you have an expert darner on hand they can help novice stitchers get to grips with a needle and thread.

As well as reducing your community’s consumption footprint, these events are great for nurturing community spirit, providing a social occasion for people from across the community to come together with a common purpose and interest.

As ever we’d love to hear your ideas for great ways to encourage greener travel and reduce consumption.

Next time we’ll be looking at the range of programmes available to community groups to run for residents wanting to make significant changes across their carbon footprint.

Saskya Huggins & Jo Hamilton

finding a venue

Unless you are piggybacking on to someone else’s event (which is no bad thing), you will obviously need to arrange your own venue. Pick your venue carefully and ensure that it is appropriate for what you want to do. Here are some pointers:

•        Is it accessible by public transport and/or is there ample parking space?
•        Is it accessible to those with mobility issues?
•        Is it well known or positioned to draw in “passing trade”?
•        What is the maximum legal capacity and is the venue large enough?
•        Do you have the correct licensing for your event where you might want to play music or     serve alcohol?
•        Do you have access to all the equipment you’ll need, such as tables, chairs, kitchen access, crockery, power points, extension cables, screen etc.?
•        Have you booked it for long enough to take into account the time needed for setting/clearing up?

Try to visit the venue before committing to a booking, making sure you are happy with the facilities and take note of things like fire exits, etc. Check that your insurance covers the chosen venue as in rare cases certain places seem to want extraordinarily high public liability – keep a copy of your insurance and risk assessment to hand during your event (see my previous blog on How to “insure” you run a good event). While you’re there it’s a good idea to make a quick sketch of the room layout so you can think about how you might want to position things on the day. It’s also worth being a bit cheeky and finding out if there are discounts for running certain types of events too. Well, if you don’t ask…

timings for your event

A quick word on timings. When deciding when you want to run your event, think about your audience. Check to make sure that your event doesn’t clash with anything else locally and that as far as possible you have avoided peak holiday periods. Also it’s worth taking into account when people are most likely to be free and not preoccupied with weekend shopping times, feeding everyone, children’s bedtimes, etc. We find that weekend events from 10am ‘til 12pm or 10am ‘til 4pm on Saturdays work really well and during the week, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 7pm or 7.30pm ‘til 9pm are best bets.

budgeting for your event

It is worth taking into account all your possible costs for your event. There’s a complete list of things to think about on the events checklist. You can cover costs by charging an entrance fee; running a raffle; sale of refreshments; charging stallholders; or even through grants and sponsorship. Look at my blog on How to get the cash and make a splash. It is important to be able to balance the books right from the start!

letting people know what you’re doing

Advertise, advertise and advertise! It stands to reason that if you want people to attend your event you have to let them know about it. Publicity can be done in many different ways: through posters, articles in your parish newsletter/paper, the local press and radio, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and by putting your event on the Low Carbon Hub and CAG websites. The important thing is to make sure you get the publicity out early enough for it to be distributed and read! One very simple thing that is often forgotten is to signpost to your event from the nearby streets. We’ll be looking more at marketing and publicity next month…

getting a helping hand

Ideally you will have got a list of people coming along to help on the day and it’s important that you gather them together at the start to run though what you need them to do.

Alongside your normal list of jobs, allocate at least one person to be the “greeter” at the door.  Attending your event could be the first time someone has come into contact with your group and it’s important to make a good impression. The “greeter” should, therefore, be someone personable, well versed in what your event and group is trying to achieve. Don’t stick them behind a table if you can help it, but also try not to scare people off by being over enthusiastic either! You might also want to allocate someone to collect contact details for your mailing list and gauge people’s reaction to the event. This is type of anecdotal evidence can really help when you’re looking back at how things went. In the coming months I will be writing a blog specifically on monitoring and evaluating your events so more on this later…

Essentially, with helpers on the day the secret to making sure everything goes to plan is to a) ensure everyone knows their own job; b) make them feel appreciated; and c) have a good supply of tea and cake. Remember, a helper with cake is a happy helper!

organising refreshments

Whilst I’m on the subject, it’s not only your volunteers that will like a bit of cake! In fact, we have found that running a small café or bar at events can really help to keep people there and gives everyone an opportunity to talk in a more relaxed manner. You might want to get help in doing this from other local groups, such as the WI or your local Fair Trade group. You can also use the café as an opportunity to engage with people about specific food messages such as local food, food miles or to advertise local producers.

taking photos

If you are planning on photographing the event, try to take photos that tell a story; one photo of a big group of people looks much the same as any other. If you take photos of anyone under the age of 18, you must get them to sign a photo permission form and for them to agree for you to use the photo on your website. An example photographic permission form is available in the resources section of the Hub website.

For an all-in-one guide to starting a low carbon group, you can now download the revised CAG Quickstart Guide and for running a low carbon group there’s the first chapter of the Low Carbon Communities Handbook to download from the Oxford Directory in the resources library.

That’s about it for this time. In my next blog we’ll be looking at how to get the best out of your press and publicity. ‘Til next then…

Simon Kenton

Don’t worry, my blog this month is not about careers advice – it’s to tell you a bit about my experience of the food networks that I’ve got involved with in Oxfordshire, and beyond.

But there is a reason for starting with this anecdote, and that is to recommend a bit of reflection on exactly what interests you food-wise before diving in. I wanted to learn, build contacts and develop a more meaningful career in food, and I was relatively upfront about this when talking to people. But you might want to make new friends, learn new skills, fight climate change, get fit, grow good veg, buy good veg, find some funding for your project – this list could go on forever.  Whatever your motivation, your networking will be a lot more enjoyable and productive if you keep this in mind and share it with people you meet.

community action group project

So, let’s start with the obvious one – Community Action Group (CAG) Project. Low carbon communities have sprung up all over Oxfordshire in the last few years. Most will have a sustainable (or low carbon, or a plethora or other names!) food group. Your local food group is a really good place to start if you want to see what’s going on, make some local contacts, and get things going. The CAG Project website can give you all the details. There’s bound to a public meeting or community event coming up. Just last week there was a great CAG networking event in Oxford where food featured heavily. A great example of the sort of event the CAG network runs is DinnerTime! where people get together to cook food that would otherwise be wasted, eat together, and have alot of fun.

national organisations

Nationally, organisations like the Plunkett Foundation, the Soil Association and Sustain run a series of training events and conferences around food. One of the first things I did was to go to a conference organised by the Plunkett Foundation, which both gave me a few ideas as to what I’d like to do next, as well as putting me in touch with people to help.

online & social media

Remember, online and social media can help too. I enjoy seeing who the people I follow on Twitter follow – you can normally find some quite interesting new projects or resources this way. And if you’ve got some ideas for a food project, a website or blog is a really good way of announcing yourself to the world.

green events

But nothing beats meeting people in person. In Oxford, there are Green Drinks organised every month, Sustainable Suppers and lots more events listed every two weeks in The Key (join the Hub and sign up to the newsletter) and on the Hub website, under the events tab.

public meetings

And then if you’re ready to launch a rough idea to the world, and see who might be interested, why not call a public meeting. Cultivate, a local food co-operative that I’m involved with started life as a conversation in a pub between the five co-founders, but gathered momentum when we called a public meeting (also in a pub…) and got others supporting our venture.

I’ll save more of that story for my next blog in July about setting up a community-supported agriculture project – but please ask any questions using the comments box below.

Dan Betterton

This month, Nicola McConville from Blake Lapthorn gives us legal insight into preparing a share offer document for community renewable schemes.

share offers & regulation

A popular way for low carbon groups to raise funds for a renewables project is through selling shares in a community “entity”. This “entity” could be a limited company, a Community Interest Company (CIC) or an Industrial and Provident Society for the Benefit of the Community (IPS Bencom), see Julia’s blog on What kind of community enterprise should you set up? Members of the community can buy shares in the “entity” which has the benefit of ensuring community ownership of the renewables project, and also raising funds to pay for it.

As a general rule all share offers are regulated by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. This sets out the legal requirements for the form and content of a share offer together with who can make that offer and who can receive that offer. It is a complicated piece of legislation and there are some exemptions which, dependent on the legal form of the entity, can reduce the amount of professional authorisation and input needed before a share offer can be made. These exemptions can be very useful to community groups and we will look at this in a later blog. Whichever form the “entity” takes there are some basic rules that will apply to share offers.

share offer document

Your share offer needs to be made clear in a “Share Offer Document”. This  document gives all the information needed by somebody to make an informed decision about buying shares in your “entity” and what that involves. It is important that this document is really clear and not misleading in any way. A Share Offer Document should include the following sections:

(i) What am I investing In?

A description of the “entity” and key elements of the rules which govern ownership of shares in the entity – this will be Rules for an IPS Bencom and Articles of Association for a CIC or Limited Company.

(ii) Why should I invest?

The opportunity – so:

• what is the project? what stage has it reached (eg. is planning permission or a lease in place or are these still subject to agreement)?
• what the project hopes to achieve when completed (eg. the type and amount of power it is going to generate and whether there is a particular building or group that will benefit from that);
• financial information (eg. anticipated cost of the project and anticipated revenues and returns);
• who is behind the offer and their credentials – so a description of the directors and a brief CV of each.

(iii) Will my money be taken come what may?

Any conditions attached to the offer eg. a minimum amount of money that needs to be raised or deadlines which need to be met.

(iv) What could go wrong?

Any risk associated with the project which might mean that it either doesn’t happen or that the revenues from the project may be reduced eg. if planning permission isn’t granted or if the Feed-in Tariff changes.

responsibility

It is very important for the directors of the “entity” to realise that they take personal responsibility for the contents of the Share Offer Document. If somebody invests in shares and then subsequently feels that the content of the Share Offer Document was misleading then they have a direct course of legal action against the directors. This means they can seek to recover financial damages from the directors for any loss they feel they have suffered as a result of the misrepresentation in the Share Offer Document. In the very worst of situations the regulatory authorities can launch an investigation into the share offer, which can lead to imprisonment of the directors. Although I must stress that this is the very worse case and something which I sincerely hope can be avoided by community groups! I use it as an illustration that responsibility for a document is not something which can be taken lightly or dealt with at the last minute: it needs to be at the forefront of the minds of the directors from the day they start putting a share offer document together.

verification

The best way for the directors of the entity to ensure that they are comfortable that the contents of the document are not misleading is to instruct a solicitor to “verify” the Share Offer Document. The verification process involves working through each statement in the Share Offer Document and the directors supplying “evidence” to support that statement to ensure that it is accurate and not misleading. So, for example, a statement that says “we are in discussions with a school to put solar PV panels on the roof” can be supported by copies of communication between the school and the directors of the community group.

Some directors find this quite a tough exercise but it is a good discipline and certainly reduces the risk of any claim being made by an investor in the future. It also stops any statements being made in the Share Offer Document that don’t stand up to scrutiny when challenged. For example, if you say that “our installation is going to be the best installation in the UK”, it is unlikely to be successfully verified and therefore the statement will either need to be amended or removed in the final Share Offer Document.

This process doesn’t have to be expensive (it shouldn’t be more than £1000) and a number of directors think it is a price worth paying for peace of mind. The inclusion of a statement that the document has been verified by a law firm also adds a degree of credibility to your share offer document and can give potential investors confidence that it has been reviewed by an independent professional. Investor confidence can lead to investor cheques!

Nicola McConville

Blake Lapthorn

Please do send in any comments and questions to Nicola. Next month I will be back to talk about launching and marketing share offer schemes.

feedback on the review

There are a massive 57 questions in this consultation and our proposed answers are in the attached document. We have answered “no views” to quite a lot of questions but I think the important ones to look at are:

• Q1 and Q2 on the new tariff levels;
• Q4, Q5 on cost controls;
• Q10 and Q11 on index-linking;
• Qs 26, 27, 28 and 29 on pre-accreditation (i.e. fixing a tariff level before installation);
• Qs 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41 on community definition and support;
• Q54 on data collection and sharing.

We also think there is a missing question about micro-hydro and I have added our views on this right at the start. Finally, I have added a piece to the front of our evidence paper to show how difficult it is to make non-solar community projects happen.

We need definitely need your feedback on this consultation, so it would be great if you could:

• Firstly, give us your views on what we have said.
• Secondly, add in any evidence you have to support our views on community needs.
• Thirdly, either formally sign up to this response, so that we can name you, and/or submit a separate response. If you are compiling a separate response, we would like to see these too, and will post them up in the resources section of the Hub website for others to see, and use.

Please email us on info@lowcarbonhub.org by the 23rd of April.

DECC has made it clear that they are looking for evidence and ideas on community energy and they would like to receive a good response from communities. Greg Barker’s Community Energy Contact Group, of which I am a member, is working hard to feed in to DECC and is meeting with them regularly. You will see that I have referenced the work of that group in some of the responses. Let’s hope that together we can make a difference.

our response to the review

The attached evidence paper from Oxfordshire shows how many, and how high, the barriers are for real community involvement in the Feed-in Tariff scheme. Our response to both consultations is to suggest that, given the evidence of the FiT register so far, there is a significant issue to address in making it possible for communities to gain access to the scheme.

We do not propose that tariffs should include an “uplift” for communities because they are set according to the market price of technologies. We do, however, consider that major changes to the rules could be made to enable proper access to the scheme by communities. We think the FiT should be targeted at home-owners and communities. It has clearly been successful so far in achieving the former and substantial changes need to be made to achieve the latter. Our key proposals on this are given below and have already been fed into the Phase 2a consultation.

Proposal 1

Given the value for money achieved by the “double carbon cut” model, we propose that all installations of any technology over 10kWp should either be owned or jointly-owned by a social enterprise or charity with community benefit enshrined in its articles of association, such as a “Bencom” or a Community Interest Company. The community benefit should refer to a particular place with clear geographic boundaries and the public benefit achieved should be reported annually.

Proposal 2

Given that proposal 1 is accepted, changes to the FiT tariffs should happen only once a year for projects over 10kWp in size. Six-monthly changes are too frequent for community-owned projects which normally take a minimum of nine months to get from inception to completion. An alternative would be for pre-registration to cover a period of at least nine months.

Proposal 3

The EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) requirement should be dropped for churches, village halls and community halls. Most of these buildings are old and, even if they can get an EPC, it is likely to be below band D with very expensive measures being required to upgrade. Most of these buildings will not have an EPC because they will not normally be sold or leased on the market and so the cost of at least £450+VAT to get one done is an onerous extra burden for community organisations.

Proposal 4

Public funding is needed to enable wholly community-owned installations to happen. This could be in the form either of grants or low-/no-cost loans for both start-up costs and for the costs associated with getting first projects to investment readiness. This funding needs to be substantial, consistently available and accessible by application rather than competition.  A grant scheme of £10m per year for start-up costs and a revolving loan fund of at least £100m would be a good start available either through Big Society Capital or the Green Investment Bank.

We value your feedback and support. Please email responses to info@lowcarbonhub.org by 23rd of April. I look forward to hearing from you.

I will be reporting on the outcome of the FiT reviews for community energy projects in June. Watch this space!

Barbara Hammond

information – important but not sufficient

There is an overwhelming mountain of information out there for householders considering cutting their carbon emissions, yet there is little evidence to show that simply giving information is enough to result in action. So, how can we help people turn information into action?

highlight the possibilities

For many, retrofitting and eco-homes are options restricted to the dedicated few with deep pockets and in-depth knowledge. But there are a number of ways you can help show that improving home insulation or installing micro-generation is something that many people can do – not just the deeply green.

Why not…

• Invite a local resident to talk about their retrofit project at the next meeting of your group.
• Host a “Show and Tell” evening where a number of local people can showcase a range of approaches to cutting their home energy, including improvements they’ve made to the fabric of their homes, and behaviour changes that have reduced their energy use. Inviting people to share their expertise can really galvanise people and help identify where they can go locally for informal help and support.
• Run an Open Home event where one or more retrofitted houses are open to the public so that people can see first-hand what makes a home an eco-house. Have a look at the ClimateXchange Open Homes 2011 pages for ideas about how to run one, or encourage local retrofitters to join the Old Home Superhome Network
• Highlight case studies on your group’s website or in newsletters. These could be local to your group, or simply link to existing on-line materials. For example, ClimateXchange have a number of case studies on their website.

then make it possible!

Of course, once householders have decided that retrofitting is for them, there are a number of other barriers that may need to overcome before starting on home improvement schemes. You could help by:
Signposting technical knowledge

• We have a number of topic-specific resources in our library, such as installing wood burning stoves and solar PVs, as well as advice to help tenants and landlords understand their rights and obligations.

• The Energy Saving Trust has some good resources on a wide range of technical issues from double-glazing to condensing boilers. Their information on solid wall insulation is particularly useful.

• Thames Valley Energy Centre offers free expert and impartial advice on saving energy.

Accessing expert help

As a community group, you’ll need to be careful not to give advice or recommendations which might result in your being liable should things go wrong. However, you can help people access advice from third parties. For example, at their recent Bring and Take, Low Carbon West Oxford, or LCWO, arranged for experts from the Oxfordshire-based United Sustainable Energy Agency (USEA) to be present to offer both ad hoc advice and detailed advice through pre-booked sessions.

Many local suppliers may be prepared to give talks or attend community events. You’ll need to be careful not to overload companies with requests for their time and also consider how you’ll manage the potential issue of impartiality.

As we move towards the launch of the Green Deal (watch this space….) we’re seeing a growth in the number of home energy advisers – experts who can give one-to-one advice and even project manage proposed works. It will be interesting to see how these services develop. One example is The Energy Saving Co-operative, who are currently piloting a service in Oxfordshire in conjunction with the Low Carbon Hub. You can read more about their project here.

You may not wish to recommend the services of specific suppliers, but you may find its helpful to encourage others to share their experiences and recommendations. The Yougen Supplier Directory on the Hub website is a good place to start. The more people from your community who post their recommendations, the more relevant these national services will be locally. The YouGen website also has lots of information on installing renewable energies.

Support and encouragement

Technical information alone isn’t always enough to make things happen. In our previous blog on goal-setting, we discussed a number of ways you can help people set – and then carry out – their carbon-cutting actions.

When there are so many potential things you could do to improve your home, it can be hard to focus. One way your group could help is to help break the options down into bite-size chunks, focusing on a particular topic at a time. For example, you might like to host a meeting where all residents interested in tackling draught proofing share information, ideas and products, and spur each other on to action. Once you’ve tackled draught-proofing – then move onto another area.

Finances

A big hurdle for many people is the cost of carrying out work – especially when payback periods can be decades, not years. Householders may be eligible for grants and subsidies. Offers frequently change so to find out about current offers, check out the following:

• The Energy Saving Trust website Grants and Discounts Database www.energysavingtrust.org.uk,
  0800 512 012
  for free, independent and local energy-saving advice.

• Cocoon Your Home,
  www.cocoonyourhome.co.uk,
  0800 8048 777

• Your local council website,
  eg. for Oxford City Council  http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decER/Grants_and_offers_occw.htm

Another way to bring down costs is to form a buying group – resulting in bulk purchase discounts. For example, Sustainable Muswell Hill offers members discounts between 10–20% discounts on insulation, PVs and boilers. You might be able to encourage local shops or suppliers to give you a bulk buying discount. Closer to home, Sustainable Woodstock have set up a PV buying group with supplier EnergyMyWay. They have installed PV on six homes and have another six in the pipeline. They have put together a useful memorandum of understanding with their supplier.

The proposed Green Deal will offer finance based on a “Golden Rule” – the concept being that in order to qualify for finance the cost of the improvement works should not exceed the expect savings it is meant to offer. There will, however, be interest charged on loans, so although Green Deal financing may make renovation more achievable, it may not be the most cost effective way to carry out work.

Alongside the Green Deal, a scheme called the ECO (Energy Company Obligation) is being proposed to help vulnerable and low income homes. We’ll write more on this as scheme details are finalised.

give a sense of perspective

Most people will be aware of the negatives of leaving gadgets on standby, and using plastic bags, and may already feel “green” because they avoid these actions, but the things we worry about are not always the things with the biggest impact.

In an ideal world we’d be reducing out footprint across the range of activities – but tackling too much at once can result in paralysis. Getting people to focus on the most energy intensive areas of energy use will help achieve the biggest wins. The following diagram gives the breakdown of energy use by different activities in the average home.

Source: Great Britain’s Housing Energy Fact File 2011 (DECC) and The Elephant in the Room (EST)

There are a range of different activities people can take to cut energy use across these activities – the carbonbusting take home tasks in our resource library suggest a number. But, the Heating and Insulation Take Home Task would be a great place to start, encouraging people to get to grips with their heating control, and so tackle the largest slice of the pie first.

This is an average picture of energy use. In our blog Getting the measure of things, we discuss the various tools you can use to help people measure their own carbon footprint and so pin-point their biggest areas of energy use specific to their household.

taking the first step

Don’t forget it doesn’t all have to be about physical changes to your property. Much of the variations in domestic energy use in our home are due to differences in occupant behaviour. By helping people make a few simple changes to the way they use energy in their homes may be enough to get them started.

You could consider:-

•  low energy cooking workshops with local food
• distributing “switch off” light stickers or “before you go to bed” checklists
• use a simple quiz to help people learn what money they could save by changing a few habits in their home. A sample quiz will be available in our resource library soon!

Behaviour changes are important because so much of our energy use is down to the way we live in our homes. If you are interested in the role of behaviour change in domestic energy use, and how you can influence it, we have a new guide in our resource library, Encouraging Behaviour Change to Reduce Domestic Energy Use.

One dilemma groups can face is whether, by encouraging the uptake of simple actions, you risk giving the impression that we really can save the planet by unplugging our mobile phones. In reality we know that to achieve really significant cuts in domestic energy use, we need people to take a broad range of actions, both changing their energy using behaviours and making physical improvements to properties.

Personally, I feel that so long as the promotion of these quick wins is done as a stepping stone to encourage people to take more significant changes is fine – in fact, it may even be a crucial part of encouraging lower carbon living as social psychology study from the 1960s suggests.

In the US homeowners were asked if they would place a large “Drive Safely” sign on their front lawn to support a local road traffic safety campaign – only 17% agreed. However, this figure shot up more than four fold to 76% if the householder had previously been asked if they would display a small “Be A Safe Driver” sign in their window. This “foot-in-the-door” effect – where saying yes to something small predisposes you to saying yes to a larger request – has long been practised by salespeople. Watch out for it the next time you are cold-called!

However, the foot-in-the-door technique only works if you go on to ask people to do something bigger. After all, no householder spontaneously erected a “Drive Safely” sign, purely as a result of displaying the sticker. So, encouraging simple actions are all well and good as a means to an end – but it does require you to be proactive about persuading that greater end.

If you have examples of where you’ve successfully turned small actions into big commitments – do share them using the comments section.

Next time we’ll be looking at the sometimes sensitive issue of encouraging cuts in travel and consumption.

Saskya Huggins & Jo Hamilton

Reference:

The Foot in the door Technique’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

Freedman JL & Fraser SC (1966)

There are a number of websites, tools and organisations that can help find the funding you need. Here are just a few that you might find useful:

easy and accessible local and national funding

Groups that are part of the Community Action Group (CAG) Project are eligible for an annual maintenance grant of up to £250 to help kick-start each year’s activities. Groups can also apply to a special projects fund for more specific low carbon initiatives. Visit our website or call us for details.

Oxfordshire Community & Voluntary Action (OCVA) has a number of dedicated funding advisors that can help groups find the financial support they need. Members of OCVA can also gain free access to the “FundingFinder” and “Directory for Social Change” web tools to get a list of grant-giving bodies. This is also available to non-members for a small charge – currently £5.

Mid-counties Co-operative – grants of up to £2k are now given via the Oxfordshire Community Foundation, although you can still approach your local store to see if they can support you in other ways.  This is usually in the form of vouchers up to £50 for purchasing food and wine and it’s at the discretion of the store manager, not Head Office. They will also advertise your events in store on noticeboards and/or plasma screens.

Awards for All give grants from £300 to £10k, funded through the Big Lottery. It is quite an easy application process and I know many groups that have been supported by this fund.

local authority funding

District and County Councils also have some funding that is available to community groups and, depending on the authority, can range from £500 to £100k depending on the project and how generous they’re feeling!

To help local organisations in their search for funding Oxfordshire County Council, or OCC, have taken out a subscription to GRANTnet. This allows you to search the database, which contains over 4,000 funding opportunities from United Kingdom and European Commission sources. GRANTnet is a user-friendly free-to-use service, which has been devised to assist community and voluntary groups, sports and other clubs, schools, social enterprises and small businesses in identifying funding opportunities for specific projects. More information on how to use this can be found here. Apart from access to GRANTnet, OCC have a list of local funders (County council grant schemes 2011-12 (pdf format, 57 KB) and a substantial “Big Society” fund that offers one-off “Active Community Grants”  Information on these can be found here.

Each of the District councils also offers some kind of financial support and you can find out more from the funding pages on their websites:

• Cherwell District Council
• Oxford City Council
• South Oxfordshire District Council
• Vale of the White Horse
• West Oxford District Council

other kinds of help and support

It’s always worth a punt speaking to other local businesses to see if they would be willing to support you in some way. Whilst this is rarely hard cash, it can be products or services, or in kind support of some kind.  If you don’t ask…  The Midcounties Co-op also have a scheme where their employees can offer their time and expertise, such as accounting or website design, to worthwhile projects – speak to them for more details.

Carbon Leapfrog is a unique business-led charity that galvanises and channels high-value, professional advice from leading service providers across a range of disciplines including legal, finance, marketing and consultancy into UK and international carbon reduction projects – for free.

Oxford University runs a scheme to give students interested in strategy and consultancy the opportunity to get work experience through working on local projects. Over eight weeks, a team of four students will undertake market research or create a funding strategy, for example, based on developing and carrying out surveys and other research. They need very little hands on support from groups and will produce a strategy which the group can freely use, or not, with no obligation. This has already been utilised by Low Carbon Oxford North very successfully. More information can be found here

raise your own money

In a world where grant funding is becoming rarer than the Dodo, you might want to think about how you might raise your own funds to become more financially sustainable. This could be something as simple as selling cakes at your events or a donation tin, to more sophisticated methods, such as setting up community share schemes. See Julia Patrick’s blog.

Finally, for the latest funding news, along with local and national sustainability news, events and job, subscribe to The Key by joining the Hub the fortnightly newsletter of the CAG Project and Low Carbon Hub.

That’s all for this time. Next month we’ll be looking at pointers to ensure your event goes smoothly. ‘Til then…

Simon Kenton

When we started ONCORE, the share offer was probably the thing that felt most daunting to us. We had no idea whether we would be able to raise £150,000 from our community. Would enough people care and be interested? What were we trying to offer people? These questions guided much of our thinking and process, from the “financial model” (see my first blog on Where to start?) through drafting the share offer document, to launching and marketing it.

This blog will look at why you might want to launch a community share offer, and how to go about producing the share offer document. You can find more detail in our Set-up and Share Offer Guide.

Why run a community share offer?

There are lots of good reasons for running a community share offer. If you’re hoping to set up a community project, then a community share offer may seem like the obvious way to raise money. That’s certainly what we assumed at ONCORE.

First, a community share offer is a way of engaging people in your community. The mere process of drafting and marketing a community share offer means you are reaching out to your community, considering the interests of individuals and the wider community, and trying to engage with as many people as possible. Moreover by investing in a community project, people have a stake in it and are more likely to care about it. They will also get an opportunity to attend shareholder meetings and vote on key decisions, and if you’re an industrial and provident society, every shareholder gets one vote, regardless of the number of shares they hold.

Another good reason for raising money through a community share offer is that they can be a relatively cheap way of raising finance, particularly if you’re a small organisation and your project is relatively small. Interest rates typically offered in community share offers – in the region of 3–4% – tend to be lower than interests rates on a loan, for example. Assuming you are raising money through an industrial and provident society and are therefore exempt from FSA regulation (see my earlier blogs on What kind of a community enterprise to set up? and  What is a community benefit society?), the costs of producing and issuing a community share offer may also be relatively low. At ONCORE, we paid £1,000 to lawyers Blake Lapthorn to review our share offer document and “verify” it (more on the legal process next month), plus design and printing (just over £1,000), plus our website (£1,000).

So are there any situations in which a community share offer might not be the best option for you? It could be that a community share offer doesn’t get you all the money you need: some of the recent community share offers (ONCORE, OVESCO) seem to have involved fairly sizeable communities (1000s of households), raising a sum in the hundreds of thousands. If your community is quite small and/or if you need to raise considerably more money for your project, a community share offer might not take you all the way, and you may need to look at other sources of finance as well (we will be looking at this in more detail a later blog). If your community is in this position, we would like to hear from you. Over the next few months, we will be exploring ways in which the Low Carbon Hub may be able to help groups finance their projects.

Also, it’s hard work! Producing the share offer document for ONCORE was an intensive process, during which we employed a project manager for two days a week over three months. Marketing the share offer required a huge amount of volunteer effort, including individual telephone call to lists of potential investors. We hope that community groups will be able to reduce the effort needed by learning from others – which is after all what this blog, and the Low Carbon Hub, is all about – but nevertheless, the process should not be underestimated. I will be covering launching and marketing community share offers in a later blog.

Assuming you are keen to go ahead with your community share offer, the next question is…

How do you set up a community share offer?

Looking back at the process of producing our ONCORE share offer, there were two key aspects: One, what story are we trying to tell?  And two, what is the legal and financial transaction with our investors?

The “story” will be different for each project, but common elements might be: Why are we trying to raise this money? Are we trying to finance one particular project, or the social enterprise more generally? Who will benefit and how?  With ONCORE, the story was all about the project, the solar PV installation on the roofs of the Cherwell School, and the balance of benefit between the school, the wider community, the environment, and investors.

This diagram is one we used in our share offer document to illustrate the benefits of the project:

Our offer to investors was part of the story, and the core of our transaction with investors.  We wanted the social and environmental benefits to go hand-in-hand with a reasonable financial return to investors. We ended up with the following offer:

• For investors in 25 year pledge shares (those who pledged not to make early withdrawals of their capital), an annual return of 4.2%.
• For investors in returnable shares (those who wanted to retain the option to withdraw their capital early) an annual return of 3%.

On top of the core story and offer to investors, there are a few specific things you may want to consider in your share offer:

• How much money do you want to raise? Do you have a minimum and maximum? What happens if you don’t raise all the money?
• How far advanced do you want your project to be when you launch your share offer? And how long do you want to keep your share offer open?
• What do you want the minimum investment to be?
  With ONCORE we decided to ask for a minimum investment of £500 (and legal maximum of £20,000), partly to keep the administrative burden manageable, and partly because we live in a relatively affluent community and felt many people could probably afford this sort of amount. Other community share offers have required as little as £10, e.g. West Oxford Community Renewables. In the end we got the best of both worlds, as the school’s PTA decided to invest, and raised money from parents who wanted to be part of the project but not invest £500 or more themselves.
• Your management team and track record.
• What are the risks?

Having developed all the elements of your share offer, you ought to be in a position to draft your share offer document. ONCORE’s share offer document  or brochure is available here, by way of example. It includes an example of “terms and conditions” of investment and other legal blurb, all based on the West Oxford Community Renewables offer document.  We put a lot of time into trying to balance our desire for simplicity and clarity of messages, against the need to deliver a professional document with appropriate evidence, explanations and caveats. We tried to strike this balance by using Q&As and appendices in the document.  I’m sure we didn’t manage it perfectly but it seemed to do the trick – we raised our target of £150,000 in under two months.

There are now plenty of other examples of share offer documents, for example Tresoc (Totnes Renewable Energy Society) and OVESCO (Ouse Valley Energy Services Company).

A final note of caution: whilst community benefit societies (that issue “withdrawable shares”) are exempt from the FSA’s regulatory regime, regardless of your legal form it is advisable to ensure any offer document is based on evidence, and that you’re not making any wild promises (see also Practitioner’s Guide to Governance and Offer Documents (Co-operatives UK, Development Trusts Association, July 2010)).

Please do send in any comments and questions. More about legal constraints and advice next time…until then, best wishes for a happy Easter break.

Julia Patrick

We do not propose that tariffs should include an “uplift” for communities because they are set according to the market price of PVs. We do, however, consider that major changes to the rules could be made to enable proper access to the scheme by communities. We think the FiT should be targeted at home-owners and communities. It has clearly been successful so far in achieving the former and substantial changes need to be made to achieve the latter. Our key proposals on this are given below and we will feed them in to the Hub response to government on both the Phase 2a and 2b consultations.

Proposal 1

Given the value for money achieved by the “double carbon cut” model, we propose that all installations of any technology over 10kWp should either be owned or jointly-owned by a social enterprise or charity with community benefit enshrined in its articles of association, such as a “Bencom” or a Community Interest Company. The community benefit should refer to a particular place with clear geographic boundaries and the public benefit achieved should be reported annually.

Proposal 2

Given that proposal 1 is accepted, changes to the FiT tariffs should happen only once a year for projects over 10kWp in size. Six-monthly changes are too frequent for community-owned projects that normally take a minimum of nine months to get from inception to completion. An alternative would be for pre-registration to cover a period of at least nine months.

Proposal 3

The EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) requirement should be dropped for churches, village halls and community halls. Most of these buildings are old and, even if they can get an EPC, it is likely to be below band D with very expensive measures being required to upgrade. Most of these buildings will not have an EPC because they will not normally be sold or leased on the market and so the cost of at least £450+VAT to get one done is an onerous extra burden for community organisations.

Proposal 4

Public funding is needed to enable wholly community-owned installations to happen. This could be in the form either of grants or low-/no-cost loans for both start-up costs and for the costs associated with getting first projects to investment readiness. This funding needs to be substantial, consistently available and accessible by application rather than competition. A fund of £100m would be a good start available through the proposed Green Investment Bank.

We have also compiled a response to questions posed by the government’s further review on the solar PV FiT. We would value your feedback on the Hub response to the government consultations. Please email responses to info@lowcarbonhub.org by Friday 30^th March.

Barbara Hammond

The goal-setting theory of motivation is one of the most studied areas of workplace psychology – and there’s lots we can take from this and transfer to a domestic or community setting. In this blog we will uncover some of the simple tricks you can use to increase the likelihood of turning people’s best intentions into concrete action – through the carefully managed encouragement of goal setting in your community.

There’s a list pinned to my fridge – a summary of all the things my family want to achieve this year. The writing of the annual list has become a New Year’s Eve ritual – and serves as a public declaration of our good intentions (lose 5 kilos by June), educational endeavours (learn to swim 10 metres), and wish fulfilment (see a swallowtail butterfly).

As I reach for the milk, the list acts as a frequent reminder and permanent record against which I can check our progress. So what makes for a good goal? We’ve already looked at this in some detail in an earlier blog, but just to recap:

specific, measurable, agreed realistic and timed – SMART

Having spent many years working in large organisations with performance management systems, I’ve learnt the importance of being specific about goals. After all simply stating “lose some weight” means a single ounce lost technically fulfils the goal. Setting easily achieved goals fail to motivate: where’s the challenge? But equally, an impossible goal can kill enthusiasm too. Asking my four year-old to swim 100 metres would quickly result in the end of swimming lessons!

It’s obvious, but knowing when a goal needs to be achieved by, and how you’ll measure you’ve got there are also important. So, the first step in helping people reduce their carbon footprint is to encourage them to set SMART carbon-cutting goals.

goal-setting tools

Several community-based schemes incorporate goal-setting in their approach. These include:

• The Greening Campaign
  This involves people deciding on five small actions they will do to reduce their CO₂ and letting the community know they are doing this by placing a card in their window to signal their commitment. (link: http://www.greening-campaign.co.uk/)
• The Low Carbon Living Programme
  As part of the programme, participants are encouraged to set their own goals using a carbon-cutting action plan. Commitment to their key goals is further reinforced through the use of pledge postcards. Both can be downloaded from the Supporting Greener Living resource library, under the Quicksilver carbon calculator.

Setting goals in the first place is one thing, but there are a number of additional factors that influence how likely a person is to achieve those goals:

choosing your own goals

Considering what scope there is to allow people to set their own goals, rather than imposing goals on them is the first area to consider. As we know from personal experience, we feel much more inclined to work towards a target we’ve set ourselves than one imposed on us by our boss. My kids got to set their own goals for the year – but that’s not to say I didn’t encourage them with suggestions to steer their choices.

active goal-setting

Active commitments are more likely to be achieved than those you passively agree to, as a volunteering study by Coiffi and Garner illustrates. They found that students who had to actively state a commitment to volunteering by filling in a form were more likely to actually follow through with that commitment than those who were told to simply leave the form blank. The difference was striking – with 49% of those who actively committed turning up, as opposed to just 17% of those who had been passive in their agreement.[i]

Writing down your commitment yourself can be important. It transpires that customers who fill in credit agreements themselves rather than have a salesperson do it for them are less likely to cancel that agreement, and when patients are asked to complete details of their next visit on their own appointment card are less likely to miss the appointment than when the receptionist helpfully does it for them. They conclude that securing an active, written commitment can make the difference to the likelihood of meeting our best intentions.[ii]

So, it may be helpful to offer to fill in a carbon-cutting commitment form for participants but, by doing so, you could inadvertently reduce their likelihood of success.

following the herd – the importance of social norms

We might like to think we are independently-minded, but in reality, it transpires that we are heavily influenced by our perception of what everyone else is doing, and how we behave is heavily influenced by the actions of others.

In one experiment, signs were put in hotel bathrooms encouraging the reuse of towels. The study found that messages that implied it was the norm to reuse towels (“the majority of guests reuse their towels”) were more effective than those than simply focused on the environmental benefits. [iii]

By reassuring people that the action is not only a normal thing to do – but something that is done by people in their immediate community or on your programme – could result in a higher success rate. Schemes such as the Greening Campaign, which encourage participating households to publicly display a postcard in their window, can help create a sense of an environmentally-minded norm in your community.

modelling good behaviour

Seeing the desired behaviour advocated and carried out by others can be more persuasive than simply reading about it. In one study, university students proved more likely to reduce the amount of water they used in the shower when seeing another student use water sparingly, than when they simply had a sign encouraging them to do so.[iv]

We’re not advocating communal showering – but you might like to consider how you can use modelling in your community to promote greener living. Are there households already leading greener lives who could share their experiences? What roles might street champions play as advocates of greener living and so make people feel more obliged to carry out actions such as recycling? Eco-homes open days are a great opportunity to model and share the different approaches to energy reduction in homes, and serve as a useful way to access information and experiences.

commitment

Making a commitment is an important step in achieving our goals – but how we make it can be key in how likely we are to achieve them. It seems that making written commitments, is more effective than verbal ones. Public commitments are more likely to be effective than those made in private – the theory being that we value consistency between what we say and what we do. In fact, this can drive not just behaviour change – but also shifts in attitude, which is important in helping make changes sustainable over time.[v]

Not everyone will feel comfortable pronouncing their commitment from the rooftops – but you can encourage people to share their plans with friends, or with a small group of people. Even better, if you can encourage them to also commit to advocating to others do likewise, this has been shown to increase their likelihood of achieving their own goals.[vi]

providing feedback and support

Helping someone set a goal is only part of the role we can play in helping them achieve it. We can help people get feedback about how they are progressing against their goal – by encourage them to measure their energy use or carbon footprint for example (see our last blog on Getting the Measure of Things). By knowing their goals we can also pinpoint technical support and advice they may need to achieve them.

Ultimately of course it’s not just the number of goals you help one household achieve that matters – its achieving that at scale which will be the true measure of success in greening your community. Do send post up any specific queries you might have about goal-setting in your community.

Saskya Huggins & Jo Hamilton