Local Action 21 Summer email newsletter
Welcome to our latest newsletter. It has turned out to be rather a long one, which is testament to the amount that is happening locally.
This is just a snapshot of what has been and is happening in Woking in the sustainability and climate change related arena and there are bound to be many other activities, which we would like to promote, so if you know of something going on which is not noted here, then please let us know.
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Contents
Recent events:
1. George Marshall’s Carbon Detox show at our AGM
2. Environmental awareness day at Lightbox
3. Age of Stupid showing at Lightbox
4 Oak Tree House open days
Project group activities
5. Food project
6. Eco-auditing
7. New project group Fun, Culture and Community
8. Business group gives advice on cutting energy bills
9. Results of 2009 Gardening for Life survey
10. Garden sharing
11. Eco-teams- join a group to help you reduce your energy consumption
12. Schools project gets go-ahead
Future events
13. Craft fair at Lightbox
14. 7 to 18 Dec – Copenhagen fortnight in Woking
15. Future meetings
National campaigns we support
16. 350.org
17. 10:10 campaign
Other news
18.Oak Tree House
19. Find out more about what we do and what our project groups can offer you
20. Scoping report response
21.Eco friendly taxis
22. Events at our sister group in Guildford
23. Happiness
24. Energy meters on loan at Surrey libraries
25. Financial returns on renewable energy
26. Copenhagen – climate change treaty negotiations
27. Woking Climate Change Strategy
28. Surrey County Fairtrade meeting
29. Food in 2030
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1. Carbon Detox. Our AGM on 10 June featured George Marshall with his one man Carbon Detox show. It was well received and he gave a useful insight into how to avoid climate denial and how an individual’s footprint was made up and where reductions could be made. For more about the show see our blog here. George has also written an extremely useful book by the same name.
2. Environmental Awareness day The Lightbox held an Environmental Awareness day on Sat 6 June LA21 and showed a number of activities including a vision tree for 2020, a fun serious of giant footprints showing what were the most significant factors in personal emissions and a quiz for children. We also showed how lofts could be insulated to the latest standard and how to join up to the WWF calculator.
3. The Age of Stupid was shown at the Lightbox on 17 July. The Age of Stupid is a new film from Director Franny Armstrong in which Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? For more about audience reaction see here.
4. Oak Tree House open days. Oak Tree House, Woking Borough Council’s low carbon demonstration house, has now been formally opened. It has already held two open days specifically for the house, where LA21 members were also present to guide and inform visitors, and on 19 Sept LA21 Gardening for Life and Food project groups held a successful Open Garden there to showcase the drought resistant, wildlife friendly and food productive garden. The sun shone brilliantly, and the garden was a great source of inspiration to many visitors. Also present were the community vegetable gardeners from Knaphill.
5. Food project You may have seen some of the activities of our food group covered in Woking News and mail recently. If you missed it, you can see the article here.
Future plans for food group activities include encouraging the growth of more fruit trees in Woking, fruit scrumping in autumn, and to help with that, building up a map of fruit trees with fruit for offer. We are also planning to make it easier for residents to start cooking vegetarian, by holding demonstrations in the near future and publishing locally produced and tested vegetarian recipes.
If you are interested in getting involved in any of these areas, then please contact Sarah at sevan001@talktalk.net
We also have a blog here, which, so far, has two postings on it about how to make vegetable beds easily in the middle of a lawn or where there is existing paving, in your own garden. The directions could also be used for vegetable beds at schools or churches, or any other community building.
6. Eco auditing Members of the low carbon living group have recently completed an Energy Saving Trust auditing course. They are now planning how to use this to help local residents reduce their footprint. In the meantime, they continue to offer a first level audit facility for community buildings and similar organisations. They will be conducting a review of Woking Fire station’s energy efficiency in the near future. Please contact Rod Brans or Rob Palgrave if you are interested in this activity. rodbrans@greenbee.net , robertpalgrave@hotmail.com
7. New project group: Fun, Culture and Community The community networks group has now expanded to include fun and culture following the enthusiasm generated for this at our recent conference Our Woking, Our World. We continue to encourage community groups of all shapes and sizes to include sustainability issues as a norm in their activities, and we are also developing fun activities for schools and other groups, to demonstrate that one-planet-living is not all hair shirts! Watch out for future activities as they unfold.
In the meantime, we are also teaming up with Surrey Wildlife Trust to find novel ways of involving more people.
8. Business group gives advice on cutting energy bills Our business group has been looking at ways for small and medium enterprises to cut their energy bills and save money. They will be handing out tips for doing this at the Woking means Business event on 8 Oct at the HG Wells centre. If you are a small business and can’t get along there, then please contact Godfrey at godfreyhc@btinternet.com to find out more.
9. Results of 2009 Gardening for Life survey Garden Wildlife Watch The third annual Garden Wildlife Watch organised by the Gardening For Life project group took place in April. The summary of the results is published here. Many bird species have been seen during the last year in a similar percentage of Woking gardens surveyed, while others have shown more marked changes within the three years. Thus the house sparrow has declined from 71% of gardens in 2007 to 57% in 2009 which ties in with other reports of declines in urban and suburban areas. On the other hand some species like long-tailed tits and goldfinches have continued to increase. The selected animals and insects over the last year were reported in a very similar percentage of gardens to the 2008 survey except for the stag beetle, which dropped further to only 40% of gardens.
In 2009 a number of questions of the original Woking Garden Profile survey in 1999 were repeated to see how our gardens may have changed. It was interesting that the garden composition had remained remarkably similar for most features. However, there was a clear increase shown in the percentage of gardens with areas for vegetables and fruit bushes. This agrees with the national trend to grow your own produce and from the additional question around 30 more people want an allotment or to share garden space. For more about the possibility of garden sharing for food production see item 10.
It was encouraging that there were around 8% more gardens in 2009 than 1999 with both small and larger trees and also some specified wildlife food plants were grown in more gardens as well as 49% gardens grew wildflowers.
10. Garden sharing There has been considerable national and local interest shown in either offering one’s garden to share or in helping to cultivate someone else’s garden for food. At the moment we do not have sufficient time to offer a tailored service to people who would like to get involved, so we suggest that you use the Landshare site that was set up by Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall on Channel 4. If you have the inclination and time to help set up some more specific co-ordination for local residents wanting to engage in this, then perhaps you could contact Sarah at sevan001@talktalk.net
11. Eco-teams- join a group to help you reduce your energy consumption. We are setting up our first Eco-Team group in Woking.
“Climate change, increasing stress on natural resources, growing mountains of rubbish, worsening air and water pollution, it can be difficult to know where to begin.
That’s where EcoTeams comes in. We provide the practical information you need to take positive steps in your own lives towards greener living. Working together with family, friends, colleagues, even strangers, through a series of action-focused meetings or online groups, we’ll provide you with all the tools you need to make a difference.”
We now have a trained Eco-Team leader from Climate Squad volunteering with us who will help you over five monthly meetings to look at greening your household. “You’ll pick up invaluable tips from others as well as impart your knowledge and experience. EcoTeams will transform your desire to protect the environment into practical action that achieves results.” Teams typically comprise 6 to 8 people who meet up monthly for 5 months. They will have acess to online resources.
“What are the benefits of getting involved?
A household taking part typically:
- reduces CO2 emissions by 16.6%
- reduces heating energy consumption by 21%
- reduces rubbish by 20%
- reduces water use by 15%
- increases recycling by 5%
- reduces energy & water bills by £170 a year”
The first sessions will probably be starting in November. Contact us to find out how to join up: clare.palgrave@hotmail.co.uk
12.Schools project gets go-ahead. Since early this year, the Schools Group has been working to get that part of the Woking Council’s Climate Change Action Plan relating to schools off the ground. In a partnership role with WBC and ecsc, arrangements for the launch of a Low Carbon Schools Programme were recently finalised and we now are pleased to report that the Council has invited all schools in the Borough to participate in the Programme which, over the next four years, provides for a free Energy Audit and a free assessment of the scope for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency improvements, for every school.
Schools wishing to participate have been asked to register their interest with Tim Lowe at Woking Bororugh Council timlowe@woking.gov.uk or 01483 743 413, who will be co-ordinating initial arrangements.”
13. Craft fair at Lightbox There will be a crafts fair with mainly local craftspeople at the Lightbox on 28 November. See here for more details nearer the time, but make a note in your diary now and support local craftspeople making things that will last and provide enjoyment. Join the movement towards buying things that last!
14. 7 to 18 Dec – Copenhagen fortnight in Woking
It is being said that the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference, Dec 7th-18th 2009, will be the most important single event in the history of humanity. Thousands of people there will be discussing and debating, prevaricating and protesting about what must be done immediately to reverse the processes which are inexorably leading to catastrophic climate change threatening our future as a species. All the scientific advice is that effective action is needed straight away.
So whatever happens in Copenhagen, what can we – the billions of people around the world – do ourselves that will immediately make a real difference?
We are joining in a fortnight of glocal action in every locality, home, street and workplace – in every neighbourhood, village, town and city…
Local Action 21 is planning to hold several events during this fortnight: a public meeting, crafts activities, photo competitions, vegetarian cookery demonstrations and pub quizzes, and we hope that you will feel inspired to hold an event yourselves.
Possible activities could be:
- Pedal powered disco
- Carbon –busting coffee mornings (meet up with others to agree steps you each will take to reduce your footprint – and then meet up again to compare notes on successes)
- Teach-ins/learn-ins (meet up in small groups to find out more about what you can do)
- Low meat/seasonal food cookery demonstrations
- Art trails across your village to draw attention to the issues
- DIY weekends with a buddy to make your houses less draughty and more efficient
- Recycle/re-use Christmas stall at Christmas fair
- Hold a vegetarian day/meal and invite your friends.
In the meantime, why not join everyone in making a highly visible pledge to show world leaders that we are all serious about the need to make serious global (emission) reductions now here.
15. Future meetings Most of our project groups hold regular meetings ranging from monthly to quarterly, and we welcome newcomers. As they are very informal it’s a great way to find out what a group is getting involved in, and how you might be able to contribute. Contact the project leader concerned to find out more.
16. 350.org LA21 support 350.org which is campaigning to raise understanding and action over the need to restore concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 ppm or less. They will be holding a day of action on 24 October to spread the message. Why not start your own action and sign up at their website. Lots of fun ideas about what you could do that draws attention to the figure 350. They have an action plan to help you plan things easily. And a list of fantastic ideas including walks, cycle rides, rubbish clean up and art work, ‘carrot mobbing’ and faith celebrations.
17. 10:10
We are now a 10:10 group.
10:10 aim to encourage individuals, groups and businesses to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% during 2010. LA21 have joined up, as have many individuals within the group. The website has pledge cards for individuals and small businesses and advice for schools on how to achieve these cuts.
This is a fantastic campaign spawned by the producers of the Age of Stupid and we would love to see people around Woking getting involved in it. Early next year we hope to roll it out wider across the community, but in the meantime lets all start the ball rolling by signing up ourselves.
18. Oak Tree House is now open and will be having regular open days, which we will advertise in our email newsletter as they become known.
It is hoped that community groups who need a meeting place may consider the use of Oak Tree House as an occasional venue, where small meetings can be held, including coffee and tea making facilities. They will have the opportunity after the meeting to look around the house and gather ideas, which they can take away.
19. Find out more about what we do and what our project groups can offer you. On our main site we publish material on our blog quite regularly. Here you will also find our latest steering group minutes as they are published. If you subscribe to it through RSS you will be up to date with our postings, and future events.
Our project group site has information about all our projects, details of how to contact the leader, and starting now, regular reports on their activities. There is new material about loft insulation and choosing window frames here as well on the low carbon homes pages.
If you know of a local project with sustainability or climate change action at its core and would like more people to hear about it please contact us at clare.palgrave@hotmail.co.uk .
20. Scoping report response AS LA21 we have responded to the first stage of the latest set of consultations which Woking Borough Council, are conducting as they develop their Local Development Framework. You can see our response here. You can find out more about the LDF and how to become involved as an individual here.
21. Eco friendly taxis We are pleased to see that Woking now has at least one taxi service using more eco-friendly cars. Make sure you look out for that option the next time you order a taxi.
22. Events at our sister group in Guildford.
From the Guildford Environmental Forum calendar:
Tuesday 29 September
GEF Sustainable Energy Group. Lesley Harding, Manager of Surrey County Council’s Climate Change Team:
“The Emerging Strategy for a Low Carbon Surrey”.
1900. Committee Room 1, GBC Millmead Offices. (Liquid refreshments from 1830)
Thursday 8 October
Guildford Geographical Association. Dr Simon Carr, Queen Mary College:
“Protecting our Existence. Climate Change and the Future for the Arctic”.
1830. Auditorium, Royal Grammar School.
Thursday 12 November
Guildford Geographical Association. Dr Varyl Thornycroft, Royal Holloway College:
“Floods and Climate Change”. 1830. Auditorium, Royal Grammar School.
Tuesday 17 November
GEF Biodiversity Group. Damien Short, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Institute of Commonwealth Studies:
“The Ecological Crisis, Human Rights and Human Responsibility”.
1900. Committee Room 1, GBC Millmead Offices. (Liquid refreshments from 1845)
23. Happiness The Guardian has a very interesting article about the lack of relationship of happiness with Gross Domestic Product. Very worth reading. This also confirms work done some time ago by the New Economics Foundation on happiness, entitled The Happy Planet Index. Basically they found that happiness is directly related to financial welfare up to a certain point and then after that, as financial welfare increases happiness decreases again. Find out where you fall in the happiness stakes by taking their simple quiz here.
24. Energy meters on loan at Surrey libraries. Surrey County Council are rolling out the loan of ‘smart meter’ type energy meters in their libraries starting in early October. So if you want to monitor your domestic electricity consumption look out for these in your local libraries. This device will monitor your real time electricity use, and tell you how much it is costing you. The device will help you to identify which appliances in your house are ‘guzzlers’ so that you can reduce your electricity costs, and reduce your carbon emissions in the process. Useful for checking what devices you forget to switch off when you leave the house, and also for checking when a family member has forgotten to switch off their personal devices.
25. Financial returns on renewable energy
Government is changing the incentives for homeowners to install renewable energy systems. For electricity generation, e.g. solar PV and wind turbines, they plan to introduce a “Feed-in-Tariff” from April 2010 for installations up to 5MWp. For renewable heat, what’s called the “Renewable Heat Incentive” will come into effect a year later.
The underlying theme is that up-front grants will be discontinued and instead, homeowners will get a guaranteed income for the electricity or heat they generate renewably. This income is tax free, and will apply to both new and existing installations. For solar PV, the scheme will run for 25 years. The income arises from a levy on all energy users, not the taxpayer, so if you invest in renewable energy you are being paid out of everyone else’s power and gas bills.
The Government consultation on the Feed in Tariff (FIT) is open till 15 October 2009 if you want to look at the detail and to submit comments. To illustrate the way the FIT is currently proposed to work for solar PV electricity, here is a realistic but fictitious example.
The principle is that you can get paid for two things – the electricity you generate and the electricity you export to the grid. (A solar PV installation will exportpower to the grid when it is generating more than your own home is using. For example at noon on a summer’s day your PV may be generating 2000W and only your fridge-freezer and telephone answering machine are consuming power – typically something like 100W. Under these conditions you would be exporting the balance i.e. 1900W to the grid.)
For a 2kWp solar PV system, the proposed rates are 36.5p per unit for generated electricity and 5p per unit for exported electricity. Here’s what that means in terms of cashflow:
BEFORE: I have no solar PV and I use 4000 KWh of electricity a year, costing me £480 at 12p per unit.
AFTER: I install Solar PV, which generates 2000kWh per year. I still use a total of 4000 kWh of electricity per year.
I get an income of £730 for generating 2000kWh
I export 500 units and get paid £25 for this
I import 2500 units from the grid and get charged £300 (at 12 p per unit)
I therefore have a net income of £455 from my solar PV electricity. This is real money in the bank.
On top of this, some of the electricity I use is coming directly from my solar PV so I am no longer paying for it – in this example 1500 kWh out of the total I generate of 2000 kWh. This saves me £180 per year.
Comparing what I used to pay (£480 pa) with what I now earn (net £455 pa), the change is £480 – (£455), i.e. £935 pa. A solar PV installation with 2kW capacity might cost £13,000 to buy and install. Annually I am better off by £935 by having it – meaning it pays back in about 14 years. This equates generally with the Government statement in the FIT consultation that they have set the payment rates so that owners of renewable energy systems get a rate of return between 5 and 7 % on their investment.
One other factor will apply – the rates paid for electricity are fixed at the time you start up your solar panels. This might make the payback period longer. But compensating for this is the likelihood that energy prices generally will increase over time so that the savings you make by avoiding the need to buy electricity will be higher in future years.
Please note that the rates quoted here are what is proposed in the consultation and may change before the FIT is introduced. Pressure is being applied to Government to set higher rates – many people feel that the current rates don’t compensate for the loss of up-front grant funding, and so will not stimulate installations at a fast enough rate to make any real difference to carbon emissions. Also note that the rates are different for wind power, small-hydro schemes and for solar PV with a capacity greater than 4kWp.
26. Copenhagen – climate change treaty negotiations
A lot rests on what is achieved at the international climate change discussions in Copenhagen in December. Failure to resolve differences between the so-called Developing, Emerging and Developed economies on how to make a fair contribution to lowering emissions could have very serious effects for decades to come.
Human ingenuity has once again added layers of complexity to what really boils down to two things – firstly we have to stop putting so much carbon into the atmosphere, and secondly we have to stop destroying the earth’s capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon.
Statistics, projections, targets etc can obscure the big picture. A simple concept that all those attending the Copenhagen conference might like to keep in mind is this:
One trillion tonnes of CO2 is what mankind can emit between 2000 and 2050 in order to keep global warming below 2 degrees of the pre-industrial baseline. Between 2000 and 2009 we have already used up a third of that quota. In very simple terms we have to eke out the remaining two-thirds over 41 years. But at the current rate of 36 billion tonnes per year, increasing by 2% per year, we will actually hit 1 trillion tonnes by 2030.
Creative schemes like carbon offsetting, emissions trading, buying up forests etc don’t change the physics. Mankind has to reduce the amount we emit to avoid destabilising the climate. Moving the emissions elsewhere or levying a tax on them isn’t enough by itself.
27. Woking Climate Change Strategy
Woking Council has now adopted annual targets for reducing carbon emissions as part of its climate change strategy. As well as the long-term target of 80% in 2050, the goal is to reduce annually by 3% from 2009 to 2020 on the levels in 2005. That results in a total reduction of about 37% in 2020 – slightly higher than the Government’s current target for the UK in 2020 of 34%.
These figures relate to the emissions from energy use in Woking and from some transport – essentially non-motorway driving, but not public transport nor flying. These emissions are now being monitored by central government under National Indicator 186 – details are available on this website. Emissions from the council’s own operations are recorded separately under National Indicator 185.
The NI 186 figures for Woking are as follows, in tonnes of CO2 per head of population:
2005: 6.273
2006: 6.255
2007: 6.082
This is an overall reduction of a little over 3% in a period of three years. To meet the national and local targets, we have to reduce at least twice as fast as we have in the recent past.
Government gas and electricity statistics show that Woking households reduced consumption of both fuels over this period and that gas usage is reducing faster than electricity. But Woking is falling behind both the South East and Great Britain:
2005 – 2007 Domestic GAS consumption per household (meter point):
Woking – down by 5.90% overall
South East – down by 6.29% overall
Gt Britain – down by 7.39% overall
2005 – 2007 Domestic ELECTRICITY consumption per household (meter point)
Woking – down by 1.16% overall
South East – down by 2.99% overall
Gt Britain – down by 4.56% overall
The average household consumption of GAS in 2007:
Woking – 19461 kWh
South East – 17799 kWh
Gt Britain – 17614 kWh
The average household consumption of ELECTRICITY in 2007:
Woking – 5025 kWh
South East – 4741 kWh
Gt Britain – 4392 kWh
It seems that Woking households are particularly profligate with gas, using 9% more than the South East average where the weather conditions are very similar and we cannot claim we have a need for more heating. Our electricity consumption is also significantly higher than the South East and the gap is widening.
28. Surrey County Fairtrade meeting Fairtrade will be having a get-together, which will take place on 7 Nov between 1pm and 5pm at the Trinity Centre in Guildford (by Holy Trinity Church, at the top of High Street). More details. Workshops will include:
- Can we achieve Fairtrade County status
- How to keep the momentum up in your campaign
- Linking with Transition Towns
- Where next for the Fairtrade Town movement
29. Food in 2030 Join in the discussion on how we will supply our nation’s food in 2030. Food 2030 looks both at the food we produce and consume in the UK, and how global food production can be increased in a sustainable way. Defra would like to hear your views on these issues so that we can make the food system better for the economy, for our environment and for our health and well-being. This forum will stay open until 16 October 2009.
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Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to assure you that your contact information will be held in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act. From time to time, contact information will be passed to elected members of the Woking LA21 Steering Group in case they wish to contact interested parties about projects or activities. Again, this would be undertaken in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act.
If you would prefer to be removed from this email newsletter list, please contact me at clare.palgrave@hotmail.co.uk.
