Many of you will have received our newsletter in the post this week which gives some headlines of what TZCB projects have achieved since April 2011.  For a bit more detail follow the links below.

CCF 2010-11 Data collection sheet – CCF 1392 Feasibility Study v0.1

Appendix 2 CCF 1031 Organisations v0.2

I joined the project at the end of August and it has been a whirlwind of activity.  It has been great to meet so many people committed to improving our environment during that time.  Karen and me have been inspired and learned a great deal from people ranging from 7 to 93!  Thank you for taking part in our events, dropping into the office and working with us to reduce Bute’s Carbon Footprint.

We are currently awaiting on decision from Climate Challenge Fund for the new projects – Overcoming Barriers to Change.  These projects have been informed by the ideas and feedback received from you and analysis of work undertaken in the last year.    We hope to take up the challenge of tackling our ‘hard to heat’ built heritage which means many of island residents are unable to be as energy efficient as they could be AND reducing emissions from short car journeys by supporting more people to take up walking and cycling.  It will be a couple of months before the full process is complete.  Thank you to those who have written letters and emails of support, we truly appreciate these.

TZCB office will be closed over the Easter Weekend.  Let’s hope the weather matches the spring in our steps!

Cheers

Reeni – TZCB Project Manager

A Fyne Futures Project

Some times you hear a phrase that strikes a chord.  It’s something you would never have thought of yourself, and on the face of it something you would normally dismiss.  But I read ‘Palace of Intention’ this morning as I was planning the week ahead and it made me pause for reflection.

We all have good intentions – those that guide our decision making on a daily basis and those we intend to get round too some day!  Like the intention to get fitter or the intention to budget better or the intention to gain more family time.  And we curse the mundane things that somehow prevent us from honouring our intention.  Yet remember how good we feel when the thing we intend to do actually gets done.

So a busy week ahead!  I am delighted to be taking a small contingent through to Edinburgh for The Scottish Green List , representing Isle of Bute Primary Schools.  We are hopeful that the children will be recognised for their inspiring efforts in adopting low carbon travel.

We are preparing our final report for Climate Challenge Fund.  It’s a fair piece of work however it is good to spend time looking back to what has been achieved in the last year.  It is easy to be so busy doing you start to forget why you are doing it.  Glad to say I think we have achieved all we set out today, although there has been alot of learning too.  Look out for our newsletter, which will be sent out in the next week.

We are also preparing a submission for TZCB next projects.  The first follows on from Be A Zero Carbon Hero – from the many conversations we had it seemed there was a great appetite for people to walk and cycle more.  We would hope to work to over come the barriers that are preventing that good intention turning into action.  What’s your thoughts on Active Travel?  The second project was identified following work on insulation programmes and Bute Renewable Energy Project – it relates to our ‘hard to heat’ buildings and the costs associated with draught proofing and insulating our solid wall buildings.  We intend to run a project to overcome the barriers preventing improved energy efficiency.  Are you living in a Hard to Heat property?

Plato says “lack of activity undermines the good condition of every human being” so I better get on with putting some of these good intentions into action.

Our work with residents, community groups and local enterprise brought home the extent to which our built heritage was impacting on achieving energy efficiency improvements and contributing greatly to fuel poverty on the island.    Argyll & Bute has a higher than average
number of properties (88.5%) that are non-compliant with the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) – so there is a high proportion of hard-to-heat, hard-to-treat housing (pre-1919, stone built, one and a half storey properties) with low levels of insulation and double glazing. This combines with harsh weather conditions to reduce the energy efficiency ratings of properties.  The majority of homes and community buildings on Bute fall into this category.
Analysis taken from survey work carried out by Energy Saving Trustsuggests that 62.5% of households on the island are stone built.  If we are to reduce our CO2 emissions in Domestic sector significantly, we believe tackling ‘hard to treat’ buildings and overcoming fuel poverty through energy efficiency needs to be tackled.

We are currently submitting an application to Climate Challenge Fund for a project to tackle this issue.  We would appreciate your thoughts.  Please take part in our survey -

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D83VTPR