Galson Estate Powering Down

Kirsty MacLennan is the Powerdown Project Officer for the Galson Estate, North Lewis. In this guest post she describes the work taking place on the estate to reduce carbon usage.

Community Energy Scotland (CES), Development Trust Association Scotland (DTAS) and 27 community groups came together to form the Community Powerdown consortium. The consortium was successful in a bid to secure £1.5 million from the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund for the first phase of a coordinated effort to achieve carbon reduction projects and behaviour change within the participating communities.

I (Kirsty Maclennan) am the Powerdown Project Officer for the Galson Estate Trust with the main aim to reduce carbon emission in the area, by increasing energy efficiency within the community. The average British household spends £620 on energy bills during the winter, about £200 more than an energy efficient home. Insulating your home is key to reducing your energy bills and carbon emissions, loft insulation acts as a blanket, trapping rising heat from the house below. If you currently have no insulation and you install the recommended 270mm depth you could save around £150 a year on your heating bills and around 800kg of CO2 per year. Also insulating cavity walls could save you around £115 a year on your fuel bills and 610 kg of CO 2.

The way people use and conserve energy in the home is set to be revolutionised in Scotland with the offer of free energy audits, advice on becoming more energy efficient and free or discounted loft and cavity insulations. This is great news as this service is now available to 8506 houses throughout Lewis and Harris, which should reduce fuel poverty which is a major concern for householders in the Galson Estate Trust area. Due to this scheme being announced a couple of months ago, we looked at the insulation scheme that we had planned and we are now thinking of different ways such as domestic renewable energy that can help reduce fuel poverty while still working with Energy Saving Trust on this new scheme.

As well as looking at insulation I am looking at developing the Community Market and increasing local food production, we have had several markets so far. They have been very successful showing interest from both producers and buyers which was very positive. We ran a Community Market every second Saturday until the end of October. We have looked at developing allotments however we believe it is not the lack of land that is stopping people from growing their own fruit and vegetables it is know-how, so we are at the moment looking for people who are willing to train and educate people on how to grow their own vegetable.

On Friday 30th October we helped to host a low carbon lunch in the local hall for 44 local senior citizens. The lunch was held as part of the CSV’s annual Make a Difference event and the Julie and Kirsty teamed up with the Local Volunteer Centre to organise and host the lunch. The lunch was designed to follow on from the success of the community markets and all the ingredients for the meals served were sourced from the estate area with donations of meat, fish and vegetables coming from local crofters. As well as the lunch a number of local agencies had information available about resources that may be available to help people make their homes more energy efficient as reduce their food waste in order to reduce their Carbon footprint.

Education is extremely important in all areas, the third area which I work on is educating people in energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions, I have produced a leaflet that will be distributed to all the 900 houses within our estate this contain simple steps to saving money, saving energy and saving the environment such as turning your thermostat down by 1 degree could cut your energy bill by 10% and using energy saving light bulbs which lasts up to 12 times longer than an ordinary light bulb and can save £590 over the lifetime of all the bulbs.

We are also working with schools and have arranged for eco-drama to come up in November to do a couple of shows and workshops in the eco-schools in the estate, before this we are hoping to get the children thinking of renewable energy and energy efficient measure within the estate and afterwards as a follow up have a quiz with a energy efficient prize.

If you have any enquiries or helpful information don’t hesitate to get in touch:
Tel:01851810825 email: kirsty@uogltd.com