Heating up

As the cost of oil starts to spiral again and a bitter winter has almost left these shores, it is a good time to review how we heat our properties in preparation for future years.

On Skye, the John Muir Trust has done just that and the two properties at Strathaird are benefiting from a newly installed log boiler.

An open house on Friday 18th March 2-4pm and on Saturday 19th March 10 -12 noon will give both local people and visitors a chance to see what this is like in action and discover some of the benefits of this carbon neutral form of heating.

Angus Robertson of Clean Sleat will share some of their experiences of making changes towards a low carbon community on the Friday and there will be demonstrations from Skye installer Alastair Robertson of Highland Eco Heat of how the boiler works. There will also be information about various aspects of insulation and renewable installations from Community Energy Scotland (who provided a grant through the CARES programme) and from the Energy Savings Trust Scotland. In addition there will be displays of other initiatives from the Highlands and Islands including Assynt Renewables. And essentially, there will be HOME BAKING and teas and coffees.

Hope you can join us there.

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

Good for the pocket, good for the planet

The nights are drawing in and across the country boilers and stoves are getting lit for the winter, so it’s not surprising that October 1st was Central Heating day. It’s not surprising either that this is the time of year when energy bills start to stack up.

Reducing heating costs is not only good for the pocket, it’s good for the planet, and there are lots of things you can do to keep warm without spending a fortune on fuel through the winter.

According to the Energy Savings Trust turning down the thermostat by one degree Celsius can shave eight per cent off heating costs.

If you are not brave enough to turn down the heating down a full degree or two in one go, try reducing the heat a small amount every day, you probably won’t notice the difference – at least until the utility bills come in. And if you have a timer, try setting it to come on half an hour later than last year.

Of course everyday energy efficiency is not just about central heating. Green Footsteps have a load of handy hints on how to keep your home cosy without impacting on your energy usage. For example, making use of thick curtains and soft furnishings for insulation, and some great ways to keep your kitchen nice and warm.

Reducing energy consumption is key to the future

The Government’s new energy adviser, David MacKay, has warned that unless new sources of energy are found the country will have a power shortage by 2016.

The suggestion that the United Kingdom will face blackouts less than a decade down the line should be enough motivation to persuade the government it is time to concentrate on energy conservation. Soon we will have to address the fact that we are living unsustainably.

As a country we have a choice - either live more efficiently, or live with less. By continuing to focus on energy production, the government is attempting to spend their way out of a crisis that has been caused by excessive consumption, rather than tackling the problem head on.

As the country’s leading wild land charity, the John Muir Trust is concerned that a reckless commitment to upping the build rate of energy projects will allow huge swathes of the country to be parcelled off for land hungry renewable energy schemes without proper assessment of each development.

The delivery of a secure, sustainable and affordable energy portfolio requires a commitment to protect the local and global environment from the effects of both energy production and consumption. The country urgently needs a national energy strategy that focuses on conserving energy and on energy efficiency, as well as producing it by more sustainable means. .

As John Muir said more than 100 years ago, “Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress.”

Whose plate will it end up on?

In an increasing number of communities there is an appetite to reduce food miles and explore ways to use what is available locally. One food resource available potentially in abundance in some rural and remoter communities is deer.

It seems a simple process - kill the deer, butcher and process them locally, then sell locally.

Sadly, the venison industry is anything but simple. The growing taste for venison means that we are actually importing venison from the other side of the world with it being flown thousands of miles from New Zealand to meet the demand from processors, supermarkets and restaurants for this lean meat.

At the same time, according to Scotland on Sunday over a third of the venison produced by the £70.4 million a year industry gets sent to the continent - primarily by the game dealers – to end up being stuffed into German sausages.

Part of the problem is there are restrictions on when deer can be culled, so they are not available all year round – unless farmed. Another issue is licensing. Historically most of the deer culled has gone to licensed game dealers who can get more from exporting than selling locally ( this is the fate of much deer culled on John Muir Trust land as it is for many estates).

Investment in local butchering and processing is a costly affair. The capital costs for deer larders that meet the standards and facilities to skin the beasts make it prohibitive for many communities to look at.

So are there other ways to get local food to your plate?

The Fife Diet encourages people to sign-up to eating food from the region, monitor their progress and share their experience. They are working closely with suppliers and local farmers. The group aims to shorten the supply chain, reduce food miles, create innovative distribution services and re-localise produce. This approach is meeting with some success with some 800 people already signed up to the initiative.

In Assynt and North Lewis, thanks to funding through the climate challenge fund communities are hoping to look at the issues around food production and food miles.

According to research some 70% of food miles are created by the consumer driving out to buy food.

Meanwhile, next time you have a plate of venison, check where it comes from. Has it taken 11,000 airmiles to arrive on your plate from New Zealand or a maximum of 370 airmiles from Scotland?