LATEST NEWS
The LCCC launch event - 08 February 2010
The Low Carbon Communities launch event took place on 8 February 2010. Joan Ruddock, Minister for Climate Change, attended the event and met the community representatives. In the video below, Joan explains more about the LCCC and what it means for these communities.
12 more winners announced - 04 February 2010
Twelve communities from across the UK are today celebrating after winning up to £500,000 each to help install new green technologies such as solar panels, hydro turbines and energy saving insulation.
The grant money, awarded through the Government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge, will be spent on a range of green measures which will cut carbon, save money on energy bills, and could even see some communities make cash from generating their own energy – thanks to the Government’s new clean energy scheme.
Winners announced
Communities in Norfolk, Isle of Wight, London, Nottinghamshire, Pembrokeshire, Cheshire, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire and Devon are the first of twenty communities to benefit from a £10million fund as part of the Low Carbon Communities Challenge.
Details are available on the winners web page.
Research Councils put out call for research into community energy projects
Proposals are being invited under the Research Councils’ Energy Research Programme for new research which will compliment the Low Carbon Community Challenge. The call is funded by the ESRC and the EPSRC with £6M available. Interdisciplinary applications are being invited for research on energy and communities under the following themes:
- Energy literacy and visibility
- Transformative innovation, lifestyles and sociotechnical practices
- Communities, ownership and social movements
- Policy, governance and legislation
Projects funded under this venture can directly contribute to the Government’s investment in the Challenge.
LCCC selected for ‘Listening to the front line’ initiative
DECC’s Low Carbon Community Challenge (LCCC) has been selected by Cabinet Office as one of 3 demonstration areas for their ‘Listening to the front line’ initiative – along with work by the Department for Health on obesity and Lewisham Council's work on customer redress. The work, steered by the Head of Policy Profession (Robert Devereux) in the Cabinet Office and with significant interest from Liam Byrne and Sir Gus O'Donnell, aims to reconnect policy making with front line professionals and ensure that those who develop policy do so in close partnership with the people who are responsible for its implementation. A Fellow from the Sunningdale Institute (National School of Government) will be assigned to work with DECC to provide ‘thought leadership’ to the Challenge.
Setting up social enterprises
The 20 winning communities can access dedicated help to set up social enterprises, thanks to support from the Office of the Third Sector's Social Enterprise Action Research programme.
A social enterprise is a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.
Social enterprises have multiple benefits: they encourage entrepreneurs who may not otherwise consider starting a business, raise the bar for operating in ethical markets and work on the front line to improve public services and pioneering new approaches and delivering services.
Sciencewise-ERC backs the challenge
Through the Challenge, the experiences of people living and working in communities that take part will be shared publicly, along with the quantitative data on carbon and energy savings. In doing so, we will engage closely with the selected communities so that the data is openly shared and so that the communities have the tools and opportunities to be active participants in the learning. The programme is likely to include the following:
- Hard data on energy use - baseline and historical trends:
Capturing baseline data and historic trends on domestic and non-domestic energy use in buildings in each of the 20 communities. We will source this information using meter point data.
- Real time monitoring of energy use: We propose to install RTDs among a sample of up to 500 homes in each community (up to 10,000 households in total) to monitor real time change in energy use.
- Socio-economic and environmental behaviour data: we will commission a household survey across the successful communities - one before the challenge begins and one at the end - involving a sample of residents in each community to capture information on the wider impacts of the Challenge.
- Public dialogue & co-inquiry: A series of facilitated events in each of the 20 communities to understand the emerging lessons from the Challenge - for the project, the partners as well as for policy making.
We are delighted to announce that The Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre for Public Dialogue In Science and Innovation (ERC), funded by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) will be co-funding the public dialogue and co-inquiry element of this programme. Sciencewise-ERC helps policy makers commission and use public dialogue to inform policy decisions in emerging areas of science and technology. The other three elements of the programme fall within the core research programme for the Challenge.