Thanks to close links between Gatehouse Development Initiative and the Crichton Carbon Centre, Gatehouse residents will be benefiting over the next twelve months from a fully-funded programme of help and advice aimed at reducing the community’s carbon footprint by over 20%.
Leading the programme is 26 year old James Hutchinson together with local team Shaun Burnie and Sean Flanagan, both well-known Gatehouse residents who share James’s enthusiasm for harnessing community effort in the fight to contain global warming. James is a graduate in Environmental Science from Lancaster University and has also spent a year studying Carbon Management at Glasgow University.
The programme will aim to cover every household in and around Gatehouse, including where possible holiday homes. Through a home visit residents will be invited to discuss their own situation as it concerns energy use, including home insulation and heating, travel, recycling, transport (personal and public), and lifestyle issues such as purchases and consumption of goods and service, with a view to establishing a base carbon footprint. There is no pressure on households to sign up to anything, simply an opportunity to look at and suggest improvements. James and his team aim to generate interest and enthusiasm at all levels of the community. Visits will hope to cover all households between March and October this year.
Advice will be offered to each resident on how they could improve their carbon footprint, with emphasis on changes which could save them money and improve their quality of life, often with very little effort. There will be support with practical information about grants to help lower-income families and advice for those who might consider investing in new energy-efficient technologies such as solar, wind power or heat pumps.
Between October this year and March next year there will be follow-up visits to assess progress on a house-to-house basis, with a final report at the end of the programme to reveal how successful the project has been.
Gatehouse was selected to pioneer this approach to reducing carbon emissions at community level because of evidence from within the community of interest in green energy such as the wind-turbine at Rainton. The aim is to give a lead to other communities in the south-west who could then benefit from the Gatehouse experience.
The Gatehouse Carbon Acton Project officially launched on the 8th of February! On the 9th of February we spent the day with Gatehouse primary school, our guest speaker Kerr MacGregor (pictured below) came to Gatehouse to demonstrate renewable energy technologies, his renewable energy vehicle, Solar One uses a roof mounted wind turbine and solar electric panels to produce electricity, hot water is produced by two solar thermal panels on the side of the vehicle, these produce hot water even if the weather is cold or the sun doesn’t shine! Solar One also uses bio-diesel made from vegetable oil as a fuel source.
We spoke with almost every pupil at the school, many staff members were also curious about Solar One and came out to speak with us; it was a really successful day! Feedback from parents has been great, the children found the visit really interesting and we will be working with the school as the project progresses