Change begins at home: the Comrie approach
Comrie, a small village in Perthshire, Scotland, has come up with a great way of lowering its whole community’s carbon footprint.
The Comrie Development Trust, a community-run charity, decided the best solution was to offer each householder individual and comprehensive help to increase their home’s energy efficiency.
This is exactly the kind of approach WWF has recommended across Scotland in its Carbon Countdown report (which details strategies and technologies for making existing homes low-carbon).
We all know simple steps like insulating our lofts and draughtproofing help reduce energy consumption at home, but so many people simply don’t have the time or the means to do what’s needed.
So, in Comrie, the Trust works out the best solution for each individual home in the village, offers to arrange for the work to be done, and even helps get funding.
Energy saving, door-by-door
To kick-start Comrie’s village-wide retrofit project, six local residents have been trained as Energy Awareness Advisors for the village, each spending a month studying for a City & Guilds qualification in Energy Awareness.
Then, over a period of six months, the advisors visit all the houses in the area, door-by-door, to hand-deliver Home Energy Check forms, supplied by the Energy Saving Trust.
If householders are interested, the advisors can suggest energy-saving measures for each property, explain the benefits of joining the scheme, highlight grants available for retrofit improvements and, if required, instruct local contractors to carry out the upgrades.
The work could include loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, draughtproofing doors and windows, hot-water tank jackets, pipe lagging, and, for the more ambitious, a variety of micro-renewable energy systems.
Businesses will also be able to take part by getting a free energy audit from a SCARF (Save Cash and Reduce Fuel) Business Advisor – see http://www.scarf.org.uk.
As Comrie has a number of older buildings, Historic Scotland are kindly providing advice about retrofitting these properties to increase their energy-efficiency in an appropriate way.
Comrie is already working with other villages and towns in Perthshire who’ve also been inspired to take up the challenge of retrofitting local homes.
Download the report
Carbon countdown for homes
Related links
Case studies
See what's possible
And to see inside the homes of people who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible when retrofitting our existing houses take a look at the Old Home Superhome network. Organised by the Sustainable Energy Academy, the network is aiming to build and promote exemplar, energy efficient retrofits, which have all reduced their carbon emissions by at least 60%.