Heating project village meeting

Heating Project Village Meeting

A very productive and informative meeting was held in the Old School Room on October 12th.

The meeting started with a selection of the main organisations working with the public on heating having tables in the hall and providing advice to the visiting public.
Then, a series of presentations were given, followed by a question-and-answer panel session.

• Introduction Matt Geen Curry Rivel Parish Council. Presentation here. Contact at matt.geen@curryrivel.org.uk.
• The report and its findings Alex Lockton RenewEV. Presentation here.
• Overview of energy and heating technology Roger Bradley Open University. Contact at r.s.bradley@open.ac.uk. Roger gave us an excellent overview of modern heating technology, comparing them and explaining which ones work best for us. Presentation here. In summary: most of us will be using air-source heat pumps in the future.
• Community energy projects Karuna Tharmananthar Climate Action Taunton. Contact at tauntonCEC@gmail.com. Karuna is doing great work involving the community in climate projects. He has recently spoken to the village WI!
• Retrofit Chris Gaskell Retrofit Somerset. "Retrofitting" is working on your existing house to make it cheaper to heat and lower its cabon footprint. They are setting up a register of trustworthy contractors and suppliers who can make that happen with a minimum of fuss and cost, go tohttps://retrofitsomerset.info/.
• Grants and finance Atha Murphy Centre for Sustainable Energy. Contact at atham@cse.org.uk. CSE are the go-to organisation for help and advise with heating. They can tell you what are the best steps to take, and how to get funding for them. For example, stopping drafts is simple and cheap, and can have a big effect. Then, look at your insulation, and only consider getting a heat pump after all that. They can provide advice over the internet, over the phone, or visit your house to have a look at it. https://www.cse.org.uk/ will tell you everything you need to know.

We finished with a panel discussion and questions.

This meeting was the culmination of a project funded by Somerset County Council (now Somerset Council), looking at how people in Curry Rivel can reduce their contribution to climate change, and save money on their heating bills at the same time. Our study shows that about half of the "climate footprint" of Curry Rivel villagers comes from heating their homes. The village has no mains gas, so most of us need to use oil or bottled gas for heating. The village has been identified as a hot-spot of fuel poverty.
The Parish Council contracted RenewEV Ltd. to report on heating in the village and make suggestions. Their report can be downloaded from here.

This meeting concluded the deliverables from the project, so this phase of the work is complete. We are now looking at what comes next, and are open to suggestions from the community on expanding the scope of the working group.