The People’s Republic of Energy is Carbon Co-op’s entry into energyshare, a competition to win £100,000.
You can vote for us here: http://www.energyshare.com/voting/
Closing date is 5pm, Saturday 3rd December 2011
**About the project**
The energy crisis is real and upon us. Faced with rising bills, growing energy insecurity and the requirement to tackle climate change it is time to organise, educate and take action! Carbon Co-op propose The People’s Republic of Energy, a campaign to democratise, popularise and role out a low carbon renewables and retrofit programme for Greater Manchester and beyond.
Using a campaign of people’s assemblies, popular education, direct democracy, carbon literacy and energy assessment training, we will equip an army of energy ambassadors with the skills to seed local self supporting groups and gather information on household energy usage in their neighbourhoods. Ultimately we will create a series of community energy plans and use EnergyShare funds to deliver a number of eco retrofit and renewables show houses around Greater Manchester.
This project builds on four years of work from the Carbon Co-op, a Manchester-based mutual organisation created to bring street, neighbourhoods and communities together in a bulk purchasing co-operative for low carbon, household technologies. With over 300 supporters the organisation has a track record of delivering retrofit work, creating innovative new community finance models and pioneering community engagement based around renewables and energy efficiency.
In more detail
Our project is divided into four discrete stages
**STAGE 1: PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY**
The People’s Republic of Energy will convene a day long assembly of over 300 delegates: individuals, organisations, businesses and social landlords at a venue in Manchester. The objectives of the assembly are to educate and inform attendees through the delivery of carbon literacy work, to engage in debate and discussion on how household renewables and retrofit work could and should be delivered and to train a series of community ambassadors in the Carbon Co-op’s Whole House Assessment Profile tool.
**STAGE 2: COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT**
We will develop the Carbon Co-op’s Whole House Assessment tool to enable community assessors to simply and easily gather information on a household’s energy usage and process this data using an easy to use, database-driven online tool.
After the assembly volunteer community energy assessors will work in their own streets and neighbourhood, seeding satellite groups and mapping out where energy is used in homes and communities. The Carbon Co-op’s Big Red Bus will tour Greater Manchester, acting as a mobile exhibition space to host information, talks and films, supporting the work of the energy assessors. We will facilitate Carbon Co-op workshops in these satellite areas, bringing friends and neighbours together in order to understand current energy usage and how this could be reduced. These volunteers will use hand held tablets to input information, with data centralised via the Carbon Co-op energy database.
**STAGE 3: CREATING A COMMUNITY ENERGY PLAN FOR GREATER MANCHESTER**
At a second People’s Assembly, using the data collected through energy assessments and using Carbon Co-op’s community action planning workshop, we will build up a house-by-house retrofit action plan for streets and communities in Greater Manchester.
Together, assembly delegates will make decisions on where best to deploy the EnergyShare resources, which areas will provide the best return on investment and what factors to prioritise.
**STAGE 4: DEPLOYING RESOURCES**
Based on decisions made at the second People’s Assembly, EnergyShare funds will finance four retrofit and renewables household projects in Greater Manchester. Forming a key part of the Carbon Co-op’s larger retrofit programme, these homes will act as eco-show homes, showcasing the latest energy saving technologies and hosting regular open days to inspire other households and communities.
Information from the assessments and retrofit work will help build and develop the Carbon Co-op model and Green Deal Pilot. Data will be used to inform the Greater Manchester Retrofit role out and build a housing archetypes pattern book to inform future retrofit roll-out work across the city region.
The whole project will be supported via a panel of retrofit practitioners and experts, providing up to date and practical advice on the decisions being made throughout the project relating to technologies, contractors and finance.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Funding.