The team in Llangattock have won £100,000 to spend on a local environmental project of their choice after they impressed judges with their ambition to become a carbon negative community.
Over the last 18 months a number of measures were installed in homes and community buildings helping the people of Llangattock slash their energy use and CO2 emissions. In that time the local school installed solar panels and 100 radiator panels, the village hall installed an air source heat pump and 43 local homes installed 655 energy efficiency and generation measures including insulation, solar panels, a biomass boiler, multi-fuel stoves and new efficient boilers. As a result the community expects to save £62,000 over the next five years and nearly 200 tonnes of CO2.
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Llangattock was chosen from 100 nationwide projects to be one of the final 14 communities who would go head-to-head over 14 months as part of the Green Streets challenge - a project helping Britain's communities to save energy and generate their own energy. The competition, which asked communities to come up with their own innovative energy projects, ended on 31 March 2011.
The two runners up in the competition were the Meadows Partnership Trust in Nottingham and the Bradford Bandits BMX Club with both projects receiving their own energy prizes. British Gas will work with a school chosen by the Bradford Bandits to make the school more sustainable and help cut their energy bills by providing measures like solar panels and insulation. The Meadows project will receive support from British Gas to set up its own eco-taxi service of electric cars. Both prizes will be worth around a combined £70,000.
Earlier this month, British Gas launched the energyshare tariff, a new Ofgem accredited green tariff which supports community energy projects with funding. The energyshare website has already seen over 800 community energy groups register online highlighting the scale of projects across the UK already taking place.
Gearóid Lane, Managing Director of British Gas New Markets, said: "Over the last 14 months the people of Llangattock have shown some amazing levels of commitment to cutting carbon emissions, changing their behaviour and educating the wider community about what can be done. We are thrilled to crown them Green Streets champions."
(CD/GK)
