Step Towards a Low Carbon Community
Step Towards a Low Carbon Community
This year's eagerly awaited CAfE conference was another chance to showcase the country's top community energy projects
30 November 2007
Over 200 people came away from this year's Community Action for Energy conference with a spring in their step, inspired by the speakers, informed by the workshops and motivated by presentations from some of the UK's best known community energy projects.
The venue was Newcastle's CastleGate centre with its spectacular ‘Turbine Room' — a dramatic and cavernous space that once housed the power turbines used to generate electricity for the city's trams. An apt and very impressive location for a sustainable energy conference.
Community Action for Energy (CAfE) is one of CSE's flagship projects, and is helping to promote and facilitate the plethora of local community-based energy projects that are springing up almost daily across the UK.
The opening speaker at the conference was Mark Lynas, journalist, author and environmental activist. In his keynote speach he lambasted the 'lamentable' lack of Government action in the face of the climate threat, but said that the efforts of groups, projects and individuals represented at the CAfE conference, and the groundswell of public opinion in favour of action, gives him hope.
He was followed by inspirational presentations from people who are - literally - living in community energy projects. First of all of Sanford Housing Cooperative and then carbon neutral Ashton Hayes. A busy series of of workshops and community project ‘speed-dating' followed, with the day wrapped up by an interactive energy-based ‘deal-or-no-deal' game.
As ever, the conference provided an open forum for CAfE members (community groups, energy professionals, local authority officers and interested individuals) to share experiences and ideas in a structured but relaxed atmosphere. Feedback has yet to be collated but the response of those taking part has so far been overwhelmingly positive.
For more information on Community Action for Energy, www.est.org.uk/cafe