Energy group meeting ~ 8th February 2018
Building stronger communities
Sarah talked about Sustainability week initially being a smaller weekend event – a Saturday or Open house activities and a Sunday on the Stade Open Space – dates to be confirmed.
Building Stronger Communities is encouraging applications in Hastings for £1,500 fund for orgs with income below £50,000. Last meeting the group come up with ideas. Deadline is early March. more “Energy group minutes – February 2018”
On Saturday 23 September campaigners from across East Sussex will be boarding one of the Big Lemon’s sustainable buses for a one-day tour of East Sussex, taking the message about fossil fuel divestment – and the Divest East Sussex petition – to Hastings, Bexhill, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Seaford, Crowborough, Uckfield and Brighton.
If you’d like to come and see us off on the day – and take part in the photo call, featuring one of the Big Lemon’s sustainable buses – then please meet us by Hastings pier at 9.15am on Saturday 23 September.
“If we want to avoid 2C, we have very little time left. The public should be very concerned.” – Adrian Raftery, co-author of the recent scientific paper ‘Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely’, Nature Climate Change, 31 July 2017.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
We’ve already seen global warming of over 1 degree centigrade.
The resulting climate change is now leading to increasingly severe impacts – from rapidly melting sea-ice at the poles to 50 degree heatwaves in India and drought in California. The UK is also seeing serious impacts – with increasingly severe flooding in almost every region and country in the UK in recent years – and it’s going to get much, much worse.
Unless, that is, we take action NOW to ensure that most of the known deposits of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) are left in the ground unburnt, and replace them with cleaner sources of energy.
LET’S NOT MISS THE BUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
East Sussex County Council (ESCC) currently has £150m of local people’s pension monies invested in fossil fuels. These investments are a disaster for the climate as well as a financial risk for local people’s pensions.
Hastings Borough Council, Lewes Town Council and Brighton & Hove City Council have all called on ESCC to get rid of these investments (‘divest’).
Add your voice to the calls for divestment by signing the petition to divest the East Sussex Pension Fund and join us on 23 September if you can (see below for our schedule).
Together we can send a strong message to the ESCC that it’s time to move our money away from the problem and into the solutions.
More info here.
Join us for our Big Happy Sun-day on Sunday 10th September 10am–4pm, outside the Stade Hall in Hastings Old Town. A day of family fun and celebration as we launch the 1066 Energy Campaign for Local Energy.
The jam packed day will include free interactive games for children such as solar boat making, cycle powered smoothies, toy car racing and our solar cinema! This will run alongside fun for all the family such as a morning salute to the sun yoga session, music, singing, massage, giveaways and more.
Transition Town Hastings is part of the group launching the 1066 Energy campaign for local energy to power the local economy.
Contact kate@energisesussexcoast.co.uk for more details or visit www.energisesussexcoast.co.uk
A truly fascinating and educational morning was spent by 14 Transition Town Hastings folk at the Hollingdean Materials Recovery Facility in Brighton last week.
We found out they don’t actually recycle Hastings and Rother recycling waste – it goes to Crayford in Kent!
Before the sorting begins
We did get to see how they process all of Brighton’s recycling, as well as fly tipping and commercial waste and learn about what they do and don’t recycle.
They employ a team of people to sort waste as well as relying on machinery to filter out paper, steel and aluminium. Machines suck up paper and steel cans get pulled away by magnets. They mostly sell on paper, steel and aluminium made into large bails and sometimes shipped to China!
Seems we need more industries in the UK prepared to buy recycled materials to manufacture products. At present, more than 50% of materials recycled in the UK are exported and often manufactured into down-graded products – instead of becoming raw materials for UK industry.
According to our guide at Hollingdean many food companies are reluctant to use recycled plastics because of fears that people will not buy their products (like plastic milk bottles that look slightly grey).
Non recyclables collected at Hollingdean end up in the Newhaven Incinerator down the road where energy is generated and fed into the National Grid.
Also at Hollingdean and other Veolia sites they are working with a new (and secret) technology to recycle coffee cups.
We think every school pupil in the country should visit these sites to find out what really happens to our waste.
more “Transition Community Energy Group Meeting – 6th July 2017 minutes”
Following the Community Energy Fortnight speaker event, the relaunched transition community energy group met on 6th July at the White Rock Hotel. The meeting was on an appropriately beautiful sunny day in the White Rock hotel which overlooks the sea and generates some of its power with solar panels on the roof. In this spot, we couldn’t help but be inspired by the potential we have locally to use the energy of the sun, sea and wind to power our town.
The group concentrated on visioning what we would love to see in our local area, with ideas ranging from becoming ‘Silicon Seaside’ and encourage cutting edge renewable energy tech innovation to the local area, to becoming the first seaside town with a pier powered on renewable energy. Please take a look at the minutes to read the full list of ideas. We would love to hear your thoughts, feedback or any useful contacts. Even better we’d love to hear them in person at the next meeting!
The next meeting will be held on Thursday 10th August, 7:30pm – 9pm at the White Rock Hotel where we will be voting on our ideas and selecting a few to start progressing. The meeting is open to anyone that would like to get involved in community energy, or just learn a bit more. More ideas can be added to the list so please get in contact if you’d like to add anything and come along to the meeting. If you are thinking about getting involved then please do! This is an exciting time in the world of community energy and there’s so much potential in Hastings and St Leonards for interesting projects which really make a difference.
For more information please email kate@energisesussexcoast.co.uk
Energise Sussex Coast is bidding to bag a massive cash boost for it’s ‘Science Lab on the Beach’ project from the Tesco Bags of Help initiative.
Tesco teamed up with Groundwork to launch its community funding scheme, which sees grants of £4,000, £2,000 and £1,000 – all raised from the 5p bag levy – being awarded to local community projects.
Three groups in every Tesco region have been shortlisted to receive the cash award and shoppers are being invited to head along to Tesco stores to vote for who they think should take away the top grant.
Energise Sussex Coast is one of the groups on the shortlist.
The Science Lab on the Beach will feature solar powered family activities, solar panel making, solar powered boat building for children, an energy quiz and more. We want to give local residents a taste of the amazing potential that sunny Hastings holds for changing the way we power our local area through more locally owned, community benefit renewable energy and greater household energy efficiency.
Richard Watson, Chief Executive of Energise Sussex Coast said:
“Hastings is one of the sunniest places in UK and we want every child in the town to be able to come to our science lab on the beach to have fun and find out how the sun can help us generate clean energy for the future.”
Customers will cast their vote using a token given to them at the check-out in store each time they shop.
Lindsey Crompton, Head of Community at Tesco, said:
“We are absolutely delighted to open the voting for July and August. There are some fantastic projects on the shortlists and we can’t wait to see them come to life in hundreds of communities.”
Funding is available to community groups and charities looking to fund local projects that bring benefits to communities. Anyone can nominate a project and organisations can apply online. To find out more visit www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp
Yay! We’re running another Swap Shop at the Stade Hall on July 15th.
With energy advice cafe, Make Food community chef and entertainment by Hastings Voice Squad (local community choir).
These are special community events, not to be missed. Lots of great things to take away and a chance to meet new people and share the good vibes.