Rural Community Carbon Network

Welcome to the Rural Community Carbon Network (RCCN)

This is a diary of our journey towards the creation of the Rural Community Carbon Network (RCCN). The journey started in the summer of 2006.
By the autumn of 2006 ruralnet|uk had teamed up with the Carnegie Rural Community Development Programme to raise awareness, promote and support collective approaches to reducing energy use and increasing energy production from renewable sources, or in shorthand, reducing the carbon footprint of communities.

Tracey blogs for the Chronicle!

Tracey Todhunter from Ashton Hayes who has been writing her Low Carbon Diary, is now writing a low carbon blog for the Chester Chronicle.  Tracey first wrote about her own family's low impact lifestyle in the Chronicle in January 2006 and since then she has continued to make changes and try to prove that life doesn't have to be about discomfort and self denial just because she lives 'low carbon'.

Over the past 12 months Tracey has visited low carbon community groups all over the UK and there is a definite feeling that the climate movement is growing.

Over the coming months Tracey's blog on the Chronicles website will share the experiences of the many low carbon groups in the Chester area; Tracey will be urging readers to join in and share their own stories of making the journey to a low carbon future together.

I really hope that many more local newspapers will feature a 'Low Carbon Diary' from members of their community; providing an inspiring insight into a new but not necessarily sacrificial way of life.

Funding success for rural low carbon network in Europe

Last year I attended an EU funding event in Brussels where I met the one person I had set out to try and find there.  Her name is Aline Brachet and she works for ADIMAC in France.  We spoke about the need to be able to support isolated rural communities to reduce their carbon emissions and the opportunity for renewable energy in these regions.  I told her about the RCCN and she told me all about the impact of local energy plans in mountainous rural communities - we both had the objective of forming a project which had the objective of sharing experiences from one community to another and develop methodologies for rural energy plans.

The project was submitted to the EU IEE (Intelligent Energy Europe) programme in September last year.

It is called RURENER and consists of 12 project partners, including France, Germany, Italy, Greece and Romania.  RURENER is a network of small rural communities  willing to become low carbon/carbon zero.  The network will bring tools and methods to support energy strategy set-up and evaluation - and will work to disseminate what is happening throughout the network; so it will become a living network of villages and small towns committed to carbon neutral objectives. 

This project is very complementary to the work of the RCCN and will add value.  RURENER will provide an opportunity for UK projects to get an insight into the carbon neutral activities of rural communities in Europe; no doubt, offering some very exciting and inspiring insights.

Remote rural areas, ICT and the RCCN

The importance and the application of ICT in rural communities, especially remote ones, has been examined in a new study commissioned by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).

According to the report, community groups in the Highlands and Islands have a high level of technical skills and the confidence to take advantage of opportunities presented by the world-wide web.

HIE e-communities development officer Claire Hannah said:

“The study demonstrates the benefits of bringing people together in online communities, not just within common interest groups but in sharing experience with the rest of the world. The voluntary sector is a significant feature of life in the Highlands and Islands and by providing communities with the means to support themselves, we can help making them more efficient and more effective.”

The study found that 70% of community groups, who responded to the survey, felt that ICT (information and communication technologies) had enabled them to network more effectively.

ruralnet|uk's core charitable aim is about supporting rural individuals, groups and organisations to be more effective and efficient.  We do this through innovation & development, networking (online and offline), knowledge transfer and collaboration.

Calling Low Carbon Rural Communities!!!

The ruralnet|uk Collaborate|2008 convention is taking place next month and I want to reach out to you.  If you are part of a rural community that is currently taking action to collectively reduce your carbon emissions, we want to invite you to attend this convention where we want to gather your views about a Network to support and facilitate community action.

When: Thurs 10 April 08
Where: Dunchurch Park Hotel & Conference Centre nr Rugby
Cost: FREE - BUT it's an invite only event and I only have a few places available, so please contact me asap; first come, first served.  I am, of course, always keen to hear from all communities and what you are doing - and we will add you to the network.
What: Meet other like-minded communities and organisations and learn more about how you can network and collaborate effectively through ICT.

If you want to join us, please post a comment to this post.

Thanks,
Sam

Sustainable Youlgrave is Future Friendly

Tracey Todhunter, who has her own blog here, just told me about Sustainable Youlgrave in Derbyshire which was formed in early 2006. They have achieved a lot in a short time by working on a range of locally based activities  to combat climate change and make their community more sustainable. Tracey met John and Andrew who are active members of the committee in September 2007 and she has blogged about how impressed she was here.  They have now established a regular newsletter, carried out feasibility studies and launched a website.

Most recently, they have just won the Community Action section of the Future Friendly Awards 2008. They are a very inspiring group, with lots of good ideas.

Left: Sustainable Youlgrave Chair John Youatt receives the award from Sir Trevor MacDonald at the awards ceremony in London last week.

Rural communities can 'lead the way' says Rural Advocate

The report of the Rural Advocate has just been published (3 March 08) and is Dr Stuart Burgess' second report since appointment in September 2004.

In the report Dr Burgess refers to Ashton Hayes as an example of a rural community 'leading the way'.  He acknowledges the important role rural communities are making and can make to mitigating climate change and recommends the following priority areas for action:

"...the experience and good practice of villages like Ashton Hayes [encouraging personal and community action to tackle climate change] should be promoted and replicated more widely."

"...there is an opportunity for Defra to take the lead in encouraging rural communities to fulfil [their] potential [to contribute to climate change mitigation], and to encourage community initiatives within a local, regional and national framework."

http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/publications/ruraladvocatereport2007

The Rural Advocate is a non-political appointment made by the Prime Minister to put the case for rural people at the highest levels of government.  The Rural Advocate is also Chair of the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC), which has a particular focus on people who are disadvantaged and on areas suffering from economic underperformance.

YouTube clip of FREE

One of the case studies from the recent research is Fintry Renewable Energy Enterprise; the BBC news Scotland report is on YouTube.  It's been on there since May 2006, but I have only just watched it and wanted to pop it up on here.

YouTube and Podcasts could make a valuable contribution to the RCCN, helping to deliver the message of what people are doing effectively and in a way that is very usable and engaging.

New research identifies gaps in funding for community energy projects

Supported by Carnegie UK Trust, ruralnet|uk have been undertaking mapping and research work into community energy projects.  This work has 'mapped' community energy initiatives all over the UK - take a look - and provides a 'snapshot' of current activity and included case studies from Ashton Hayes, Knoydart Renewables, Transition Forest Row and FREE.  I would like to thank everyone for their time and cooperation in helping to put the case studies together.

Low Carbon Communities: A study of community energy projects in the UK

The main research findings are:

• The availability of grant support for small-scale renewable projects is good but this does not necessarily reflect how successful the project will be long-term
• There is a lack of on-going support for community energy projects; particularly project-to-project networking support
• Local support from Parish Council varies greatly between projects
• A gap in funding exists for the development of support infrastructures and general awareness-raising activities at a local level

 

Architecture of participation & inspiration

I just read about how large corporations are embracing idea-sharing networks... "creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but who has the most compelling architecture of participation. That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products?"

Following on from my earlier post about the development of ruralnet|online and the possibilities for Web 2.0 and the RCCN....I wanted to point you towards a blog by ruralnet CEO Simon Berry - where he describes how he conducted an experiment at the weekend into social networking.

Simon has illustrated how effective Web 2.0 technology can be at putting people in touch with each other. Imagine being able to converse with others that have developed a similar community energy project and who are writing about it somewhere 'out there' on the web.  Web 2.0 technology will enable us to track what that person is doing, when they are doing it and would allow us to contribute and add to that knowledge.  Now, that is 'collective genius' at work -and in this way the RCCN is the architecture of participation and inspiration.

An interesting, if depressing, read this morning....

I came across an article this morning about a new report from the Department of Health which suggests that climate change could kill thousands in the UK by 2012. The report said that "Climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people within the next decade."

It put the chances of a heatwave of that severity happening by 2017 at 25%.