The main part of the LEAF grant that we won in February was to deliver a series of reports and analyses by the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) on the energy efficiency of Montpelier’s homes, and the potential for renewable energy.
You can download a summary of this work here. Videos and reports on housing types are here.
For us, the conclusions point to four main community projects over the coming years:
- mass top-up of loft insulation
- mass installation of solid wall insulation
- mass improvement/community bulk-buy of heating controls
- community bulk-buy purchase of solar PV panels.
84% of our homes are ‘hard to treat’ for energy efficiency, and could qualify for Energy Company Obligation (ECO) grant subsidies for solid wall insulation and gas condensing boilers as part of the proposed Green Deal. This is relevant for homeowners, but is particularly important for the 28% of homes here that are privately rented, as it has the potential to allow retrofitting work to occur with no upfront cost to the landlord, and give cheaper bills and warmer homes for the tenants. It is not yet clear how ECO grants will function in the LA/housing association sector, but we aim to work closely with this sector as 44% of Montpelier homes are social housing of some form.
The main reports are over 300 pages long, and due to the nature of some of the analyses, can’t be hosted on a public server – they contain information on which properties would be best to target for solid wall insulation and solar PV panels, and could be used by unscrupulous salespeople to target vulnerable homes. We are happy to share these with interested residents; please email energy@transitionmontpelier.org.uk if you would like to see more.
The CSE reports and analyses give us the first step for securing substantial grants for community work to tackle wide-scale change to the housing stock here. If you’d like to get involved in the next phase of our work, we are holding an Open Meeting on 10 May in the basement of Cafe Kino at 7.30pm. Hope to see you there.
I found the report very interesting , especially the section on solar panels on page 22 which indicated that there are 1149 suitable roofs for PV and solar hot water in Montpelier. The Energy Fair on Saturday was very good, but we did keep having to correct people who commented words to the effect that “Its a pity the Feed In Tariff has finished”. The truth is that it is very much alive and kicking and at current FIT rates will provide in excess of a 12% return on investment on a south facing unshaded roof. However don’t hang around for too long as the FIT will be changed again from July 1st. OK you will have to have an EPC rating and achieve a ‘D’ but this will normally be paid for by your PV installer. Anyway its a good thing to do so that you can also look into your other options, such as a gas condensing boiler, heating controls and insulation measures. Jon Walker, 1 World Solar, 35 Cobourg Road, Montpelier.