Rural Community Carbon Network

In its tenth year now, the New Statesman New Media Awards highlight the positive impact of new media technology on public life - and the Community Carbon Network has been nominated within the ‘Innovation’ category - which “recognises social technologies, people or organisations that make an impact and improve our society through the use of new media technology.”

The nomination is here and you can leave a comment or star rating too.

communitycarbon.net is an initiative developed by ruralnet|uk, the rural regeneration charity.  ruralnet|uk (and other collaborators) were also nominated for a New Media Award last year, for the Open Innovation Exchange.

I am really happy :-)) We have heard from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and they have agreed to fund part of the pilot stage of the RCCN. This is fantastic news and reflects 7 months of dedicated fundraising efforts. The grant will allow us to form the RCCN ‘Consortium’, which will consist of community advocates, experts and academics who will help to drive forward the initiative. The grant will also support the establishment of a multi-user blog-based forum which will form the foundation of the RCCN. We would like to thank the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation for this grant and the support that they are giving to this initiative.

More on this development soon!

I went to meet with Rob Bell a few weeks ago, who is the Programme Manager for Community Action for Energy. CAfE is a programme from the Energy Saving Trust that is designed to promote and facilitate local community-based energy projects. It is important that the RCCN develops and fosters relationships with organisations like CAfE, who are doing such complementary work.

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The village of Forest Row is in it’s early stages of becoming a ‘Transition Town’ or ‘TT’. A group of eight individuals, led by Mike Grenville, is taking the lead and preparing an awareness raising plan to start introducing the community to the concept of the Transition Towns model, as a way to respond to the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. Follow the link below, ‘Read More…’ to see the email of support and find out more.

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Sam spoke with Caroline at Torridge Action Group for Sustainability (TAG for Sustainability). Tag for Sustainability is a fantastic charity working for a sustainable future across northern Devon. TAGS develops projects that contribute to sustainable living and works with individuals, groups, businesses and local government….

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We are delighted that Angela Duignan from Energy4All, Garry Charnock from Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral and Adam Kennerley from Wasteless Society have all agreed to attend the forthcoming ruralnet
conference ‘Rural futures - who cares?’ and will be contributing their invaluable knowledge and experience to a panel session facilitated by Simon Berry, ruralnet|uk CEO.

The RCCN will be launched at the ruralnet|2007, with a focus this year on climate change and the promotion of collective approaches to tackling this issue.

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Sam had a very interesting discussion recently, with Dr Patrick Devine-Wright, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester. Patrick is a chartered environmental psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society, committed to working in interdisciplinary contexts on research with significance for policy makers and practitioners. He joined the University of Manchester in 2006, having previously held posts as Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University.

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Support for the RCCN has grown considerably over the last few months. We want to evidence that this initiative will work to complement and build-upon existing climate change initiatives. As such we have been contacting key organisations to ask them to read about the RCCN and provide a letter of support for the initiative. So far we have met with COiN, Marches Energy Agency, Every Action Counts, Converging World and EcoCongregation and all have recognised the synergy between what we are doing and what they are doing. We would like to thank these organisations for this support and we look forward to working with you in the future. Please go to the Supporters section of this blog for further details.

Sam travelled to a sunny Bristol and met with Alice-Marie Archer from The Converging World to discuss the RCCN and mapping of community energy projects. The Converging World is a UK based registered charity. Their work
addresses the issues of climate change and sustainable development
globally. They generate clean energy in developing countries and enable carbon
reduction in the UK. All their income supports the communities where their
energy projects are based as well as programmes in the UK that help
people and organisations reduce their carbon footprint. Converging World call their approach ‘beyond carbon neutral’.

The Converging World are currently looking to ‘map’ where groups exist within the Bristol area - with the possible extension to the UK as a whole. We have already undertaken some considerable mapping work as part of the ongoing action research we are doing for the RCCN; so we met to discuss collaboration and to avoid duplication.

The Converging World support - an email kindly sent by Alice-Marie;

The RCCN has received praise from Ashton Hayes community group for providing the type of support and information that will be integral to the initiative once it is up and running.

Tracey Todhunter from Going Carbon neutral Ashton Hayes writes:

“The Going Carbon Neutral project will be having a meeting in September and I know that the information you have provided will be very useful to us in deciding how best to proceed with the project - especially as we are looking to pursue our microgeneration plans. I hope we finally get to meet at Ruralnet Conference in October and I can thank you personally for all the support you have given the project.”

Providing funding information is just one of the resources that community groups will have access to as part of the RCCN and we are very encouraged by this feedback from Tracey.