Heating and transport are two areas where community climate action can have the biggest impact. 

Currently, 30% of UK Energy use is within our homes and we know there’s significant wastage of energy - particularly through heating. Would you like some support from your community to do some improvements to make your home more energy efficient, more comfortable, and save on heating bills? 

Whether you rent or own your home we would like to connect local volunteers with energy and building experts who can demystify the processes involved. 

There will be practical workshops available to all. We will create demonstration kits and organise bulk buying of materials and labour to help people make the work as effective and affordable as possible. We believe connecting skilled people with households, offering free resources and supporting people to negotiate the barriers collectively will make significant differences to health, wellbeing and we will see less carbon emissions created through home energy use.  

We will support groups of neighbours to come together and begin the process of creating a shared buildings plan. This involves coming to an understanding, through surveys and expert advice, what the route would be to collectively transform existing housing stock into energy efficient homes. We will do this in liaison with EdinBRIC, the city wide retrofit collective.

We will also set up a Cargo Bike Library and Active Travel Hub in the centre of Portobello. We aim to make e-Cargo Cycles accessible to all and you are welcome to borrow one for a ride along the coast or to help you move stuff around. We will look after three cargo cycles, which are especially designed to carry kids, dogs or goods. They will be lent out for day loans, and used by community projects like the Community Fridge. We will offer training to get you started and support riders of all confidence levels. There’s a sturdy trike or sleek 2-wheeler to choose from so something to suit everyone. It’s impossible to ride one without an enormous grin! The Hub will also offer travel advice, routes and bus information. It will support our car-share club and we will set-up local lift-sharing opportunities. Whatever you need to help you reduce the amount of miles you travel by car, we will be there to help.