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.  

This fund would enable us to pay our Volunteer Coordinator full time to manage and grow our food sharing project. This is an essential role and without this position we would not be able to successfully continue this important work. 

Cargo Bike Movement is a charity that was established, initially informally, in April 2020 in response to the first UK Covid-19 lockdown. Since then, we have gone through the journey of being a Community Interest Company (CIC) and now a registered charity (SC051593)!

By bringing together cargo bikes and volunteers, we were able to respond to food insecurity experienced by many across the city of Edinburgh. We did this in a number of ways, such as delivering surplus supermarket food to those being accommodated in hotels, shelters, and hostels, and supporting local food banks and building partnerships with various charitable organisations across Edinburgh.

By collecting surplus food from supermarkets, we prevent these products from being wasted, which helps people and planet.

We ensure these tasty items end up on plates - where they should be - and limit the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food ‘waste’. Typically, 1 tonne of food wasted from supermarkets results in 1 kg CO2 equivalent emissions*. These greenhouse gas emissions can negatively alter our atmosphere and impact climate change.

Working through existing charities and services, we get food to those that need it in a dignified way.

Over 80,000 people in Edinburgh live in poverty, affecting almost 1 in 5 children**. Ideally, the service we and our partners deliver shouldn’t be needed, but sadly it is and we are proud to be able to offer the support that we do.

* DEFRA Conversation Factors, 2020

** Edinburgh Poverty Commission

Warmer homes, lower fuel bills, reduced carbon emissions, and happier communities through the Edinburgh Building Retrofit and Improvement Collective. 

If you are a homeowner or private rental tenant our community-led approach could benefit you!

 

Your vote will help us empower communities to own the retrofit of their buildings, to gain funding, and carry out upgrade works to get better, cheaper results more easily. Doing so will lower heating costs, reduce carbon emissions, and positively impact the value of people’s homes. We exist to help people get better results working together, in communities.

 

If successful, the funding will do this by accelerating the development of Edinburgh Building Retrofit & Improvement Collective, an existing voluntary organisation. We will engage a project officer and be able to fund the resources to: 

• hold events like retrofit roadshows;

• create a website for citizens to get advice;

• provide forums to share experiences and get support; 

• create ‘how to’ guides for setting up formal associations, applying for funding, submitting for planning consents and procuring contractors to carry out work, providing these guides for free to community groups;

• connect groups to support from local architects, skilled tradespeople and other specialists, and 

• collectively be a unified voice for communities to speak to council, funders, and other authorities.

 

Any questions? Ask away here. If you want to get in touch directly, you can send us an email.

 

We’re already working with a number of partners. This funding will help us support more groups and build the resource-base quicker to meet the urgent needs of the cost of living crisis and climate change.

Our initial partners alongside EALA Impacts CIC are: 

• Porty Community Energy 

• Bruntsfield Area Net Zero Action Initiative 

• Edinburgh Tool Library (ETL)

• ETL Retrofixers 

• The Dudleys Community 

• Edinburgh Communities Climate Action 

• Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council 

• Edinburgh Climate Action Network 

• Edinburgh Architectural Association 

 

Please note: This application is intended to be complementary to the application from Porty Community Energy and Edinburgh Tool Library ('Cosy Homes and Cargo Bikes'), which includes practical workshops for all in home energy efficiency improvement skills and introductions to potential retrofit actions, as well as local assistance in the forming of community groups.