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August 17 2023

Engaging our communities to improve their carbon footprint

Our Story

Cheshire East Council is on a mission to engage and empower its communities to improve the carbon footprint of their activities and understand the scale of the challenge we face.

Our story is best told through our individual initiatives:

Town and parish council hub
To encourage further collaboration between the councils and to facilitate the sharing of ideas and expertise we have also developed our climate hub. This is an online collaboration platform for use by members of our town and parish councils or their related sustainability groups. In addition to providing easy access to a toolkit of ideas for reducing carbon, the hub functions as a social platform to allow sharing of news articles, examples of best practice and requests for help and assistance.

School competitions
We recognise that bringing young people into the climate conversation has never been more important.
Our competition to ‘Name the hydrogen bin trucks’, run in partnership with Storengy UK and Ansa Environmental Services, received a huge amount of interest from primary school children across the borough. The winning names, selected by a judging panel including our members and project partners, were Ch2ewie and Ch2omper.
In another competition, launched with Storengy UK, we asked primary school children to submit creative ideas for tackling climate change – and received an amazing response. The winning school received a prize of a solar panel package for their school worth up to £10,000, with prizes of solar panel robot kits being delivered to the well-deserved runners-up.

Reaseheath conference
To provide the most comprehensive community engagement, the council recognises the need to make contact with many different sectors. Partnering with Sustainability Nantwich and Reaseheath College, with support from the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership, we hosted a virtual conference in October 2021.

The primary purpose of the conference was to engage different sectors with the climate conversation, particularly agriculture and retail.

Having secured a strong keynote speaker, the conference sought to inform but more importantly be informed by the sector representatives. As a council, we need to understand the constraints and difficulties, but also the potential of each sector within our borough – encouraging a collaborative approach to carbon reduction and sustainability.

Useful Learnings

We found that early engagement with the town and parish councils was fundamental. Overall, this improved the uptake of the engagement and interest in the hub.

We also made sure we targeted the widest range of stakeholders through our community engagement activities, coupled with a clear plan for follow up with attendees.

Currently we have several initiatives underway to engage and empower the community to improve the carbon footprint of their activities and understand the scale of the challenge we face. As a result we have seen an increased engagement from the community, as well as increased collaboration. Through initiatives such as our Town and parish council toolkit and hub we have created open conversations around our climate emergency. We have also encouraged further collaboration between the councils, ourselves and the wider public to facilitate the sharing of ideas and expertise.

Cheshire East Council’s metrics

Number of initiatives, such as competitions.
Number of people engaged.

Cheshire East Heat Networks

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Our Story

Cheshire East Council is working to develop heat networks in various forms to give the borough the best base to transition away from gas as a primary heat source in public, industrial and domestic buildings.

We have presented three key examples of proposed and operational heat works which include the Crewe Heat Network, Alderley Park Heat Network, and Garden Village Heat Network.

The Crewe Heat Network is currently within the procurement and pre-construction services phase, it is intended to connect four buildings owned by Cheshire East Council and potentially other publicly used buildings. Powered by a combination of a gas-fired combined heat and power engine and an air source heat pump the network will initially provide carbon savings circa 350tCO2e per annum, however as the technologies and their economics improve the replacement energy sources are expected to reduce the carbon intensity of the network towards an eventual zero over time. Due to the difficulties experienced in the retrofit of existing buildings, including two listed buildings, this project has required significant grant funding to be economically viable.

The Alderley Park Heat Network was developed to optimise one already in existence to reduce waste heat and carbon emissions. While the heat source remains natural gas powering combined heat and power units, the network will show a carbon reduction of over 200 tCO2e per annum over forty years and provide the science park with a significant financial saving.

The North Cheshire Garden Village Heat Network will service the settlement, powered by ground source heat pumps located in a central energy centre and can provide all the space heating and hot water for the site. This network is expected to provide a carbon saving as well as a financial saving to residents with an added benefit of reducing the electricity capacity required for the settlement compared to individual air source heat pumps on each property.

Useful Learnings

During the research stage of the project, we learnt a significant amount from other likeminded authorities to learn how they approached their respective projects, what tips they may have or anything they might have done differently in hindsight.

We also ensured that we had sufficient information from other examples of projects.

Engagement with experts in the field was key, we engaged with our Scandinavia colleagues to better understand the future trajectory for heat and develop a greater understanding of the market.

We ensured we had a fully developed, clear strategy and aim for what we wanted to achieve, as well as future proofing plan for how to maintain the resource long term.

Key points
– Clear vision
– Engagement with all key stakeholders
– Embedding the concept into plans very early on, establishing a clear narrative around regeneration plans and create links between the concept and wider projects.

Cheshire East Council’s metrics

Tonnes of CO2e saved per year.

Greater Manchester Local Energy Market

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Our Story

The Greater Manchester Local Energy Market is an innovative project led by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) with 11 partners from community, technology, energy suppliers and network operators.

It will create a more efficient and cost-effective energy market for residents and businesses, exploring opportunities including the production of green hydrogen and use of heat networks to reduce carbon emissions and increase network capacity.

Local Area Energy Plans provide an informed view – from the perspective of residents, businesses and network operators – of where Greater Manchester needs to: generate renewable energy; retrofit buildings; place Electric Vehicle charging hubs; and the impact this whole system approach may have on electricity network/grid operators.

The Local Energy Market is the first project in the country that will provide local area energy plans for ten Local Authority areas, supporting the energy needs of 1.2m homes and 2.7m residents. The project’s ability to provide such an informed position supports people in all walks of life to make informed decisions.

The Challenge

In order to support the development of the GM LEM programme, extensive research schemes were required due to the vast scale of the overarching aim. This included a domestic stock modelling across our 1.2 million homes and a review of over 2,000+ local authority buildings. It required close working relationships with our network operators Cadent and Electricity North West to carry out the work.

May 9 2023

The Reuse360 Hub

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Our Story

The Reuse360 Hub is a circular economy initiative developed by the Waste Service at Lancashire County Council, designed to divert good quality furniture and household items out of the waste stream, and instead into the homes of people who need help. Items are collected from one of Lancashire’s Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs), where they are then cleaned and prepared for reuse at the Reuse360 Hub by members of staff and volunteers.

The Challenge

In the Lancashire-12 area, 13.3% of the total population are income deprived, with 16.7% of children aged 0-15 living in income deprived families. Some of the people who make up these statistics are clients of the Reuse360 Hub, along with others facing difficulties, such as those fleeing domestic violence, refugees, or young people leaving care.

Our Solution

The Reuse360 Hub is able to alleviate some of the financial challenges these individuals and families face by providing reusable items that would otherwise have been destined for landfill or recycling, for free.

Access to the Hub is granted on a referral basis, with the referrals typically being made by social workers, but also other professionals too, such as school teachers within Lancashire. Items can be selected from the Hub via the Reuse360 Hub website, and then distributed either by click&collect or delivery service which is run in partnership with Lancashire’s Child and Youth Justice Service. The Reuse360 Hub also offers pop-up events where the Reuse360 Hub goes on tour!

Redistributing reusable items of course has much needed environmental benefits too – playing a small but important role in increasing Lancashire’s recycling, reuse and composting rate of 45.7% (2019/20) to the target rate of 65% by 2035. Compared to making and buying new, reusing existing items already in the economy reduces the need for new natural resources, reduces pollution and energy consumption, and reduces the amount of greenhouse gases being released – a core goal of the Reuse360 Hub.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CLICK HERE.

May 3 2023

Motrac Research Engineering

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Our Story

Motrac offer services that are tailored to push the boundaries of research and engineering, helping individuals and organisations find new and exciting solutions to the toughest challenges.

The Opportunity

We want to democratise emissions monitoring and make it accessible and simple to understand through continued customer support and data analysis services. When companies understand their emissions they then have critical information to move towards emissions reduction, process optimisation and building evidence to help with further funding or validation.

Motrac Research Engineering also aim to provide services and products to companies in a variety of sectors, especially with technical R&D, product development and proof of concept. Service offerings include field trials, R&D projects, data processing, report writing and engineering consultancy and much more.

For further information click here.

May 3 2023

Greater Manchester Urban Pioneer

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Our Story

In 2016, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) created four pioneer projects to inform the development and implementation of the 25 Year Environment Plan. Greater Manchester was selected as the ‘Urban Pioneer’ which pulled together a number of partnerships and headline activities into a comprehensive and targeted programme of activity, sharing the learning and helping everyone make better decisions to protect and improve the environment.

A key priority at the start of the Urban Pioneer was the development of a set of natural capital accounts. These aim to measure the benefits provided by the city region’s natural assets to its businesses, public services and to those that call Greater Manchester home. We have done this so we know what we currently have and can monitor those natural assets over time, seeking improvement.

The Opportunity

As part of delivering a place based approach, Greater Manchester partners made a commitment to embed a biodiversity net gain approach to the planning system across Greater Manchester and explore and demonstrate how this will deliver wider natural capital net gains and benefits to people’s health, wellbeing, prosperity and growth.

Through the Natural Course (EU Life funded programme) Greater Manchester pioneered the creation of the first Natural Capital Investment Plan (NCIP) for a UK city region to identify new opportunities to secure sustainable investment in its natural capital assets. A Greater Manchester Environment Fund is now being developed which will provide a mechanism to develop and implement these opportunities and unlock new and existing investment sources.

Through trialling the delivery of the Business in the Community Water Resilient Cities demonstrator Sustainable Urban Drainage project, the ground breaking IGNITION emerged which is looking to develop innovative financing solutions for investment in Greater Manchester’s natural environment. This investment will help to build the city region’s ability to adapt to the increasingly extreme impacts of climate change.

The need to develop and test a communications and engagement model that brought together sectors, organisations and the public to deliver more for the environment was a key priority of the Urban Pioneer. This included the creation of an online digital platform Nature Greater Manchester as well as supporting initiatives such as My Wild City and My Back Yard to engage with residents to increase understanding and access to the natural environment in their local community.

For further information click here.

May 3 2023

Renew Hub and shops

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Our Story

Renew is an ambitious and unique project which aims to create value from waste to benefit Greater Manchester. It’s a joint initiative between R4GM & SUEZ UK. We take items donated at Recycling Centres across Greater Manchester, then we repair and renew them at our Renew Hub, ready to be resold to a new home.

The Challenge

The single biggest threat to decarbonisation is consumption.

What if as a society we wasted less, reused more, and gave items a second lease of life leading to less manufacturing of new products and a more circular economy? That is what we’re bringing on an industrial scale to Greater Manchester.

The Opportunity

We’ve opened three Renew shops in Greater Manchester. These shops sell pre-loved household items at an affordable price and are located at three of our recycling centres.

The shops stock a wide variety of homeware, garden furniture, toys, sports equipment, books and more. Items have been donated by residents and cleaned and repaired before being handpicked by staff for the shops in Eccles, Oldham and Altrincham.

The aim of the Renew shops is to reduce waste, reuse unwanted items and increase recycling rates. Many of the items donated by residents would have otherwise gone to waste.

The possibilities are endless and focus around delivering real social, economical and environmental value for Greater Manchester.

The shops and Hub have so far resulted in the creation of 10 new green skilled jobs, with more to come.

Every year the money raised in the 3 shops goes towards two good causes: £100,000 for the GM Mayors fund and a minimum of £220,000 for the R4GM Community fund which aims to increase engagement and lead to behavioural change within communities.

This is a partnership between SUEZ, who manage the waste contracts on behalf of Greater Manchester Combined Authority, and the Combined Authority.

For further information click here.

May 3 2023

Petrus Incredible Edible Rochdale

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Our Story

PIER is run by local homelessness charity Petrus Community. We initially started as a pilot project in 2014 making hanging baskets for the community. Since then the project has grown and now includes a community garden, open to all, but specialising in social and therapeutic horticulture and bringing people together from all backgrounds through a common love of nature, horticulture and food.

The Challenge

The space itself was once a wasteland, devoid of colour, vibrancy or purpose. We desperately needed a place where people could come, feel safe, supported, meeting socially, learn and enjoy the outdoor environment.

The Opportunity

The project has resulted in many opportunities that in some cases have changed people’s lives. From something as simple as a place to meet others and become less isolated, learn to grow food or about biodiversity and nature, it is also a place where people can engage in high profile activities and opportunities that may have previously felt unachievable but as a community they can achieve those goals.

Our two show gardens at RHS Tatton Park have been particularly notable. In 2019 The Petrus team won a silver medal and the People’s Choice award for their ‘Petrus Paradise’ Garden which highlighted the therapeutic impact of horticulture on those experiencing homelessness and in 2021 the team won a bronze medal and the People’s Choice Award for a second time for their garden which explored rain garden techniques, water diversion and planting schemes that can be used to reduce water run off or that can cope with flash flooding.

PIER is a lead partner in the Rochdale Social Prescribing Network where we aim to widen our impact with an overall goal of supporting community-based gardening to be available via prescription linked with all GP surgeries across the borough.

Our current offer through the network has seen an expansion in collaborative working to enable a wider range of green care activity to be delivered from low and high level walks and combining art with the natural environment. By creating a co-produced offer from the outset,we hope to support members of the community to shape a service that will create healthier, mutually supportive, sustainable communities.

For further information click here.

April 28 2023

Catalyst: Net Zero interactive exhibit

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Our Story

The exhibit was developed at the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre which features a range of interactive exhibits that bring subjects to life from Science, Maths, Engineering and Technology to the Humanities and Geography.

The exhibit is a three-level, fun-filled game which teaches all ages about the ways in which we can help tackle climate challenge and deliver a net zero future. It takes players on a journey from reliance on fossil fuels and gas to a greener future in 2050 where hydrogen is used to power industry, fuel our cars and heat our homes. The game is based on the North West and some of the projects anticipated to be delivered in the region over the coming years, including carbon capture and storage beneath Liverpool Bay as part of HyNet North West.

The Challenge

One of the challenges we found with the exhibit was although it was technically accurate, we had to make sure it was accessible, fun and engaging for young people. To manage this, a developer who had extensive experience of creating similar exhibits was brought in to help deliver the project. A steering group of North West Hydrogen Alliance members was set up to provide technical and expert input and sign off the exhibit at various stages.

During the research phase, other exhibits were reviewed within the museum to ensure lessons were learned for the new exhibit. Various options were identified with the chosen option using the existing ‘Compound Creator’ exhibit. This also meant that the existing screen could be re-used, reducing the need, and carbon impact, of the new technology.

Our Solution

The game is displayed on a large touch screen which shows how existing industrial processes, transport and homes release CO2. As the user progresses through the decades to 2050 they can introduce low carbon forms of energy generation, such as hydrogen and renewables, which reduce the CO2 impact. The aim of the game is to reach net zero by 2050 by reducing the amount of CO2 released.

During the game, pop-ups set various challenges and can be used to showcase North West projects which demonstrate to the user how the region is working towards a net zero future. This North West context is important in educating the user on what’s happening in the region to reach net zero, with the aim to inspire people to find out more and perhaps even look into a career in net zero.

The net zero exhibit was sponsored by the North West Hydrogen Alliance (NWHA) – a collection of over 30 businesses that are driving the establishment of a hydrogen economy in the North West. Their goal is to raise the profile of the role hydrogen can play in meeting net zero targets. The NWHA worked closely with the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre and Museum Trust Ltd (Catalyst), a registered charity, in the development of the exhibit.

The exhibit was launched at a stakeholder event with speakers including Cllr Gill Wood, Deputy Portfolio Holder for Climate Emergency & Renewable Energy at the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. The event was attended by Year 6 pupils at Lunt’s Heath Primary School in Widnes who were the first to test run the exhibit. A press release was issued with the launch covered in local and trade media.

Want to find out more?

To find out more about the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre exhibit, follow the link below:

Catalyst Science Discovery Centre – A unique interactive museum for all ages.

April 28 2023

Reducing Mowing for Biodiversity

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Our Story

Salford City Council’s Green Spaces team have started an exciting project to increase biodiversity and tackle climate change by reducing mowing of grassland in the city.

As part of Salford City Council’s commitment to tackling climate change and increasing biodiversity, some grassland previously amenity cut will now be managed for nature. This means the grasses and wildflowers can be encouraged to grow and will only be cut once in autumn.

Grassland not used for sport or recreation identified in 25 parks will be reduced to one mow a year. The grass will be encouraged to grow long for pollinators to enjoy. Plant species will be recorded and compared to evaluate environmental impact of leaving grass to grow.

Our Solution

Leaving grass to grow will double the biodiversity of species that grow within it and use it. Insects that pollinate our flowers and food crops (including butterflies and bees) alongside mammals and birds have been seen to flourish in similar reduced mowing regimes throughout the country.

Cutting the grass less often will reduce our environmental impact from less machinery running and increasing the carbon storage potential of our grasslands as grass absorbs carbon dioxide when it grows the same way trees do. When grass is cut and dies that carbon is released back into the atmosphere through the organic matter decomposing.

In summary, leaving longer gaps between mowing can lead to reduced costs, an increase in bio-diversity, a natural carbon capture system, and a dramatic improvement on the environment for pollinators.

Want to find out more?

If you’d like to find out more about the Green City Programme, follow the link below:

https://www.salford.gov.uk/planning-building-and-regeneration/salfords-natural-environment/green-city-programme/