Energy / Power Sub Group Meeting 18/2/2008

Attendees: Keith Farvis, Alister Hamilton, Judith Shepherd, Liam Young

The information gathering since the first meeting on 21/1, and additional information brought by Liam to this meeting, highlighted how much is already going on in Edinburgh that we weren’t all aware of.

A challenge for a communities-based initiative such as Transition Towns is to decide where to get actively involved to be most effective. This is particularly challenging for a power/energy sub-group since an Energy Descent Action Plan is the future major deliverable of the whole group.

The energy-related initiatives already happening in Edinburgh appear to be “top-down” – national and local government programmes, obligations on the power companies, demonstration projects by businesses, one-off funded initiatives by charities.

Specific things we agreed to feed back to the whole group on 24/2:

1. The learning and sharing we’ve done so far has highlighted how much is going on in Edinburgh already.
2. We need some bottom-up awareness raising of energy issues for Edinburgh. This sub-group will produce a couple of items to give to the Communications sub-group for a planned drip-feed campaign of awareness raising. We suggest letters/articles in the Evening News. Likely items will be:
   1. Question to Council and government – what next on the report “Powering Edinburgh into the 21st Century”?
   2. Comparison piece with one of Edinburgh’s twinned cities (Munich?):
      • Munich Germany 1954
      • Nice France 1958
      • Florence Italy 1964
      • Dunedin New Zealand 1974
      • Vancouver Canada 1977
      • San Diego USA 1977
      • Xi ‘ an China 1985
      • Kiev Ukraine 1989
      • Aalborg Denmark 1991
3. Find at least one specific energy project to progress as a community/householders. Candidates are:
   • North Edinburgh and Leith Community Energy Project that Mark Lazarowicz MP is trying to get started (next open meeting is likely to be 15th March)
   • Energy efficiency and/or generation measures in a stair/street of people within the Transition group
   • A demonstration flat (tenement/colony flat/high rise).