Slightly warmer weather and bluer skies may be making some of us more optimistic, despite all the doom and gloom in the media. It’s good to hear one encouraging bit of news from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit - that compared with 10 years ago climate science scepticism has almost entirely disappeared from the opinion pages of British newspapers. The veteran environment correspondent, Geoffrey Lean, also drew attention to positive responses in polls and criticised newspapers for failing to keep up with their readers’ views. That’s not to ignore the extremes of some social media but we progress one step at a time.
In a perfect world, we would be forging ahead in the Moorlands with our own community energy scheme. We’ve reported previously on such schemes and the difficulties in getting them established. Nevertheless, with changing attitudes we think it’s an idea we should keep alive, especially as we’re well placed here for small-scale wind energy and our MP has told us she would not be opposed to a community project. Encouragingly, a very recent YouGov poll shows widespread public support for the creation of community owned, renewable energy projects. Maybe if we keep talking about these, people with the will and motivation to help make it happen will emerge. We can but hope.
In the meantime,...
we’ve been making progress in lending out our thermal camera. We’ve lent it out twice a week since autumn last year, with a gap over the festive season, and will carry on till the end of March. If you’d like to borrow it, follow the contact link below to choose from the new list of dates. We’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to meet those of you who’ve already borrowed it and share our experiences and have been hugely impressed by the depth of knowledge and experience shown. We feel this is a valuable resource that should be shared.
To that end, we’d like to organise a local Energy Forum for our members and other interested people, so that we have a better opportunity to pool practical experiences and information. Unlike our successful Energy Days in previous years, we think this might benefit from an informal approach with the focus being on rotating discussion groups and possibly with some expert input. Given that this event is likely to be primarily driven by those attending, we’re asking you, our readers, to tell us if you think it’s a good idea and what you would like us to cover. To give us feedback, do please complete the Contact Form below.