Community Action Plan – Home Energy Efficiency and Improvements
In the Spring 2024 edition of the Eagle, we included an article about Ballater’s Community Action Plan (CAP), “owned” by the BCCC but worked on by volunteers from other organisations such as Ballater CAN and BRD, which is also the funding charity where applicable. The article summarised a snapshot of where a home consumes its energy and ideas and links to resources how to save money on energy costs with little or no investment.
In this follow up article, we summarise some key points about energy efficiency and how, with some investment, (for which funding support is often available) your home can be less costly to keep warm and/or heat, as well as the option of making a switch to renewable energy.
An Energy Improvements Pack has been developed to provide the Ballater and Crathie community with ideas and information on the relative benefit of a range of home energy efficiency, cost saving and home environment improvements as part of the 2023 Community Action Plan Theme no 4: Environment*. There are several sources of government and commercial advice on how to improve your home energy efficiency and get financial support to implement them. A number of these sources have helped develop our Energy Improvement Pack. Below is a table from our Pack with a summary of home energy use reduction measures and their respective characteristics.
This 2nd Pack is now available to residents on the BCCC website:
http://www.ballaterandcrathiecommunitycouncil.com/energy-efficency-at-home
An important element of this project is a Drop in Event at Ballater’s Victoria Halls for people to receive expert input on home energy saving and renewable energy improvements. We have arranged this for Wednesday 26th June from 10.00 to 16.00.
Home Energy Scotland (HES) as a Scottish government sponsored independent technical experts will attend the event. HES are offering Ballater residents free home visits to make assessments and specific recommendations for improvements (to be implemented by others) as well as advise on access to funding support. HES will also provide information on energy saving tips that cost little or nothing.
In addition, the following three reputable organisations will attend to provide their information and offer to implement the recommendations by HES and/or their own suggestions: Green Home Systems, NESFIT and Sugplumb.
Please note, you don’t have to wait until the Drop in Event to make contact with the referenced organisations. We encourage you as a first step you contact Home Energy Scotland at https://www.homeenergyscotland.org/contact-advice-support-funding/ where you can pre order home visits to assess the best combination of improvements for your home.
Like any project, it’s important to record and assess its impact and measure its success. To that end, we ask that, if as a result of this communication and/or the Drop in event, any member of the community that:
1) makes contact with one or more of the referenced technical or funding support organisation or
2) implements any measure of energy conservation or renewable energy generation facility, they inform Scott Peacock at scottpea58@gmail.com or Tom Flynn at tomflyn59@btinternet.com accordingly so we can keep a record.
We will of course respect your privacy and not reveal any personal details.
Finally, if you are interested in getting involved in this, or any other CAP Theme projects*, please contact :BCCCsecretary@outlook.com
*See a summary of all 9 CAP themes at: https://visitballater.com/communityactionplan/