New Recruits

October 19, 2010

Islay Energy Trust has recruited 5 Home Energy Assessors to help in the delivery of the Scottish Government’s Home Insulation Scheme in the Argyll islands. Between the end of October and late December, the Islay-based team – Alec Chasemore, Meri Ferguson and Rosie MacLellan from Islay, Lindsay Smith from Jura and Joe Teale from Gigha – will visit every home on Islay, Jura and Gigha offering a free Home Energy Check. This will identify individual insulation needs and any offers for which householders may be eligible. The Assessors, who are about to finish a three-week training programme and will be trained to City & Guilds level, will make three attempts at visiting every home.  The HEC can also be filled in online or over the phone. When all the survey work is complete, the appointed installer – still to be announced – will be contracted to complete the insulation work within a very strict time frame. If you haven’t yet had loft or cavity wall insulation installed, this will be an opportunity to take advantage of heavily discounted rates, or in many cases free installation. In particular, if you currently have between 60 and 160mm of insulation on your loft, you will be offered a free top-up, irrespective of your circumstances or the size of your loft. This is a new, very valuable benefit which has not previously been offered.

The Islay-based team will be seconded to Changeworks, the managing organisation for the HIS, and will work alongside teams based on Mull and Bute to cover every island in Argyll.

“The Islay Energy Trust (IET) moved quickly to assist Changeworks in the recruitment process. Working with locally based staff offers so many advantages in terms of service delivery that the partnership made good operational sense. Building up further expertise for the benefit of the community also fits well with Changeworks’ strategy of support for island and rural based communities on behalf of its Energy Saving Scotland advice centres”, comments Tom Kenny, Head of Commercial Operations at Changeworks, who has been tasked with co-ordinating assessments to over 90,000 properties across Scotland.

 Information from the HEC forms will also be used to build up a clearer picture of housing across the islands, for example identifying the proportion of ‘hard-to-treat’ houses such as those with solid walls or coombed ceilings. It is hoped that feeding this information back to the Scottish Government may help to make a case for subsidised measures to treat these, so your participation is vital. Even if you have completed a HEC form in the past, it’s important that you take a few minutes with one of the Assessors to complete a new one.

This is a great opportunity for the islands, and IET are delighted to have played a part in ensuring that some of the associated employment comes to Islay. We wish all the new recruits the best of luck with their training, and look forward to seeing them in their new HIS uniforms very soon!

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Posted by Lindy MacLellan

Spring may be coming…..but….

March 25, 2010

                                                       

Don’t forget how cold the winter was! If you were shivering in an uninsulated house this winter, make sure you do something about it before the summer passes. Without insulation, you were losing up to 25% of your home’s heat through the roof, and another 30% through cavity walls – and paying for the pleasure.

Energycare Scotland have just completed a second round of work on the island as part of Islay Energy Trust’s Carbon Savings project, and this time over 20 homes have benefited from either free or cut-price loft and cavity wall insulation.  These boys are keen to work and will be back on Islay during the last week of April, so get in touch now if you’d like to participate.  Anyone missed from this latest list due to timing or other issues will be top of the next. Other firms carry out this work too – you may have had a flyer from Argyll & Bute Council with your council tax bill recently offering a council tax rebate if you take up an offer from Scottish Gas; feel free to explore this but it’s worth noting that the ‘rebate’ appears to have been added on to the initial cost, which on this visit by Energycare was around £199. It has also proved difficult to get larger firms to commit to coming to the islands

These discounts for insulation work apply to all households with uninsulated cavity walls and also those with less than 60mm of loft insulation; if you are over 70 or on certain benefits the work may be free. The benefits of full insulation are immediate and will save you money as well as keeping your house warmer – even if you have to pay for cavity wall insulation, it will repay itself in just 2-3 years. If you are having trouble keeping your house warm, insulation is the first thing you should consider – there’s no point paying for heat that is escaping to the outdoors!

Interested? The initial survey is free and carries no obligation to have work carried out. If you’re not sure how much loft insulation you already have and have difficulty in accessing your loft yourself, just get in touch – call Lindy on 01496 301413, or email lindy.maclellan@islayenergytrust.org.uk, or call into the IET office in Main Street, Bowmore.  Surveys will take place from 23rd-25th April, with installation completed the following week. Act now and you’ll be sure of warmer winters for the future – indoors at least!

Quick, professional work - and no need to don the face mask yourself!

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Posted by Lindy MacLellan

Interest-free loans to improve home energy efficiency

October 8, 2009

Interest free loans are to be offered to householders to help them cut their fuel bills and reduce emissions.

A sum of £2 million is available this year for a pilot loans scheme to help people improve insulation, replace inefficient boilers or install small scale renewables.

The Energy Saving Scotland home loans scheme is managed by the Energy Saving Trust in Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government.

 Loans of between £500 and £10, 000 are available. The loans are interest free so you only pay back what you borrow. Applicants can pay back the loan in monthly instalments over a maximum of eight years. 

Loans can be combined with grants such as the Energy Saving Scotland home renewables grants and funding from fuel suppliers under the Carbon Emission Reduction Target.

 You can borrow money to:

  • Install cavity wall or solid wall insulation and/or loft insulation;
  • Install renewable energy systems, such as wind turbines, solar water heating, heat pumps, small scale hydroelectric schemes and wood fuel heating systems;
  • Replace old, inefficient boilers.

For more information, go to http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/scotland/Scotland-Welcome-page/At-Home/Grants-and-offers/Energy-Saving-Scotland-home-loans

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Posted by Lindy MacLellan

Cut your carbon footprint – cut your costs

April 30, 2009

We hear a lot about cutting our carbon emissions, but what is it all about and is it really worth doing? If you’ve read the article on global warming in a recent issue of the Ileach, then you may already be convinced of the need for action. If you are not, perhaps you would just like to reduce your living costs? It really doesn’t matter what motivates you, the fact is we need to stop wasting the Earth’s resources, and by doing that we will reduce our carbon footprint and save money into the bargain.
Islay Energy Trust’s Carbon Savings Project has been tasked with reducing Islay and Colonsay’s total carbon emissions by 300 tonnes in each of the next two years. That figure may seem a bit meaningless, but if you think of it as equivalent to the saving made by fully insulating 100 lofts, then it begins to come into perspective. If every household on the two islands was able to reduce their carbon emissions by just 300kg (and that could be as little as 2% depending on your current energy use; simply turning down your water heater thermostat to 60C and your central heating by 1 degree will go a long way towards that), then the target would be reached very easily – and we would all be a bit better off into the bargain. Over the next few months, we will be distributing Home Energy Survey forms which can be used to give you tailored advice on how to reduce your energy bills, and also how to access grants for loft and cavity wall insulation – help with these is available to all households.
So how do you work out your carbon footprint? There are lots of calculators out there on the Internet, some of which are more thorough than others, and probably none of which is completely accurate, but they do give a good indication of where you are using more energy than necessary, and advice on how to cut down. You might like to try the one on the Energy Saving Trust website – it will take around 10 minutes to work through. Ideally you should have your latest energy bills to hand, (or at least an idea of your monthly spend) and an idea of the number of miles you drive in a year. If you don’t have access to the Internet, or have difficulty using the calculator, feel free to call in at the Islay Energy Trust office, on the middle floor of Custom House, Bowmore, and Lindy will do it for you. Don’t be depressed by the result, or feel guilty! If you live in an old house and have to drive to work every day – both fairly common in rural areas – then your result may well be higher than average. What’s important is that there are small, easy measures you can take to cut your energy usage, and after a while they will become routine.
After all, we used to waltz out of the Co-Op with armfuls of carrier bags….

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Posted by Lindy MacLellan