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This Years Ashden Awards Finalists

Posted: 06/06/2006

UK energy innovators in line for green energy awards - eight pioneering initiatives have reached the finals of this year’s Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. All demonstrate new and radical ways to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at the local level,using biomass, energy efficiency and solar energy to help limit climate change.
 
The Ashden Awards, the UK’s leading green energy award scheme, reward outstanding and innovative projects which tackle climate change and improve quality of life by providing renewable energy and energy efficiency at a local level.
 
All this year’s finalists boast high CO2 savings from using renewable technologies and energy efficiency, and are aiming to scale up their projects to make a real impact on climate change. If their approaches were replicated across the UK, significant national CO2 savings would result, say the Ashden Award organisers.
 
The impact of these programmes on individual clients and users goes beyond supplying energy efficiency measures and renewable energy: “Our finalists this year show how using local sustainable energy not only reduces carbon emissions, but can also have significant social and economic benefits. Most importantly, by bringing energy generation and efficiencies to peoples’ homes and schools, these projects are putting people in touch with the energy they use, and hence giving them the power to help tackle climate change. I hope these examples will inspire others to follow,” says Sarah Butler-Sloss, Founder and Director of the Ashden Awards.
 
This year’s contenders for the Ashden Awards are:

BioRegional’s TreeStation project, which produces 10,000 tonnes of woodchip a year from waste wood, helping to expand biomass heating in London and reduce landfill costs;

Kirklees Council in Yorkshire who have installed the UK’s biggest solar energy programme, supplying power to 400 council houses and other public buildings;

Energy Audit Company, managing a highly effective initiative rolling out cavity wall insulation free-of-charge to remote rural areas of Northumberland;

Good Energy, an alternative electricity supplier offering a financial reward to micro-generators aiming to boost the UK’s micro-generation sector;

Barnsley Council who have set up the largest programme of biomass fired community heating in the country, replacing coal with waste wood;  

Gloucestershire Warm and Well, a programme offering insulation and other energy efficiency measures to older people and those at risk of cold-induced health problems, reaching 16,000 homes in the region.
 
Two British primary schools have also been short-listed for the Ashden Awards in a new category of ‘Sustainable Energy in Schools’ – Cassop School in County Durham and Eastchurch School on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Both schools have incorporated sustainable energy into all aspects of school life using renewable technologies, energy efficiency measures; and integrating energy learning across the curriculum in imaginative ways. These initiatives involve pupils aged as young as 8 or 9.
 
The finalists will be in London next month for the last stage of the judging process. The Awards will be presented at a major VIP ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society, London SW7 on Thursday June 15 2006. Guest speakers will be David Cameron MP, leader of the opposition and Lord May, former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government and former Head of the UK Office of Science and Technology. Mark Lynas, broadcaster, writer and author will host the event.
 
Green Building Press  
 

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