I won’t make a habit of this, but once or twice a year I’m going to re-post my Zero Carbon Luton newsletter here. It focuses on the local stuff, some of which I’m involved in, and you can subscribe here if you’re so inclined. In this edition:
- Luton’s Climate Action Teacher Champions
- How one local home-owner went zero carbon
- Ten years of the busway
- Sustainability features at Lidl’s enormous new warehouse
Climate Action Teacher Champions
The first group of teachers have completed the Council’s Climate Action Teacher Champion programme (CATCh), with schools invited to enter for the autumn term.
The scheme supports schools to develop a climate plan, offering training and one-to-one mentoring for teachers as they look at setting environmental goals for their school. It is run by Luton Council, along with Groundwork East and Youth Network. (PS – I’m one of the mentors on this scheme and that’s me bottom right).
The programme was successfully trialled during the summer term. The six schools from the pilot will now be putting their plans into action in the coming months.
“When I was first looking into sustainability it felt massive – where do I start?” says Alex Martin, Assistant Head and Denbigh High School, who took part in the scheme. “This is a great programme to make you realise what you can achieve now, what you can achieve in the medium term, and how you can make sustainability systems for the future.”
Caroline Room, from Putteridge High School, appreciated the sense of community that formed around the programme. “In previous years there were times when I felt like I was the only person working on climate change,” she says. “It’s been such a pleasure to find other people who are like-minded, who are working on similar projects, to exchange ideas and just to have that positivity about what we’re doing.”
Schools are now signing up for the second round of the programme. Find out more on the Zero Carbon Luton website, and email myclimate@luton.gov.uk to register.
Schools resources
While we’re on the subject of schools and teachers, the Zero Carbon Luton website now has a dedicated schools section with a host of ideas, links, resources, and lots more to come in future. Please do get in touch if you’ve got ideas for any further resources you’d like to see, or stories you’d like to share about climate action in schools.
How I made my home zero carbon
After a life at sea driving cruise ships, Jesse Bryce now works on energy efficiency in the cargo industry. He shares how he made his ex-council Luton home zero carbon for £4,200.
Decarbonising my two-bed semi started not from what I should do, but from what I could do. By taking one step at a time, the gas supply has now been disconnected and capped off.
When I bought my house I had simple gas hobs. An electric induction hob was an easy choice, and cost me £400 installed. It heats up fast and is better for cooking, easier to clean, and better indoor air quality too!
One of the most talked about aspects of decarbonising homes is our heating. The standard approach in the UK is to plumb an air-to-water heat pump into our radiators, circulating warm water as we’ve done for decades. I was raised in New Zealand, where gas grids aren’t as common as they are in the UK. Kiwis moved to adopt air-to-air heat pumps, often known as air-con units! These are simple, cheap, quick to install units that are often more efficient at heating than their air-to-water counterparts.
For £2,000 installed, a single 3.5 kW Mitsubishi air-con unit in my living room pushes more than enough heat through my home, ticking over low and slow to maintain temperatures. I find it’s better at keeping my living room comfortable than my radiators ever were.
Having sorted my heating, it left my gas combi boiler only producing hot water. A basic hot water cylinder with a smart immersion switch gave me the best balance of cost and capability, at £1,800 installed. Being able to set a schedule on the immersion makes the most of cheap off-peak power overnight.
These three steps with a total cost of £4,200 meant I could have my gas meter removed – no more standing charges! And with smart meters and their off-peak tariffs giving running costs similar to (or less than) running on gas this last winter, going fossil free makes sense for bills too.
Living in an ex-council house, there are likely hundreds of homes in the area with similar heating needs and available space to repeat these steps.
I’ve been lucky to be in a position to take these steps over the last few years, especially with the current cost of living. Hopefully by showing some of what we could do with our smaller homes, it can spark ideas for those wondering what steps they can take when they’re able to.
There is a longer and more detailed version of this article on the ZCL website.
Ten years of the busway
The Luton to Dunstable busway marks its ten-year anniversary this month. It opened in September 2013, and minus the quieter Covid era, has carried around two million passengers a year ever since.
Built along the route of a disused railway line, the busway allows buses to bypass the traffic along the often busy Hatters Way. High quality bus transport of this kind helps to reduce traffic, carbon emissions and air pollution. We’re all for it, and it will be even better when it one day runs electric buses with zero emissions – we await announcements on that front. In the meantime, hundreds of people use the path alongside the busway every day, travelling carbon-free by bike, scooter and on foot.
Guided busways have been built in various places since, including Manchester and Bristol, but it’s still a pretty unusual transport technology. With ours running for just over eight miles, it remains, to the best of my knowledge, the longest entirely urban guided busway in the world.
(PS – My wife, being a BBC journalist, also covered this story last week and did it better.)
Look at all the solar on Lidl’s warehouse
Lidl has opened its biggest ever warehouse in Houghton Regis, and from the look of this photo, you could fit most of Houghton Regis inside. It will serve 150 stores and create 1,500 jobs. This being Zero Carbon Luton, what we’re most interested in is its green credentials though, and they are not to be sniffed at.
This will be the first Lidl warehouse with a biogas delivery fleet. All of its delivery vehicles will be powered by biogas made from food waste. That makes it a forerunner in the company’s wider target to go diesel-free by 2030.
With such a vast roof to work with, the warehouse has a large solar array that can produce two million kilowatt hours of electricity every year. During the longer summer days, the warehouse will be entirely self-powered through its solar panels.
In other news…
- Have you seen the new solar streetlights in Wandon Park or Kingsway Rec?
- The DART took just 147 days to carry its one millionth passenger.
- A schedule has been announced for long-awaited improvements to Luton Station, including new canopies over the platforms and a new bridge.
- Easyjet has co-founded an industry alliance to accelerate the development of hydrogen for zero carbon aviation.
The Earthbound Report 