Edinburgh News
Summary
District heating schemes reduce carbon emissions and also save customers money, writes Gavin Corbett.
Energy isn’t sexy. That may come as something of a shock. Bring together a bunch of energy enthusiasts and you will be soon be drowning in a sea of acronyms and a tangle of initiatives.
But warmth in our northerly country and power to operate the many things which attend our daily lives is one of the basics. It’s why wars have been fought over oil; and why miners’ strikes in the 1970s and 1980s were so totemic. Energy is also a big deal in shaping our future Edinburgh. Heating homes and workplaces makes up over 40 per cent of city carbon emissions. If Edinburgh is to achieve its target of being a zero carbon city by 2030 – and there is really no choice but to do so – then the scale of change needed is breath-taking.
In that context, the work of any single body can seem small. As a director of Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative, I am very proud of the work that has been done since 2015. We have raised £1.4m from a community share issue to install solar panels on 24 public buildings, both for use by those buildings and export to the grid. Well over a thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide have been saved in the process and any profits above community share dividend have been shared among local projects.
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