British Gas has put together a community project to encourage communities to both save and generate energy. The idea is for everyone in the local community to come together with project ideas to generate energy from renewable sources locally.
Once the selection process has been completed in October 2009, the projects will run through 2010 and the winners announced in February 2011. There will be about 14 projects which will receive a share of £2 million to spend on their project.
The project aim is to show how energy consumption in the UK can be reduced, British Gas says. A similar project ran through 2008, where eight streets in eight cities were challenged to see who could save the most energy and CO2 over the course of the year.
The 64 streets managed to save an average of 25% on energy and 20% on CO2 emissions. If this pattern was repeated across the country, British Gas estimate that it could produce an annual saving of nearly £6 billion in energy bills and 36 million tonnes of CO2, a huge difference.
