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Speaker: James Noble Presentation: Carbon 60 Project at Sanford Housing Co-op Website: Sanford Housing Co-op Due to problems with the recordings, Jim's full speech was not audible. Therefore, the following report is a mix of Jim's speech and my own observations of the project. Apologies for the discrepency. Sanford Housing Co-op is a Fully mutual housing co-op with over 130 members in 14 shared houses and one block of flats made up of 6 studio flats. It was built in 1973, opened in 1974 and has remained independent for the past 30 years. Boom in housing at the time Sanford was built (1970’s), litle attention was paid to the environmental consideration or future sustainability as buildings. We want to rebuild Sanford in a way that is more environmentally sound. Our ex-Housing Officer, David Flindall was the driving force behind the project to renovate the property but with an energy awareness angle. He came upon the Carbon 60 project, which is an initiative to reduce carbon emissions in the UK by 60% by the year 2015. We made contact with the Energy Saving Trust (EST), the body funding and overseeing the initiative. EST were interested in this project because reducing Carbon emissions, to this level, in existing housing stock had not been tried before. Why do we want to reduce carbon emissions? A White House Report graphically shows that human influence has had a measurable effect on the planet’s temperature; even though the US government has cut back on environmental legislation. Committee of Management (CoM) made the decision to replace the roofs and boilers in the most environmentally friendly way. We approached Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE), who were able to part-fund (50%) a feasibility study. The study offered options on how to go about this, and could be used as a tool to leverage grants to finance the project. This 64 page document measured our current energy use, surveyed our building stock and worked out ways to reduce it by behavioural, technological and building improvement methods. The Report made the following recommendations: Energy consumption should be charged per room, to link the cost with energy use and make people think about wasting energy (Sanford currently pays for gas and electricity in bulk) A training program to be undertaken to improve the awareness of energy consumption and means to reduce it. Undertake some basic energy saving repairs/ renovations such as cavity wall insulation, sealed front doors, ventilation systems to improve flow of air in the houses, condenser boilers fitted, exterior cladding to the flats. A number of “exciting” sustainable technological additions: Photovoltaic panels on the roofs of houses to heat water. A heat and power station, fuelled by woodchip provided from the local Council’s Parks Service, which would provide heat to the whole complex. A ground-source heat pump, which is a pipe sunk deep into the earth and heated by retained heat deep under the ground. The feasibility study also discovered that Sanford was using 10% more energy than the average (taking into consideration current insulation, average energy use, etc). Once this report was out, a meeting between CSE, EST, Sanford and Lewisham Council was held to assess the recommendations of the Report and work out the next stage of the project. The next stage was to appoint an Architect to the project and the CoM approved the appointment of Architype, after they and 2 other interested architecture/ surveying firms made presentations to open meetings at Sanford. Meanwhile, CSE asked us to do an energy survey amongst the members of Sanford and the results found the following: Most people found the houses too hot. Heating is centrally controlled, therefore to heat an individual room, one needs to switch the heating on for the whole house Attitudes to how we could reduce the emissions by 60%: Using renewable energy There was found to be a low awareness of sustainability issues The project continues……	AUDIO
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