Community Organisations and Household Energy: Final Project Report
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Abstract
Policy makers and practitioners are increasingly looking to the community and voluntary sector to support delivery of social and environmental initiatives The Community Organisations and Household Energy project responds to this context by exploring the process, practice and impacts of household home energy visits delivered by or in partnership with community organisations in the UK. This was undertaken through semi-structured interviews and collection of supporting data for twelve projects across the UK, representing a diverse range of scales, contexts and delivery models. Four types of actor that lead projects were interviewed: Local authorities; Independent Specialist charities; Semi-professional charities; Voluntary groups. This research focuses on two issues: How community organisations can effectively engage fuel poor householders in undertaking energy efficiency measures through home visits; how these projects are organised and how this relates to their delivery mechanisms and impacts. A key finding that emerged from the study is that community organisations, in the sense of grassroots volunteer-run local bodies, may not be the best entities to effectively engage the fuel poor. Rather, larger funded projects either run by or commissioned by local authorities appear to be effective at playing that role, where the political will and financial support is made available to make this possible. In this context, the role of community organisations would be to facilitate access to vulnerable community members, refer contacts for support and engage in partnership working where this enhances the reach of the energy advice project. However community organisations pursuing carbon reduction goals may still be excellent leaders in supporting local householders to pursue a low-carbon agenda, an activity that may be unlikely to be funded through fuel poverty focussed initiatives.