Essex County Council (UK)
Partner Description
ECC is a regional authority, governing an area of 1.4 million residents spread across vibrant urban centres, rural villages and historic market towns. Our vision is for Essex to be a place where energy is a force for good – generating economic, social and environmental benefits by securing renewable and resilient energy. We want to use our role in strategic planning, transport and social care to intervene in the energy system and develop new initiatives to reduce local carbon emissions and increase the take-up of renewable energy generation and energy efficiency technologies.
Role in EMPOWER2.0
ECC will engage and intervene in local community energy by targeting buildings at the heart of local communities; either schools and or libraries. In both projects site surveys will determine the most-suitable technologies to provide the community with the greatest environmental and financial benefits. Technological considerations will provide demonstrations of (i) producing own renewable energy (e.g. solar-PV) (ii) storing energy (e.g. integrated battery storage) and (iii) using this energy in the most efficient and effective manner (e.g. building management systems, microCHP, LED, building fabric upgrades). The local communities and households will be involved from the inception of the project through to the ongoing generation of energy and maintenance of the buildings. By taking the communities through the whole journey ECC will have an on-going platform to educate and advise citizens in the benefits of owning and utilising low carbon and renewable technologies whilst facilitating the community to take power and ownership in the shift to a decentralised energy market. To complete this we will incorporate targeted engagement techniques in order to engage the broad demographic of members found in all communities; from school children to the elderly. ECC will add value to EMPOWER by targeting community hubs such as schools and libraries and developing propositions using these types of sites as a pathway into empowering communities. The successful implementation of these projects will provide the foundation for roll out similar projects in as many of the 450 schools or 74 libraries within Essex contributing significantly to the reduction of carbon emission and empowerment of community energy.
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