This year feels like a success for HEI and we certainly had plenty of electrifying action right from the start, as we worked on the launch of the electric car club. A glance back through the months, however, reveals that more things didn’t come off as did. But we won’t dwell on that because the successes matter rather more than the mostly ‘near miss’ failures.
Electric cars… but not bikes
Having secured a grant late in 2014 from the DfT financed Car Club Challenge, we were anxious to get set up to launch the new electric car club in 2015 within the agreed timescales. Progress was a little slow to begin with but it soon became a brisk stride into the unknown with many positive consequences. The club launched on May 13th with 70 or more people in attendance and probably as many cakes, supplied by Biblio’s. Thereafter 35 people quickly joined and we had something very visible and of clear use to the community attracting attention to our presence in Harbury. I think people already were aware of us but the car club has been a significant step in our promotion of sustainable living and carbon reduction.
One of the benefits of the project, as you can see twice from the head of this paper, has been the development of a logo for HEI. Once again we turned to the school for help and had 12 imaginative entries from children across the age range for our logo competition. The winning entry stunned us not only by its perfect simplicity but the fact that it was created by an 8-year-old in year 4.
Between the launch in mid May and the end of November we gained 46 members, of whom 28 have actually booked a car. The cars have clocked up 3,413 miles of travel and 492 hours of use. Highest use was in August, when the cars completed 148.5 hours. In November bookings covered 116, our second highest, reflecting the launch of e-Wheels.
In summer we had the opportunity to apply for a grant to establish a pod of EAPCs (electrically assisted pedal cycles) at the village caravan site. At the last minute, for private reasons, the host family decided to withdraw from the scheme. There will probably be more funding available in 2016 for electric bikes, so perhaps we need a new plan ready.
e-Wheels
Our successful application to the Car Club Challenge included an aspiration from us to use our club for social benefit. This also fitted with the aims of E-Car Club. Having established a link with the church through the Transforming Communities group, we realised that there is a genuine need for this from a variety of agencies, not least the four local food banks. Out of the blue (and solar panels) came an offer from Big60Million to provide £1,000 of start-up funding. E-car Club added in-kind support and we then successfully bid to the Heart of England Community Foundation for a further £960 from January 2016. This enabled us to launch at the end of October with 8 volunteer drivers and 5 volunteer coordinators, knowing that we had 450 free hours of electric car use to offer local social agencies for their clients. As of this week we have used 45 of those hours and it is likely that this will grow in 2016 as new agencies join in with referrals.
In response to an enquiry from me about external interest in e-Wheels, the Manager of Customer Services for E-car club said: “It is a big scheme we want to shout about”.
It didn’t all work out
The sun hasn’t shone on all our ideas. Solar panels for the school proved legally impossible. Our search for a community energy scheme for the village has so far proved fruitless and the market is now likely to slump for a while whilst the sector works out how to survive a massive and unexpected reduction in Feed-in-Tariffs. An opportunity to compete for funding solar panels on the roof of the library was proposed too close to the deadline to allow for adequate discussion and didn’t go ahead. There will be a second chance in 2016, if we want to pursue it.
Publicity and communication
We did talk to quite a lot of people during the year, not least at the Carnival. We were invited at various times in the year to speak to the Southam Roundtable, Kenilworth All Together Greener group, Harbury Scouts and at the Carplus conference. People seem to want to know what we are doing, an important success to add to the practical activity.
At the Carplus annual conference on car share schemes we were given two slots and appeared throughout the delegate information pack. There was particular interest in the e-Wheels project, which at that time was yet to deliver.
BBC Coventry and Warwickshire gave us considerable coverage for the launch of the electric car club. This was followed up by an invitation to be interviewed live about e-Wheels in mid November.
Joining the car share revolution brought us into contact with a number of associated websites, such as Greener Car Guide, which all carried stories of our launch to complement those by E-Car Club, Carplus and Renault.
The Leamington Courier published an excellent story (written by the Chair!) about Sofia’s winning logo for HEI and subsequently announced the launch of the electric car club in May.
Finally in November the Mail on Sunday interviewed Harbury car club member Rosanna Hunt for a story
in the Personal Finance section about her experiences of membership. She said all the right things.
Finally HEI will, by the end of the year, have a new website, which you have now visited. This has been created for us at no charge by Pixel boy, an IT company run by one of our friends in a sister group in Hartlepool called Hartlepower.
Neighbourhood Development Plan and Parish Council
As part of our contribution to the work of the Parish Council, we took an active role in the evolution of the plan by joining the NDP steering group under Pat Summers. HEI was responsible for the sustainability and environmental elements of the plan with a great deal of work being done by Linda Ridgley.
Very recently, so recent that the text isn’t fully agreed yet, Paul Quinney has provided us with a technical standard HEI/parish council specification for new builds in Harbury. Whilst developers are not required to do anything beyond current building regulations and cannot be forced to adopt our standard, this nevertheless makes a statement about our aspirations for low carbon living in Harbury.
Attendance at conferences
During the year one or more of us attended these conferences:
Community Energy Conference, 5 September
Reconciling a Wounded Planet 18 and 19 September at Coventry Cathedral
West Midlands Green Communities Network, 7/8 October
20/20 Low Carbon Business and Communities Workshop, Coventry, 25 November
Into 2016
As the year closes we have two key long-term projects running (the electric car club and e-Wheels), greater recognition locally, closer relations with the parish council – and two new projects forming. We have, as an immediate challenge, a quote for refitting the school’s lighting with LEDs throughout at a cost of £26,000 and next a planned project with the church to begin in January for a March/April launch. That will do for starters.