After a lengthy application process Forest Row Energy is delighted to announce that we have been awarded a grant from the Rural Community Energy Fund to deliver our project ‘Transitioning Rural Communities to Renewable Heat’. Forest Row Energy will deliver the project in partnership with OVESCO which is based in Lewes.
The funding will be used to support 50 households, that currently rely on heating oil, to go renewable by installing technologies such as air-source heat pumps.
For each household that is part of the project we will assess the property, produce technology designs and complete a whole-life financial analysis that will show you the long-term costs and benefits of using the new technology.
We have designed the assessment so that we won't need to enter your property whilst contact is restricted due to Covid-19.
Based on the project findings we will be producing a funding strategy that aims to reduce the upfront costs of installing the technologies in the properties that we work with. This will be supported by the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), the government subsidy for renewable heat, which has just been extended until March 2022.
Once we have shown that our approach is self-sustaining the aim is to extend the support more widely in rural areas throughout our region.
Esmé Donghi, Director said ‘We are very excited to get going on this long-awaited project. We hope this will be the start of community led support in our area to help local people transition from using heating oil to renewable energy technologies.
One third of the electricity that we use from the national grid is now supplied by renewables but we have barely got started on how to heat our homes with renewable energy. We need to make big progress on reducing carbon emissions from heating to get anywhere near meeting our climate change targets.
Currently the main barriers to getting renewable heat into our homes are the upfront costs and also understanding of the whole-life costs and benefits. Our project aims to help solve this in our area’
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