Funded Energy Redress Projects

The project will deliver energy advice and support to elderly residents and those most in need. Including individuals with long-term conditions, sensory impairments, physical health challenges, and low-income backgrounds.

Alongside energy saving advice the project will provide practical assistance in making small but effective home energy efficiency changes, helping to reduce energy consumption and lower costs. This includes installing simple adjustments such as draught-proofing, energy-efficient lighting, and optimising heating controls to maximise warmth while minimising waste.

In addition, they will support residents with tailored advice to help them make informed decisions when searching for and switching to the most cost-effective energy tariffs, ensuring they are not overpaying for their energy.

The project will also offer hands-on support in dealing with energy providers, assisting with billing queries, negotiating manageable payment plans, dealing with energy arrears and helping individuals understand their energy usage. 

By empowering people with the knowledge and confidence to manage their energy costs effectively, they aim to reduce financial anxiety and enhance their ability to maintain a warm, secure, and independent home environment.

In partnership with Citizens Advice South West Staffordshire, Citizens Advice South East Staffordshire, and Beat the Cold, the project will provide energy advice and support to vulnerable consumers, across a large network of community venues.

The project will host trained Energy Advisors within foodbanks, libraries, neighbourhood networks, family hubs, and older communities, engaging those who are most vulnerable, and those who don't access the support they need.

Trained Energy Advisers will:

• Provide immediate crisis support
• Deliver advice on energy efficiency
• Support financial capability and resilience
• Raise awareness of available support
• Provide onward referrals to Beat the Cold for energy efficiency advice and capital measures

Through this established partnership and support from local organisations they will increase energy advice provision to meet demand from vulnerable energy consumers, offering a mixture of face-to-face and telephone advice, home visits, and capital measures.

The project aims to deliver net zero in the Isles of Scilly’s electricity supply with environmental, social and economic benefit to the islands’ community. 

Scilly has the highest energy bills of any area in the UK, standing at £1,227 (UK average £757) at the start of 2022. Due to reliance on electricity as the sole source of domestic energy. Depending on measurement methodology, fuel poverty rates on Scilly may be as high as 21% - significantly higher than the national average, evidencing a need to address electricity costs in this location. 

Scilly faces several structural challenges: high capital costs due to the off-shore location, lack of economies of scale due to the small population size, scarcity of land, and an increasing proportion of the population being economically inactive (29%) and elderly (22%). 

This project will progress 3 sites from feasibility study to investment ready state (1 solar, 2 solar and battery). Construction of these sites would allow 400 additional households to join our Energy Local club, delivering around a 21% reduction in energy bills for those households. 

To deliver targeted support for vulnerable households, they will explore the viability of three options: enabling their participation in our Energy Local club, involving them in the decision making around next steps in our energy roadmap, and the identification of potential surpluses and whether they could effectively contribute financially to local support structures.

Blocks of flats pose unique legal, technical, and social challenges for retrofit, making it particularly difficult for low income and vulnerable households in these properties to access the benefits of warmer, healthier homes. Building on their core strengths in community engagement and co-design, this project will address key gaps in the market through a community retrofit service for these homes. 

This project builds on two previously funded projects, through which they have piloted and developed a property survey and retrofit co-design service for blocks of flats. In a previous project, they tested the minimum viable service in one estate of five blocks. The original scale of this project was revised to facilitate essential development of a digital platform for data collection and actionable advice by project partner Novoville; it has generated significant learnings and tools for delivering this offering at scale. 

This project will systematise and deliver the full service for a cohort of ten blocks of flats, including: 

• Block recruitment and marketing
• Co-developing collaborative visions for retrofit and mentoring community champions
• Whole-block survey methodology: collecting behavioural and technical data
• Energy modelling and reporting: optioneering retrofit measures, generating actionable energy efficiency plans for residents, and whole block retrofit plans

This will validate service development work undertaken to date across different typologies, standardise the approach to create efficiencies, and subsequently offer the full service at scale across varied tenure-types.

‘Powerless People’ was a short film produced in 2021, highlighting the plight of households in Northumberland currently living with no connection to the electricity grid – over 350 of them. The majority of these households rely on diesel generators to meet their basic electricity needs.

Through ‘Powering People,’ they aim to deliver a wraparound support service to off-grid households in Northumberland, increasing access to sustainable energy solutions and reducing reliance on diesel generators. This project will improve the quality of life for these households while demonstrating a scalable model for nationwide implementation in off-electricity grid areas. 

The project will:

• Deliver direct benefits to future energy consumers currently not connected to a utility company including household energy audits, facilitating access to financial support and grid connection opportunities
• Reduce carbon emissions from current diesel powered electricity generation
• Produce carbon reduction assessments for clusters of off-grid properties as the basis for developing community-based energy solutions, creating long-term, sustainable energy access for these isolated communities
• Use their evidence of issues and solutions to advocate for all off-electricity grid households along with enabling knowledge exchange and raising awareness of solution options

This project will deliver energy saving advice and support to vulnerable residents, particularly those who are neurodivergent, those with mental health conditions, and those who struggle to use current services. Expertise and learning will be shared across their national organisation. 

They will provide face-to-face advice at home and in the community, where practical and appropriate advice will also be delivered online. Advice will focus on enabling people to make the changes and adaptations required to reduce their energy use and access more affordable options in the future, alongside crisis support. 

The project will identify common gaps in knowledge among this cohort and create easy to read, bespoke resources which are more easily understood by the people they serve. These will be made available on their website and to other partnership organisations. 

In addition, they will train two further people to become energy advisors gaining the City and Guilds Level 3 qualification. This will provide the local community with an ongoing legacy when funding finishes.

The project aims to support 2,000 households across rural Cambridgeshire to reduce energy costs, improve home comfort, and contribute to environmental sustainability by lowering carbon emissions. Their focus will be to effectively reach vulnerable households who require energy advice in the home and within local community venues. Alongside offering telephone and video appointments. 

By collaborating with other charities, agencies and organisations to reach the most vulnerable households, the project aims to address critical social, economic, and environmental challenges in the region; improving the lives and resilience of beneficiaries. 

They will deliver comprehensive, tailored energy advice, and provide short term relief to those facing self-disconnection because of lack of funds. As well as improving client confidence in energy efficiency improvements and government schemes to provide longer term sustainable, affordable solutions. Empowering residents to successfully manage their own energy usage in the future and manage unforeseen issues.

This project will develop a viable and scalable business model to share solar surpluses from the re-developed Ice Factory on the Grimsby docks, and install rooftop solar and batteries at no up-front cost to low income, terraced homes, including those in the private rented sector in the East Marsh area of Grimsby. 

The project will consist of two phases:

Phase 1 – Community consultation and business model development. Testing the social, technical, legal and economic feasibility of three alternative business models for the sharing of solar surpluses and installation of rooftop solar to terraces in the East Marsh, working with Ashden Awards winners: 

• Scaling individual solar and batteries: Energise Barnsley model - Ashden Winner 2024
• Behind the meter microgrid and collective battery: Emergent Energy model - Ashden Runner Up 2024
• Local energy club (in front of meter) and collective battery: Energy Local model – Ashden Winner 2018 

Phase 2 – Detailed business and community investment plan. Developing an investment ready plan to attract a mix of philanthropic, public and community investment for 250+ home pilot (200 homes to receive gifted solar from the Grimsby Docks Ice Factory re-development and 50 homes direct PV installation).

The project is a partnership between East Marsh United (EMU), Ashden Climate Solutions, Create Streets, the University of York and GY900 Ltd.

The project will support the development of community renewable energy initiatives in South West Wales. Experienced professionals, alongside specialist consultancy, will advance key projects and drive the just energy transition by unlocking new community-led renewable electricity generation. 

These projects will either expand CARE’s existing generation, with proceeds used for vulnerable energy consumer support, or kickstart generation with community groups new to renewable energy projects, benefiting local populations. 

Their work will focus on four key areas: 

• Empowering rural, disadvantaged communities with Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) in community facilities owned by village halls, not4profits and sports groups etc. These systems will lower energy costs, improve sustainability, maintain and enhance services while creating jobs and upskilling trades.
• Developing long-term sustainable income to support vulnerable residents through existing projects, like their hybrid solar park at Trefawr Farm; and new "Direct Power for Communities" projects that will generate resources by linking new community generators with high demand from institutions and businesses.
• Scoping for larger, innovative renewable energy projects that will pilot local energy trading, to directly reduce bills.
• Assisting Ynni Bro Rhian, a new community energy group, to establish their generator for local benefit.