Funded Energy Redress Projects

The project aims to address the need for support from Fife households that are struggling to heat their homes affordably. The project will focus on those who are most vulnerable to the impacts of fuel poverty, especially people for whom English is not their first language, those with low literacy and numeracy skills, and those who are digitally excluded. 

Utilising learning gained from previous projects, they have developed a community engagement approach that ensures effective reach and maximises participant benefit. They will work closely with local groups, organisations and support agencies, train new referral partners, recruit a team of local energy champion volunteers to act as trusted local connectors for the service, and work in targeted neighbourhoods to deliver support where it is most needed. 

They will also develop marketing materials and online resources to engage with 10,000 people, raising awareness of energy issues and how they can help. 

The project will work in-depth with 700 vulnerable households, providing advice on energy efficiency, financial support and supplier switching, plus referrals to other sources of well-being support, from income maximisation to befriending services. A ‘handy’ service, fitting warm curtains, draught-proofing and other simple energy-saving measures, will increase the energy efficiency of households, and those at risk of under-heating will receive ‘cosy’ packs to increase their immediate thermal comfort.

The project will provide learning disabled adults with accessible education and training to empower them to make informed choices, reduce their energy usage and assist them with difficulties around energy providers.

Through workshops and one-to-one support, participants will gain practical skills to reduce energy costs and improve financial resilience. 

Energy Champions will design and lead workshops covering energy use and energy saving measures, understanding your bill, and how to change energy provider. Individual adviser support will enable people to: 

• understand their own billing and energy packages
• change provider if needed
• apply workshop learning to their home environment
• identify energy saving measures to take and provide support to learn to put these things into practice 

Energy Champions will be learning disabled people who complete training, design accessible workshops, offer peer support, and run workshops delivering information to their peers.

They specialise in enhanced, guided, Heatview® thermal imaging surveys, which reveal thermal inefficiencies in the building fabric. These innovative surveys make energy efficiency more accessible for residents, giving them the confidence to make targeted improvements, from immediate, low-cost DIY, through to informed, deep retrofit projects.

The project aims to expand the capacity of CHEESE to increase public (particularly renters and those in fuel poverty) knowledge and uptake of retrofit, especially shallow retrofit, which can improve residential heating loss by up to 30%, and is both an accessible starting point and a complement to other retrofit measures.

These aims would be achieved by: 

• delivering thermal imaging surveys to renters, and vulnerable residents
• expanding The CHEESE Project’s service offering and season, with air tightness testing, and offering follow-up testing after retrofit works, to check work quality and for measurable improvements.
• community workshops to share common causes of heat-loss and methods for tackling them
• providing low-cost ‘draught-proofing’ materials to enable people in fuel poverty to take immediate DIY measures
• training new surveyors to meet capacity (a green, skilled job)
• attending community and industry events to educate and inform
• signposting and referring customers to appropriate schemes and organisations
• digital marketing campaigns to educate on draughtproofing, shallow retrofit and energy efficiency

The project aims to alleviate fuel poverty and improve financial resilience in Liverpool, by providing targeted energy and financial support to vulnerable households. Using advice data, the NHS's vulnerable patient finder tool, EPC and Council Tax data, the project will identify those at highest risk of fuel poverty. 

The project will enhance energy and debt advisory services, offering one-to-one consultations, home visits, and community outreach, helping vulnerable households reduce energy costs and improve efficiency. 

They will deliver: 

• Specialist energy advice via telephone, online, and in-person
• Targeted home visits for high-risk households
• Community outreach at GP surgeries, food banks, and housing hubs
• Assistance with fuel vouchers, energy efficiency grants, and referrals to funded projects
• Training for frontline workers and volunteers to create Energy Awareness Champions 

They aim to support 9,500 households, with a total projected financial saving of £4.5 million.

The project aims to develop a 16MW (4-5 turbine) wind farm on Forestry and Land Scotland ground adjacent to one of their existing wind projects and their community outdoor adventure venue. This will significantly upscale the level of income available to their community for investment across a range of areas of need. 

To date, they have secured a grid connection (October 2031) for the project and, with the help of additional funding, have completed 35% of the work required towards a planning application. The project will support staff time (and ancillary costs) required to take forward the wind farm to meet key deadlines/milestones, and engage their community fully.

The project will develop a 14MWp solar farm on the closed Chelson Meadow landfill site. Saving approximately 2,600 tonnes of carbon per annum, the solar farm will be owned and managed by Chelson Meadow Community Solar – a joint venture between Plymouth City Council and PEC Renewables. 

The project will provide up to 60% of the Council’s electricity needs by using an innovative virtual power purchase agreement; the UK's first between a local authority and a community-owned solar farm. This guarantees long-term revenue for the project and energy price security for the Council, as well as crucially unlocking the investment required to scale renewable energy in the city. 

They aim to prove the concept of the  virtual power purchase agreement model, and by doing so provide a blueprint for replication nationwide, accelerating progress towards the 8GW Local Power Plan target. Learning and information from the project will be shared and disseminated to other local authorities and community energy groups to enable replication of the process. 

Funding will enable the project to reach financial close, enter into an EPC contract to commence construction, and site energisation in summer 2026.

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.