Funded Energy Redress Projects

Home energy advice will be delivered to at least 4500 households, focusing particularly on rural off-gas households, across this large and remote area, where fuel poverty levels are some of the highest in the UK. 

This thorough and comprehensive service will offer a range of energy advice topics to raise awareness, increase resilience and reduce the risk of fuel poverty. Including advice on switching suppliers and tariffs, support dealing with energy companies, and referrals for insulation and heating replacement schemes.

They will offer a mix of home visits, face-to-face advice at events and telephone sessions. 

The project will also deliver free training events to at least 250 frontline workers who support vulnerable or disadvantaged people, to help them to recognise and refer fuel-poor households.

Nook CRM is an open source case notes management system for UK community energy groups, with currently 6 groups joining its pilot.

Working in partnership with Plymouth Energy Community and Community Energy South, the project will launch innovations that bring efficiencies to groups’ operations and free advisors to undertake more frontline delivery.

Based on their research these include:

1. Streamlined funder reporting: resource-heavy effort is required of groups to submit regular and accurate reporting data to funders, and manage changing reporting requirements. They will work with funders and partner coordinating networks to determine required data and reporting, and then build a centrally-managed (and updated) reporting logic/templates in Nook for groups that have that funder. With a few clicks, groups would be able to generate reports for the funder, slashing the time they spend on reporting. 

2. Standardised metrics to calculate impact: Groups use a range of effort-intensive approaches for calculating impact (energy bill and CO₂ savings). They will provide groups with automated calculations of a range of metrics, or use their own formulae. 

3. Mapping: Managers have requested tools to visualise the geographical impact of their operations (e.g. the types of interventions in their locality), helping teams strategise more effectively. 

4. Continued support and hosting for pilot groups. They also plan to continue making their research and learnings available to the sector.

The project aims to enable urban communities to be part of a community-owned ‘Virtual Power Plant’, (VPP), to generate, store and control their own renewable power, directly reducing energy costs and carbon emissions for all participating households. 

The project, led by Ynni Teg in partnership with the Bengal Dragons Foundation (BDF), will support minority Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities in South Wales conurbations with the transition to Net Zero. It builds on existing project work developing the Community Centres and mosques at the heart of these communities as local energy hubs and greatly expands its scope to include the largely low-income (fuel poor) households in their locales. 

The VPP will include 1MWp of rooftop solar PV and 3MWh of battery storage, distributed over approximately 300 properties including vulnerable households, located in Cardiff and Newport. The assets will be aggregated and controlled through a specialist software platform to optimise their use and enable energy to be supplied to households at a reduced cost. 

The VPP will operate as a large-scale single entity, with ownership of the assets retained in a community energy company, thus making it more attractive to prospective funders and imposing no/minimal cost barriers on participating households.

The project outcomes will be a new community-owned energy entity, delivering reduced energy costs to participants and reduced carbon emissions. It will provide learning and capacity building for the partner organisations and will provide a model that can be scaled up and replicated to support other communities in their transition to Net Zero.

This project aims to move three community heat plus energy projects towards being investment and shovel ready.

The project will investigate ways to match community energy generation with heat demand, to cut the costs of decarbonising both heat and energy at household, community and systemic levels. The work will develop three site-specific community projects, exploring different ways of delivering clean, affordable heat and energy for different communities, urban and rural, and using different combinations of clean technologies; and will also explore ways to remove key barriers to the successful delivery of these three projects by exploring local supply and matching mechanisms. By doing so, the project will create learnings and develop replicable models which will also be useful to other community energy projects.

The project will help three communities either facing or at risk of energy poverty and unaffordable energy bills, or which may be left behind in the transition to clean energy due to a lack of the resources, time and expertise required to seize opportunities offered by community energy projects.

The project aims to build on their current energy advice service to tackle fuel poverty, and help residents across Barnsley achieve warmer, healthier homes.

A handyperson scheme will help deliver and install small measures directly in homes, while bringing pop-up energy advice sessions to local estates and rural communities, breaking down barriers to access. Their targeted outreach will focus on the most deprived areas of Barnsley, ensuring they reach those most in need of support.

They will also launch a volunteer programme, creating opportunities for local people—many of whom have been supported by their work—to get involved. Volunteers will help deliver small measures, assist advisors, and promote the service in their communities. With additional funding, they'll expand their winter warmth packs to provide extra seasonal support to more households.

The project will provide 1:1 in-depth energy support and advice tailored to the needs of older people and vulnerable adults based in the London Borough of Merton. Energy support will be delivered through a variety of channels including home visits, over the telephone, via email, and in their office.

Through complex 1:1 casework, the project will deliver impartial support based on individual circumstances and needs, to help solve energy issues and empower households to manage their own energy independently in the future. This will result in beneficiaries feeling less anxious and worried about their energy situation and having better overall wellbeing.

The project aims to achieve lasting carbon emissions reductions from self-funding households in the area through a scaled up programme of ‘deep local’ retrofit support.

The project builds on the successes and learnings of a previously funded project, through which they have demonstrated both local demand and support for their services. This next phase will scale the service to improve efficiency and embed and refine systems built around an engaging and positive customer journey that results in tangible retrofit action. 

Building on lessons from their previous project, innovations in survey and advice delivery will enable them to better meet customer needs and fix the market failures they’ve identified. Triage calls will direct customers to the right support while follow-up coaching calls and retrofit coordination will extend support across the whole retrofit journey, empowering residents to take the crucial move from information to action. 

Their proven community based social marketing approach will build on the use of champions, neighbourhood clusters and peer to peer inspiration to drive uptake, while use of data will help them reach beyond their usual networks. They will codify their approach to enable replication beyond their borders.

The project will build on the successful delivery of a previously funded project; they are currently on target to reach over 1,000 households to date and have worked alongside other Caritas services to reduce the effects of fuel poverty. 

The project will continue to provide energy advice to people who are speakers of other languages, the deaf community, people with mobility and disabilities, and refugees. Advice will be provided through interpreted workshops, calls and information sessions.

The project also aims to educate those moving from institutions or accommodations (such as hospital, prison or care) and people from other countries, about energy use, bills and supply in the UK, to pre-empt energy issues they may face.

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.