Carbon Literacy® is relevant climate change learning that leads to positivity and action towards reducing carbon emissions. The Carbon Literacy Project works to provide you with access to this learning so that you can become certified as Carbon Literate.
The Project’s published definition of Carbon Literacy is:
“An awareness of the carbon costs and impacts of everyday activities and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis.”
More than just small personal changes, Carbon Literacy highlights the need for substantial change and supports you, as an individual, to have a cascade effect on a much wider audience – whether it’s in your workplace, community, school, university, place of worship, or another setting.
Sustainable Danbury would partner with an accredited Carbon Literacy provider to undertake this programme in Danbury. The training is normally about 5 hours and is best done face to face. This might result in a small charge being made.
A thermal image is a photo of a house that shows you the temperature of the building. It can be used to detect areas where heat might be ‘leaking out’.
The thermal images would help you identify ways to make your home more energy efficient so it stays warmer for longer, you save money and less carbon is emitted.
This programme would also cover advice on improving insulation, optimising your heating system and the options for updating your heating system to reduce carbon emissions and improve efficiency.
Contact form
Why a heat pump should be your next purchase
People are rightly asking what they can do to reduce their personal carbon footprint. One of the most cost effective investments people could make is to replace their fossil fuel boiler with a heat pump. Heat pumps are being installed in increasingly large numbers all over the world and is a mature technology.
Ironically most people already own a type of heat pump, the humble fridge. A heat pump is the same process as refrigeration but in reverse; in the case of heating our homes a heat pump extracts low level heat energy from the outside air or from the ground and amplifies it to heat your home.
Like your fridge, heat pumps are powered by electricity but produce 3-4 units of heat energy for every unit of electricity consumed so they are very efficient. Incidentally they can also be used to cool your house in summer as well (one of the many hidden benefits of heat pumps over boilers). A recent survey, conducted by NESTA has also confirmed that UK consumers are 80% satisfied with their heat pump system, a similar level to those having a gas boiler fitted.
Not only do heat pumps produce the required heat, they do so with a vastly lower CO2 emission than a gas or oil boiler. Today much of our electricity is still generated with fossil fuels so each unit has some carbon emission but even so a heat pumps produces only a quarter of the emissions compared to even the most efficient boiler. As more wind and solar power comes on stream the carbon intensity of a unit of electricity will fall further (the government's target is net zero electricity by 2035) and heat pumps will then become zero carbon.
Furthermore a heat pump does not use huge amounts of resources to produce (unlike an Electric vehicle battery) and saves much more carbon per year than a typical EV. Costs for fitting a heat pump are coming down all the time and the government is offering a £7500 grant towards the cost. Octopus and British Gas are offering total installation costs from £500 (including the grant) for a small/medium house and are offering long guarantee periods. Download this guide (pdf) for a longer read (10 mins).