Making your building more energy efficient can help tackle the climate crisis, as well as save money, and create a comfortable environment. It’s a great way to get started on acting on energy and can showcase good practice for users of your building, supporting them in turn to make changes in their own homes.

This session is aimed at community organisations from the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector that are interested in making their buildings more energy efficient. This session will cover the basics of what is meant by energy efficiency, and what are the options for community organisations, key considerations and where to find support and funding. We will be joined by two guest speakers to tell us about their experiences of retrofitting community buildings:

Tom Lusink from Raasay Carbon Neutral Island

Tom works for the Raasay Development Trust on the island of Raasay in Scotland. Working on an island with fewer than 200 people, supporting the community towards net zero has been a role he’s valued deeply over the past few years. As part of the Carbon Neutral Islands project to make the island net-zero by 2040, he serves the community in ways that align climate action goals with local needs. All their projects originate from the community itself, and his recent focus has been delivering these varied initiatives, from social housing and community building energy retrofits to habitat restoration. This community-led approach has shown him how meaningful progress happens when people drive their own climate action path.

Sue Collins from Caxton House Community Centre

Sue is the Finance & Office Manager for Caxton House Community Centre in North London. She has been involved with Caxton House since the early 1990s initially as a Charity Trustee and since 2007 as a staff member. Over the past three years, they have been working to decarbonise and retrofit their purpose built 1970s community centre in partnership with Power Up North London. Sue will be sharing their progress and successes to date, their plans for the next stage of this work, and some of the challenges they have faced. Here you can read more about the Caxton House project including a Lessons Learnt report.

This session will be followed by a reflective session on 7th October. Attendees will be given registration details for this after the session.

Making your community building more energy efficient