Energetic

On Monday Evening the Porty Central Team reconvene and I expect writing Monday’s blog will not be too hard. Sunday can be a slower day (but not always).

Today all I’m going to post is the Porty Community Energy news letter. It came in to my Porty Central email so I must have signed up on a Porty Central angle. Certainly if you read the newsletter below you’ll see there are many areas this group focus on which will be relevant to Porty Central. They have been very helpful at Action Porty with regards to Bellfield. 

This is their first newsletter to members and they ask recipients to share it so here goes:

Hi Jennifer

This is our first member update, so welcome, and please feel free to ask questions!

Public Meeting – April 2021

If you came to our meeting on 29th April 2021 thank you! We hope you enjoyed it, and found it interesting and informative. If you didn’t manage to attend, you can listen to a pretty good summary on David Calder’s Porty Podcast. At the meeting we used some polling questions to help us create a more detailed local transport survey (more about this below). Thank you for taking part.

Porty Car Club

We have been working with Co-Wheels car club, who are planning to come to Portobello soon. This means we will have a second car club in addition to Enterprise. Co-wheels are different to Enterprise. Their ethos is all about providing an environmentally friendly, socially just, community-based alternative to car ownership. They are a ‘Community Interest Company’ and we believe their philosophy is a close fit with ours. Initially there will be two hybrid cars, and EVs will be brought in just as soon as we have reliable rapid charging facilities nearby. The council are installing 22kW ‘fast’ chargers in the Kings Road next year, but a rapid charger of at least 50kW is needed for the shortest possible time to recharge. Should you or your friends and family be interested in joining Co-wheels, they are currently offering a promotion code: PORTYCE25 which provides life membership for £1, i.e. no monthly charges (saves £60 a year) plus £25 free drive credit to get started!

Transport Survey

Reducing our reliance on fossil-fuelled transport, car ownership and congestion is one of our main aspirations. We want to get to know our community better in this regard and have prepared two surveys on all things to do with transport. One will be addressing local residents, and the other is for shops and businesses mainly along the High Street. We will be including you in the survey and hope you will be able to complete it and pass it on for your friends and family to complete also. The more people and businesses who take part, the better our understanding will be. We are hoping to launch the survey in the next few weeks.

Clean Heat

We have a long way to go when it comes to clean heat (heat from renewable sources), as 93.3% of heat in Scotland is generated using gas and oil. We are a member of the Edinburgh Clean Heat group, led by Transition Edinburgh. The group consists of sustainability activists, renewables/clean heat specialists, (ex-) council members, energy consultants, and community representatives, who have been meeting regularly since November 2020. This group has been meeting with senior council members to discuss the development of heat networks across the city as well as looking for ways to increase community engagement and participation in clean heat schemes. With Porty Energy we are also hoping to organise a clean heat event in the future, discussing some of the options available to people. Let us know if you have installed clean heating (eg heat pump) into your home and would be happy to share your experience.

E-cargo bikes

We support the growing trend to use cargo bikes for last mile delivery and have been endeavouring to borrow one from Sustrans so as to promote this to local shops and businesses. The loan is dependent on finding secure storage for the bike, which has been an obstacle but we are hopeful something will come up. Please let us know if you have any suggestions for (temporary) E-cargo bike storage in Porty.

Solar PV Possibilities

We have identified several sites around Portobello which we believe to be viable for solar panel installations. They are all at an early stage, but we have been in very positive discussion with Edinburgh Palette and their new premises at Stanley Street, which is still in development. More about this next time.

Seafield Road East

In January and February, we took part in a community consultation for the development of the site currently occupied by Peter Vardy hosted by the property company MANSE. The proposal was very much about general policy and outline plans with no detail as yet but we made representations concerning policy on insulation and renewable heat sources as well as public transport and establishment of community car / bike clubs. We hope to keep in contact through the planning stages and possibly through to occupation. More details: https://seafieldroad.scot/https://www.mansellp.com/

Edinburgh Council Draft 2030 Climate Strategy – have your say

The draft strategy outlines how the council will work with citizens, communities and public, private and third sector organisations across the city to deliver a net zero, climate ready Capital by 2030. The Council would like to hear your views in this consultation (closes 12th September 2021).

Membership 

We are still a small organisation of about 20 members and have limited resources. However we do have members with impressive qualifications so the future is promising. If you know anyone who you think would be interested, please encourage them and pass this on. Similarly, if you wish to get involved in any of the above, or if you have ideas for further projects, please get in touch by responding to this email.

Warm wishes,

Porty Community Energy

Email: PortyCommunityEnergy@gmail.com

Website: Portycommunityenergy.wordpress.com

Twitter: @EnergyPorty

Facebook: PortyCommunityEnergy

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