£500k grant for greener villages

VILLAGERS and businesses in Grampound and Ladock have won £500,000 to help install green technologies such as solar panels and underground heating systems.

Just 12 communities in the UK were awarded the government cash.

It will be used to cut carbon emissions, save money on energy bills and even earn some areas cash by generating their own electricity, which will be sold back to the National Grid.

Over the coming eight weeks, the Grampound Road and Ladock schools, two community halls, five businesses, including the SR Studio, Four Burrows Inn and the Grampound village shop, as well as 16 households in the parish, will adopt a low-carbon lifestyle.

The grant is thanks in part to the efforts of the Grampound and Ladock Transition Group, which has spent two years cutting carbon emissions with projects such as a local food market and planting a community orchard.

Savings

Dave Smith, landlord of the Falmouth Arms, Ladock, who has already spent about £11,000 installing double glazing and insulating his 17th century pub, welcomed the initiative.

It will pay for his cellar to be dry-lined to better maintain its temperature and for solar photovoltaic panels to be installed on the pub roof.

"We're hoping it will save us about £600 a year on our energy bills. By using green technologies, you help advance them, and the more people buy them, the cheaper the product becomes. We obviously use a lot of electricity running the restaurant and bar – it will be interesting to see how much we actually save," he added.

Twenty-five 'smart' meters are being installed at buildings in the parish to monitor energy use. The information is also being used by the University of Exeter in a study into the impact renewable energy has on people's consumption.

Camborne-based Community Energy Plus, which successfully bid for the Low Carbon Communities Challenge grant, hopes the scheme will spread to outlying areas.

"The cold and damp can affect people's health as well as making it expensive to keep a house warm and dry – in some cases it's eat or heat," said CEP's managing director Ian Smith.

Nut grove

"Any money raised via the tariff system will be placed in a rolling fund and used to extend the scheme to other properties."

The owners of the Woodland Valley Farm have also donated just over six acres of land to be used as a nut grove to naturally absorb and hold carbon while providing food for the local market.