Carbon Neutral Communities
Working with the 4 Streets in Hove neighbourhood to develop community-led retrofit and solar power upgrades
The Carbon Neutral Communities (CNC) project, led by Brighton & Hove Energy Services Co-op (BHESCo), sought to implement retrofit measures at scale, empowering residents to invest in energy efficiency improvements for their homes, lowering their heating bills and carbon emissions, with the aspiration of achieving lower costs per household by working together. BHESCo performed the retrofit co-ordination service, delivering quality control in the service design. The second part of the programme offered community-owned solar energy. This report summarises the project’s approach, goals, lessons, and conclusions.
Approach and Goals
The project aimed to create a scalable model for communities to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Specifically, CNC focused on two primary objectives:
1. Home Retrofitting: Improve the thermal efficiency of homes to use less heat, reducing draughts to prepare for future efficient electric heating technologies like heat pumps.
2. Community Solar Installation: Install solar panels on suitable roofs to be less vulnerable to electricity price shocks and prepare for increased future needs, such as electric vehicle (EV) charging points.
Launched in October 2023, CNC was promoted through a community competition inviting people living in neighbourhoods across Brighton & Hove to form focus groups and gather resident pledges to participate. The selected community would engage in a neighbourhood-wide retrofit and solar panel installation, leveraging community networks for organisation and local engagement.
Key Findings
The CNC project faced various challenges providing valuable insights into neighbourhood-scale energy projects. Here are the main findings:
Community Engagement and Focus Group Effectiveness:
The competition structure required communities to form focus groups to drive local interest and participation. While this approach succeeded in sparking initial interest, it became evident that the limited response time hindered inclusion, especially within marginalised communities that are more challenging to engage.
The Focus Group played a critical role, managing outreach, facilitating door-to-door engagement, and distributing project materials. However, training gaps in areas such as door-knocking techniques and project knowledge impacted their effectiveness in communicating information about the project to their neighbours.
Home Retrofit Implementation:
The retrofit phase categorised homes into property archetypes to streamline assessment and to recommend suitable energy efficiency measures for a cluster of similar properties. Although the housing archetypes helped address common structural characteristics, households often required specific information, leading some to drop out due to perceived cost, anticipated disruption, or inadequate understanding of the benefit of recommended measures.
Financial barriers and lack of effective government grants (such as the Great British Insulation Scheme or ECO4) restricted broader accessibility, effectively excluding lower income participants. Despite these challenges, households valued the technical advice BHESCo provided, and the process highlighted the need for more tailored communication and consistent support to build homeowner confidence.
Challenges with Community Solar Installations:
BHESCo worked with One Zero to prepare the quotes for solar photovoltaic systems, including battery storage. The neighbourhood rooftops were not ideal, primarily due to architectural constraints, like small roofs with limited capacity or flat roofs that proved difficult to insure.
A key barrier to maximising the solar generation capacity in the neighbourhood was the inability to onboard larger entities (e.g., schools, businesses) that could have provided larger rooftop space, thereby improving the economies of scale for the smaller installations. There is still a strong resistance to taking action on local electricity generation, even when the funding and technical barriers are removed.
Despite these challenges, BHESCo prepared an offer to residents that presents them with the opportunity to have a solar PV system, including battery storage for no upfront cost. Homeowners taking up this offer will pay a price for the electricity generated by the solar array, while earning income from the electricity they export from their system.
Digital Engagement through Fairerwarmth:
The project utilised the Fairerwarmth app to centralize data and streamline communication, expecting the app to facilitate community engagement. However, user adoption was low, especially among older people who found it difficult to use and couldn’t see the value of using the app.
Many participants preferred communication channels like WhatsApp, and the Fairerwarmth app’s lack of mobile compatibility further hindered its utility. More training sessions and flexible, alternative options could improve digital engagement, however it remains to be seen how the Fairerwarmth app would save time and improve project engagement due to the complexities of use
Lessons Learned and Recommendations
The CNC project provided insights into optimising neighbourhood-level energy initiatives:
Longer and Targeted Promotion:
To properly engage with retrofit activity at scale takes time. Community based programmes must take place over extended periods. People do not make these important investment decisions quickly, preferring to take a stepped approach to making home improvements. This is why the BHESCo survey is so important as it serves as a blueprint for every property owner’s retrofit journey.
Enhanced Focus Group Training and Role Delegation
While the Focus Group strategy generated strong community bonds, training in project communication and role-specific assignments could improve consistency and reduce burnout among key focus group members. Regular meetings could support momentum and strengthen accountability, keeping participants informed about project progress and next steps.
Adapted Digital Engagement Strategy
The challenges with Fairerwarmth highlight the need for versatile digital tools that accommodate varied technological comfort levels. Training sessions could familiarise focus groups with the benefits of digital tools, while supplementary materials could be offered in print and web-based formats.
Refinement of Retrofit Recommendations
The archetype-based recommendation approach proved too generic. More personalised guidance, starting from the initial assessments, could improve homeowner satisfaction and reduce dropout rates.
Proactive Community Solar Engagement
The team found that earlier engagement with large community stakeholders would have bolstered solar viability. Integrating these stakeholders earlier would expand installation capacity, improve financial viability, and create greater environmental impact.
Conclusion
The Carbon Neutral Communities project demonstrates that neighbourhood-scale energy efficiency initiatives can succeed if conducted over a long period of time with strong engagement from residents, clear communication, training and good communication channels. Key challenges included time limitations, lack of subsidy or financial support, high rate of rental properties and a lack of consistent engagement by all members of the focus group.
The inability to access sufficient government grants, like ECO4, limited access to low-income households, raising questions about the effectiveness of such programmes that create such barriers to access.
The project’s focus on community-centred implementation underscored the importance of collective effort in addressing climate change and the need for flexible, user-friendly tools. As the BHESCo team continues refining our model, we aim to address these challenges in future projects, expanding accessibility and improving process efficiency.
The CNC project contributed valuable insights into scaling neighbourhood-level energy initiatives, underscoring the role of collaborative community action in sustainable development.