We hope that this news cheers you up in these difficult times.

First Community Fund Award

We were pleased to hand over a cheque for £1,000 to Fiddlers Lane Primary School. The school plans to spend the grant on recycling facilities and on cameras so the children can see what’s happening in the bird boxes. Read our press release here.

Funding for Energy Advice

We’re delighted to share the news that we’ve been awarded grant funding to provide energy efficiency information to members of the community around our sites, encouraging them to save energy and reduce carbon for two years!  Part of the funding will be available to support our site partners identify energy efficiency savings if they wish to do so.

We are seeking a specialist to deliver this project.  You can find the project brief on our website.  Please share it with anyone who might be interested.

Strategy day

As you may be aware, the Feed-in Tariff has closed to new entrants. We were only able to submit applications for our 2019 sites because we had pre-registered them last March. We held a strategy day in January to look at the opportunities for GMCR without the FiT. We concluded that carefully selected new projects will just about break even and so decided that we would continue to look for new solar projects to develop.

Update on 2019 installations

We continue to follow up the Feed-in Tariff applications for our three 2019 installations at Monton Green, Springwood and Chesham Primary Schools in Autumn 2019, which have been delayed by an IT issue at OFGEM.  In the meantime, Monton Green and Springwood have both been generating and the delay is not causing us a cash flow issue. Export metering at Chesham and Springwood is also being finalised.

Broader solar performance

The addition of the Monton Green and Springwood arrays means that our total solar generation is 417MWh*, enough to make over 22 million cups of tea!  This translates into 121 tonnes CO2 saved.

*Total generation since the project started based on December meter readings

*** APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED ***

We are seeking a consultant to design and deliver a programme of community engagement to provide energy saving advice

Project milestones and timescales
Project start: From May 2020
Initial conversations with sites completed: 30 June 2020
Activity programme drawn up and collateral identified / developed: 30 September 2020
Energy engagement: From October 2020
Project completes: 31 March 2022

Budget: £20,000

Who we are
Greater Manchester Community Renewables Limited (GMCR) is a community benefit society, set up and run by volunteers to install community-owned solar panels across Greater Manchester.  The panels are held for the benefit of the community, and any surpluses go into a community fund to support local carbon reduction, energy efficiency and environmental education projects.

Project background
GMCR would like to amplify its impact by supporting our site partners and the communities close by to save energy.

GMCR is seeking a partner who can develop and deliver projects to support local communities in saving energy at home and at school, measuring their results.  GMCR’s sites are listed in the appendix.

Objectives and Required Outputs
Primary Objective – Community engagement activity

• Provide energy efficiency information to members of the community around our sites, encouraging them to save energy and reduce carbon through face to face engagement
• Build a community of energy savers by following up online and through social media

Secondary Objectives
Site support

• Support our sites to reduce their own carbon footprints further by arranging energy audits, accessing funding for energy saving measures and procuring the energy efficiency work identified (Note: there is a separate budget for energy audits)
• Project management of specialist educational support to help pupils learn about the climate emergency and energy efficiency so that they can take these messages home (Note there is a separate budget for specialist educational support)

Develop volunteer capacity for future community engagement work

• Share knowledge, resources and volunteering opportunities at existing GMCR volunteer meetings
• Create a toolkit of resources for volunteers to use to run their own energy efficiency engagement activities to ensure there is a legacy once the project concludes

Reporting requirements

• Collect contact details of people engaged (in order to measure energy savings) on behalf of GMCR in a GDPR compliant manner
• Quarterly reporting of activity undertaken including the following metrics:

1. Number of parents engaged with energy efficiency advice
2. Number and type of energy efficiency pledges recorded
3. Follow up surveys to identify what energy efficiency measures have been installed  / amount of money saved
4. Number of referrals to deep energy efficiency services (e.g. Carbon Co-op)
5. Energy efficiency measures installed in schools and associated savings
6. Amount of Salix funding secured.

Bid requirements
Please provide the following information by 5pm on 30 April 2020:

• Full details of your proposed approach including the number of events to be held;
• Details of proposed staff including qualifications;
• Relevant organisation and staff experience;
• Timetable;
• Detailed costs;
• Contact details for 2 referees for previous similar work.

Please limit bids to a maximum of 10 pages.

Contact details for bids
We are open to discussing potential tenders.  Please send bids and any queries to:
Kate Eldridge, Director, Greater Manchester Community Renewables Ltd
kateeldridge@gmcr.org.uk

Appendix – Location of GMCR solar arrays

• Fiddlers Lane Primary School, Irlam
• Irlam Primary School
• Primrose Hill Primary School, Ordsall
• The Fuse, Partington
• Broadoak Primary School, Swinton
• Peel Hall Primary School, Little Hulton
• Monton Green Primary School
• Springwood Primary School, Swinton
• Chesham Primary School, Bury

Greater Manchester Community Renewables (GMCR) has awarded a grant of £1,000 to Fiddlers Lane Primary School in Irlam.  The school was one of the first to benefit from the community-owned solar panels installed on their roof by GMCR.

The cheque was handed over to Sarah Cooper, Head Teacher, by Kate Eldridge, Director GMCR, during school assembly on 16^th March in the presence of pupils and teachers, Councillor Tracy Kelly and GMCR volunteers.

Kate said the panels have generated enough clean electricity to make over 4 million cups of tea, as well as saving the school hundreds of pounds on their energy bills, and inspiring children to learn about energy and climate change.

The £1,000 grant will fund an in-school recycling scheme and a video link to the school’s bird box.

Ann McQuirk, School Business Manager said:

“When we embarked on our journey with GMCR who would have thought it would be so life changing for us. We have improved our ethical practice and embedded this in our strategy. This vision of a more sustainable world starts with our children and we have the privilege of passing on to them that there is hope for our future and future generations.”

Ali Abbas, Director GMCR said:

“We’re delighted to be able to award the first grant from our community fund to Fiddlers Lane Primary School.  The school played a significant part in launching our solar schools project back in 2016, and it’s really inspiring to hear about how they’ve embraced the solar panels as a catalyst for engaging young people around the climate and ecological emergency.”

GMCR is a community energy scheme, run entirely by volunteers and owned by members of the community.  Their community fund comprises GMCR’s profits and donations from GMCR members.  The fund can be used for carbon reduction and environmental education projects in the local area.

GMCR would love to hear from any schools or community groups that would like to partner with them in future.

For more information visit www.gmcr.org.uk

ENDS

Notes to the editor

1. Greater Manchester Community Renewables Limited (GMCR) is a community benefit society, set up and run by volunteers to install community-owned renewable energy across Greater Manchester. It has 9 solar arrays, totalling c. 350 kWp capacity.

2. Generation meter reading taken at Fiddlers Lane Primary School on 17 December 2019 was 81,508 kWh.  This equates to saving c. 20 tonnes CO₂ by displacing electricity drawn from the grid.

3. 4 million cups of tea is calculated based on 81,508 kWh electricity generated by GMCR to date, and using an ‘average kettle’ of 2200 Watts and 1.7L which takes around 4 minutes to boil.

Award Win

We’re delighted to have won the Community Energy Photo Award with our photo of children from Irlam Primary School and Fiddlers Lane Primary School.  It was taken by Bill McLaughlin at the event we organised to celebrate the installation of our solar arrays on their school roofs.  Also pictured are GMCR volunteers, members, our installer, the Mayor of Salford, and one of our directors, Ali, in a fetching sunshine costume.

Community energy relies on people coming together with a shared goal of helping the environment and the community. This image from our Irlam event captures all the different groups who contribute perfectly.

Thank you very much to everyone who voted for us!

2019 installations
The last installation funded by our 2019 share offer took place during half term at Chesham Primary School in Bury.  We’re pleased to be expanding to other boroughs of Greater Manchester and will let you know once we have permission to switch it on!

The panels installed at Monton Green and Springwood Primary Schools in Salford earlier this year have started generating and we hope to get confirmation of the Feed-in Tariff registrations soon.

Volunteering
If you’d like to volunteer for GMCR, we’re having a volunteers meeting on Monday 18 November, at 6.30pm at the Green Fish Resource Centre, 46-50 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE.  All welcome!

Thanks for your support!

Award Nomination

In exciting news, GMCR has been shortlisted for the Community Energy photo award!

Our photo shows children from Irlam Primary School and Fiddlers Lane Primary School at the event we organised to celebrate the installation of our solar arrays on their school roofs. Also pictured are GMCR volunteers, members, our installer, the Mayor of Salford, and one of our directors in a fetching sunshine costume.

Community energy relies on people coming together with a shared goal of helping the environment and the community. This image from our Irlam event captures all the different groups who contribute perfectly.

You can vote for us here
Like and retweet this tweet
Voting closes Friday 11 October, 5pm.

2019 installations

We were delighted to raise £100,000 this summer to fund the installation of solar panels at three primary schools.

Panels were installed at Springwood Primary School and Monton Green Primary School (shown below) in the early part of the summer holidays. We’ve sent in the Feed-in Tariff applications for both installations, but we haven’t received permission to switch them on yet. We’re expecting to begin the installation at the third school, Chesham Primary School, soon.

Community Fund update

At our recent AGM, members of GMCR agreed to approve the payment of community grants totalling £4,000 in support of carbon reduction, energy efficiency and environmental education projects. We’ll be engaging with our first four sites to discuss this soon.

Community Engagement

We’ve been out promoting GMCR at various events including the Manchester Climate Youth Conference, the Manchester Climate Change Agency AGM and the Manchester Climate Strike.

In Part 1, we saw a huge mind map that pupils at Peel Hall Primary School had drawn about climate change when working with Manchester Environmental Education Network (MEEN).

Following this, the pupils declared they needed to be ambassadors for climate change in order to help change people’s behaviour and were excited at the prospect of running a ‘Carbon Classroom’ on MEEN’s stall at Andy Burnham’s 2019 Green Summit.

They practised their skills first by running a Carbon Classroom for a Year 5 class, when they taught other pupils in the school about climate change.  This session not only shared their knowledge but also built their confidence for their task at the Green Summit.

On the day of the Mayor’s Green Summit, the team enjoyed attending MEEN’s ‘Speak Out’ workshop which encouraged and supported young people in considering their concerns and communicating them – they were particularly pleased that the Mayor came to hear what they had to say.  They also enjoyed looking at the low carbon vehicles outside the conference, but most of all they thought that running the Carbon Classroom was the most useful and enjoyable part of the conference.

The team ran the stall inviting pupils from other schools and adults to engage in climate change activities and they also mixed and mingled with adult conference attendees asking them to discuss the issues.

The pupils reported back that they ‘were amazed that some of the adults at the Summit stopped and listened to them’ with the school staff pointing out that such conversations with adults highlighted how dialogue was a ‘good way to solve conflicts’.  The pupils also thought that the people willing to talk to them were probably ‘already campaigning for change’ and were keen to identify people who ‘need telling’, suggesting that they should wear badges such as ‘Oil Company’ so that they would be able to target their stall questions more effectively.

The school is intending to take more steps to protect the planet by planning to hold an ‘Earth Day’ Festival to raise awareness and have begun improving their school grounds by beginning to compost, by planting for pollinators and have attempted to stop cars from dropping off and picking up immediately outside the school gates. They are also looking into becoming an Eco School.

You can see how much electricity GMCR’s solar panels at Peel Hall Primary School have generated this week here.

GMCR installed solar panels on the roof of Peel Hall Primary School in summer 2018.  You can see how much electricity the solar panels have generated this week here.

As well as generating clean energy and saving carbon, GMCR’s solar panels have become an educational resource for the school; that’s why we introduce the schools we work with to Manchester Environmental Education Network (MEEN).

MEEN worked with a school team to gather their understanding of climate change and then helped them become educators for the wider community.

For several weeks the team studied information on climate change, played games based on the issues and considered all the angles of climate change and what we need to do to combat it.

The team used their knowledge and understanding to create a huge mind map which included issues such as deforestation, CO2 emissions from transport and heating, emissions from rubbish and waste, food issues such as cows’ burps and farts and the impacts on biodiversity and the jet stream.

See Part 2 for how the students got on at the Mayor’s Green Summit…

In March 2019 over 60 people from community energy groups, public and private sectors, and local and national charities, contributed to the development of a Community Energy Vision and Action Plan for Greater Manchester. This event was organised as part of the European COALESCCE project.

Read our 5 year vision for the sector here:

You can find out about other community energy groups in Greater Manchester on the Greater Manchester Community Energy Pledge website

We’re delighted to announce that we reached our share offer target of £100,000 on Friday evening and we have therefore closed the share offer to new applications.

Thanks so much to everyone who has invested and all of you who made the time to promote the project and share it with your contacts!

What happens next?

We’re still working hard to finalise the legal agreements we need to put in place before we can release the funds, order the equipment and start the installations.

We’ll update you again soon…