{"id":97,"date":"2011-03-23T13:57:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T13:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/?page_id=97"},"modified":"2011-03-30T17:00:39","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T17:00:39","slug":"energy-audit-service","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/project-activities\/energy-audit-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Audit Service"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"We<\/a>

Our Energy Auditors provide an outreach service to compliment the service provided by the BeGreen drop-in energy advice shop<\/p><\/div>\n

We set up an Energy Advice Service with a small team of advisers who were put through a thorough training programme. Up to 3 staff were employed on a full and part time basis to provide householder advice.<\/p>\n

The service operated alongside the existing information service \u00a0operating from the drop-in \u00a0BeGreen energy advice shop\u00a0(opened in November 2008), extending considerably the depth and breadth of advice provided.\u00a0The audits and follow up reports are much more detailed and personalised than the Energy Saving Trust ‘Home Energy Check’ and have been very well received.<\/p>\n

It took longer to build up interest in audits than we originally expected. Some of our initial attempts to recruit households for audits, such as a raffle, resulted in many people signing up who were not actually especially interested, and it then proved difficult and time consuming to secure audit appointments.<\/p>\n

However, carbon savings from the energy audit service to date have been quantified and we estimate these to be upwards of 522 tCO2<\/sub>e per year.\u00a0 These are detailed further in the section CO2<\/sub> Emission Reductions.<\/p>\n

More importantly, the energy audits have given households the information they require to make much larger carbon savings in the future once obstacles, particularly of finance, have been removed.<\/p>\n

Many of those who have requested audits fall into two broad camps: households that are fuel poor and households that are already quite energy aware. We have been well-positioned to assist fuel poor households to cut their fuel bills and it has been particularly useful to have access to BeGreen energy efficiency grants for older people and those on qualifying benefits, who didn\u2019t qualify for the Government Energy Assistance Package.<\/p>\n

Both these groups didn\u2019t necessarily have great scope for making energy\/carbon savings, a range of factors including tenure, ‘hard to treat’ properties and access to finance being typical obstacles while the ‘already energy aware’ have limited scope for ‘no-cost’ behaviour changes.
\n<\/p>\n

\"We<\/a>

Over 400 households received full energy audits<\/p><\/div>\n

It has \u00a0proved more difficult to reach a middle ground of households, that often have plenty of scope for easy, energy saving \u2018wins\u2019 but for whom home energy is still not a priority. Such households may be relatively cash-rich, but time poor.<\/p>\n

Partly in response to this we started our \u2018neighbourhood energy assistant\u2019 programme.\u00a0 This was designed to help generate interest among this \u2018hard to reach\u2019 middle ground, by using a friendly peer to peer approach. The idea was to develop grassroots level energy awareness, give initial and basic energy advice, lend smart monitors, encourage neighbours to work together to consider and address carbon reduction in general, and also refer people to the BeGreen energy advice shop for grant assistance and for detailed advice from the energy auditors where required.<\/p>\n

It was not our expectation that significant carbon savings would be obtained at this early stage, but we believe that tangible savings have been made through behaviour changes brought about by raised local awareness.<\/p>\n

While personalised and impartial energy advice is essential, without easy access to finance and to suitably qualified, trusted and skilled local tradespeople, many households will not be able to implement the medium to higher cost measures that are actually needed to bring older housing stock up to the standard that will be required in a low-carbon future.<\/p>\n

In the Autumn 2010, we undertook a satisfaction survey of owners and occupiers who had benefitted from the service.\u00a0The satisfaction survey had a good response rate and was overwhelmingly positive, with high satisfaction levels reported for all aspects of the service. Most clients had installed some energy saving measures and also reported making energy saving behavioural changes. We estimated the average energy savings to be about 18% (see CO2<\/sub>Emission Reductions).<\/p>\n

We carried out regular internal monitoring and evaluation of the Energy Audit Service against a set of objectives that we had set ourselves at the outset. \u00a0By the end of the project, we had scored well against all objectives except our original target of \u00a0reaching 1000 householders in each year.<\/p>\n

In \u00a0retrospect, this target was clearly over-ambitious. It took time to develop a reputation, to find the most effective ways of reaching people and to build up demand, especially given the initially fairly low levels of awareness of energy efficiency as a priority. Developing a streamlined, user friendly audit process, internal systems and procedures, and website\u00a0also took time whilst writing personalised audit reports and providing follow up support and assistance were also much more time consuming than originally anticipated. We decided that it was much more important in the early stages of the project to provide a quality, personalised service than to attempt to meet arbitrary numeric targets.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We worked in conjunction with:<\/p>\n

ESSAC (Energy Saving Scotland Advice Centre) – by referring people onto the Energy Assistance Package, forwarding completed HEC forms, and have worked in conjunction with them on Hotspot campaigns targeting insulation installations. They in turn referred people to BeGreen for additional advice or if someone might be eligible for one of our grants.<\/p>\n

Care & Repair Service, East Lothian Housing Association – by referring people over 65 for simple improvement measures eg. draughtproofing, repairs etc. Where this involves grant funding we pay for items directly and also part funded a draughtproofing campaign.<\/p>\n

Homelessness Unit, East Lothian Council – by referring recently housed clients who may be eligible for our grant assistance towards energy efficiency improvements.<\/p>\n

Property Department, East Lothian Council – by working with the Local Authority on installing cavity wall insulation to mixed tenure properties (eg. 4 in block)<\/p>\n

East Lothian Energy & Home Warmth Advisor – two way referrals for specialist advice or grant assistance, particularly targeted on fuel poor or vulnerable clients.<\/p>\n

We have also opened trade accounts with local suppliers so that grant supported items can be paid for directly, and have helped people obtain quotes from local suppliers\/installers.<\/p>\n

A summary list of outputs is provided in the accompanying Annexes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We set up an Energy Advice Service with a small team of advisers who were put through a thorough training programme. Up to 3 staff were employed on a full and part time basis to provide householder advice. The service … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-97","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/dunbar2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}