At a party in the school’s sixth form centre to celebrate the installation, the Oxford West and Abingdon Conservative MP joined forces with the East Oxford Green councillor to cut a home-made cake covered with tiny solar panels, and praise the school for avoiding ‘greenwash’, using the panels to educate the pupils about climate change, and working to reduce energy waste and promote recycling. Even though the panels have only been in place since December 2011, the school has already reduced its electricity bill by several thousand pounds compared with the previous year, through student-led initiatives such as Switch-Off Fortnight.

The party included short talks from Oncore chair Sam Clarke and a presentation and video from Cherwell School’s Earth Group. We are hoping for the YouTube link for the video soon – watch this space!

Read about the party on the BBC website and see the short video on the Community Action Group website.

We are delighted to be one of eight communities that have been shortlisted for a pilot electric car club scheme, ‘The E-Car Club’ that the National Energy Foundation is running on behalf of Sustainable Ventures. Information about the scheme is available here and you can read the Oxford Times article about it here.

Around 100 people in Oxford North took part in the survey to demonstrate that we are the community they should be selecting and investing in, and about 40 people came to the public meeting on 29 March at which the E-Car Club directors explained the scheme and heard our views and feedback. 

We’re now waiting to hear whether we will be one of the communities selected from the eight shortlisted for this exciting scheme!

Low Carbon Food in North Oxford

7pm-8.30pm at the North Oxford Association

Low Carbon Oxford North hosted an evening of information and discussion around how our food consumption affects our carbon footprints – from growing, transport, packaging, cooking to waste, we talked about how the decisions we make affect greenhouse gas emissions.

Tom Curtis, of Oxford-based thinktank Landshare CIC presented findings from his 2012 Oxford Foodprinting project – What are the biggest issues facing Oxford? How can we build a more sustainable food system for our city? Tom showed us how to use Landshare’s foodprint calculator and gave some initial results of the project. For those of us who had thought Californian strawberries were the real no-no, there was a surprise: it’s red meat that really makes the difference to our foodprint. The project report will be out in April: we will link to it from here.

Dan Betterton then presented what local food co-operative Cultivate is attempting to do: build a member-owned community response to these issues here in Oxford.

This project, which we hope will be funded by DECC, aims to provide 200  Energy Performance Certificates to householders in North Oxford during the months of February and March; it will help households in fuel poverty and use various techniques to get the message across to as many people in the community as possible. For this project we need a project manager familiar with energy efficiency in the home who is available to lead this exciting initiative, working around  44 days (at £175 pd). For further information see the project manager JD or contact Sam Clarke. We also need reliable handymen/women and trained energy assessors.

Meet at the Woodland notice board just past the allotments. The weather looks good for the day but please wear suitable clothing. The work involved will be cutting back brambles and clearing weeds and grass from trees and shrubs.

Some tools will be provided, but if you have a rake or a fork please bring them along. Contact Ian Sheppard for more information.

We also set up ONCORE, whose share offer raised over £150,000 and which has successfully installed solar panels on the roof of Cherwell School before the new deadline of 12 December suddenly imposed by the Government. Income from ONCORE will come to LCON for our low-carbon activities for 25 years.

We set up our website, which now has an average of a dozen hits a day, and have been developing our Twitter presence (we are @LowCon if you want to follow us).

We achieved charitable status, which enables us to apply for many more grants to broaden our range of activities. In 2011 we raised £45,000 from grants and donations.

We welcomed our 4 patrons, Tim Stevenson (Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire), Sir Muir Gray, Councillor Jean Fooks and Philip Pullman as influential supporters of LCON.  Tim Stevenson kindly hosted a very successful drinks party for us to introduce community members to the ONCORE share offer, and we look forward to working with the patrons for further activities in 2012.

We had a lovely fun Apple Day in October, welcoming over 100 people and pressing well over 100 bottles of juice. We partnered with Wolvercote Farmers Market in the summer and helped them run the market in Summertown.

We’ve run our first Low Carbon Living Programme and two Carbon Conversations groups, with a third about to start and now four facilitators trained to run the programme. We have helped 27 people to measure their carbon footprint using the Quicksilver software.

We started sharing information on eco-renovations and in November we held our first open homes weekend.

And finally, we were delighted that our hard work was recognised when in October we received an award in the Oxfordshire Charity and Volunteer Awards 2011.

At the time of writing (19 December) we are working hard on a bid for a government grant to help us support the local community in preparing for the Green Deal. We are also putting together plans to work more closely with our street champions in 2012 – on travel,  food and consumption, renewables and community engagement. Watch this space. If we are successful with the grant bid we will be looking for a project manager for 2 months in January; so sharpen your CV!

Low Carbon Oxford North is looking for a part time fundraiser to help raise funds for its work. More information is below.

LCON

Low Carbon Oxford North (LCON) is a charity which was founded in early 2010 and gained its charity status in early 2011. Our energy comes from the commitment of the founders and from the success of low carbon activities elsewhere in Oxfordshire. We have organised a number of activities to date, including a programme to engage with the community in Jan 2011, setting up a community benefit society to promote a scheme to put solar panels on the Cherwell school, now being installed, and running Carbon Conversations and the Low-Carbon Living Programme. We have also organised a number of public meetings.

Our aims

LCON’s aims are to work with the residents of North Oxford to help them find ways of reducing their carbon emissions. We have decided not to work to challenge climate sceptics nor to focus on persuading those who are light green, but to concentrate on those who already understand that this is something they could and should do.

The job

The job is a part time freelance job to help a low carbon community organisation raise more money to reduce emissions locally. The aim is to build up financial support for our activities. We have already raised over £50,000 in grants from the Lottery, from DECC and from local individuals. We will need to find money in future to support a paid co-ordinator, to develop a fuel poverty project and to support our training activities among other things. We envisage that the role will involve:

• Generating income from local and national trusts, foundations and other grant making bodies
• Generating support from local businesses
• Identifying and preparing approaches to wealthy individuals

In order to achieve this, you will need to cultivate relationships, make use of our patrons and prepare compelling materials.

Your experience

In order for you to be successful you will need to be able to demonstrate some or all of the following:

• Success in raising money
• Familiarity with North Oxford and its fundraising opportunities
• An understanding of the low carbon world

The terms

LCON is not a wealthy organisation and it depends mostly upon the volunteer work of the committee and others. However we do recognise that we need help with keeping the money flowing in and are prepared to pay for the fundraising help we get. We will look forward to having a proposal from interested fundraisers. This could be in terms of an hourly amount on a contract of services or something with a success fee attached.

Get in touch

To express your interest please contact the chair, Sam Clarke, or any member of the committee known to you. If you’d like to be considered, please make sure you include a CV and a statement expressing why you are interested.

Finding out more

You could browse this web site to get a view of who we are and what we do. Alternatively you could go to the website of Oxford North Community Renewables: this major project is due for completion in early December 2011. Or you could ask for a copy of our draft strategy document.

LCON promised to plant a tree for every two members joining and we are pleased to be joining with the Forest of Oxford and the Friends of Cutteslowe Park to help develop the Cutteslowe Community Woodland.

We will be helping plant 400 trees, 75 shrubs, 500 bluebells and 250 primroses. Bring a spade, your own packed lunch, strong footwear and clothes to suit the weather.

To get there, please cross the ring road by the Cutteslowe footbridge (which starts near the community centre on the map below). Follow the service lane east past the allotments to the end of the lane.

For more information please contact Brenda Boardman or Sam Clarke.

Please help us publicise this activity by putting up a leaflet for us. Download leaflet here.

Walking and cycling route to Cutteslowe Park

View Larger Map

The viewings have now taken place but you can read about the homes in the downloadable PDF files for each home.

Saturday 12 November

Open: 10am – 12 noon

Address: 36 Harpes Road,  Oxford,  OX2 7QL

More details of the Harpes Road house (PDF file)

Harpes Road is a 2 bedroomed 1890s end terraced house with a south facing rear. Over the years a number of energy efficient measures have been installed throughout the house. These include:

• Sustainable newspaper loft insulation
• Thermal Sempatap on the terrace end wall
• Reflective ridged radiator foil
• Evacuated Tube Solar Water Heating for Domestic Hot Water
• Condensing Boiler
• Solar Photovoltaic (PV) panels installed in 2010

Open: 11am – 1pm

Address: 6 The Crescent, Rutherford Way, OX2 6QY

More details of The Crescent

This house was built in the late 1990s. It has been renovated with an insulated loft extension and solar thermal system, with the inclusion of low carbon lights and appliances, plus planning for electric vehicles.

Sunday 13 November

Open : 10am – 12 noon

Address: 33 Beechcroft Road, OX2 7AY

More details of the Beechcroft Road house

1904 Edwardian terraced house, on four floors.

Significant refurbishments including: double  / secondary glazing, 18 month old condensing boiler, low-flush wc  Double  / secondary glazing throughout,  13 year old solar thermal tubes (20 tubes, installed by SolarSense),  LED lights,  hybrid car, plus lots of behaviour change