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How to improve your green spaces

We recently received an inquiry from a partner organisation about what measures they could take to improve the green spaces they manage from a carbon reduction perspective. The green spaces we keep can aid a helping hand in negating some of the emissions we produce by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They're also invaluable in ensuring that local wildlife has plenty of habitation space and on top of all that, they just look nice! Our colleague Roe has been doing some digging and unearthed a few resources that anyone who's looking to make a  bigger environmental impact with [...]

By |2023-04-14T14:32:32+01:00April 19th, 2021|Homepage, News|

Calling all Fellfoot community buildings!

The Fellfoot Forward scheme can support community buildings to change to a low carbon, sustainable way of life and focus on opportunities to retrofit and renovate in harmony with the environment, utilising renewable energy, choosing natural materials, and nurturing an ethos of reduce, reuse, repair and recycle. Grant funding support is available via the Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme to help community buildings of heritage value in the area who want to make energy efficiency improvements to the fabric of their building and for user comfort. This could include but is not exclusive to; roof, floor or wall insulation, [...]

By |2021-04-19T15:11:09+01:00April 19th, 2021|Fellfoot Forward, Homepage, News|

Ambleside to Zero – what we’ve learned so far

by Molly Hogg, Low carbon communities project manager CAfS is proud to have supported Ambleside Action for a Future (AAFAF) for the past two years. Established in late 2018, this local sustainability action group has grown to over 100 members and is committed to reducing the whole town’s carbon footprint to net zero by 2030. Their outstanding ambition is being backed by South Lakeland District Council (SLDC). They see this as an opportunity to develop a whole-place approach to community decarbonisation that can be expanded across the district and replicated elsewhere. SLDC engaged CAfS to support AAFAF to shape [...]

Good take up of the new CAfS carbon footprint calculators!

We‘re delighted to see good, early enthusiasm for our new carbon footprint calculators that were launched in early March 2021. Since then, they’ve already been used by 50 households and 10 businesses. You can find the calculators on our website here. They are available to use, for free, across Cumbria and Lancashire. One is for households and one is for businesses, both based on the same model. Measuring your carbon footprint is a great way of understanding the size of your environmental impact, specifically, how much greenhouse gas you are emitting from your daily activities or from your business. [...]

By |2021-04-19T14:30:48+01:00April 9th, 2021|Food, Home energy efficiency, Homepage, News, Renewable energy|

Cumbria bicycle mayor launches Penrith chargepoint

Two electric vehicle chargepoints and two charging sockets for e-bikes have been installed at Blain House in Penrith. The electric vehicle chargepoints are the latest in a series of similar installations by Lancaster based community benefit society Charge My Street who, over the past year, have launched chargepoints in Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow and Aspatria among others. This is the first of the installations to have integrated charging facilities for e-bikes, a prospect that Richard Ingham, Cumbria’s bicycle mayor saw as an important step forward. He said: “It makes a statement that cyclists, whether they be on e-bikes or non-assisted [...]

By |2021-04-19T12:58:18+01:00April 7th, 2021|Electric vehicles, Homepage, News|

CAfS Annual Report 2019-2020

We are delighted to announce that our annual report for the financial year of 2019-2020 is finished and now available to download from our website. As we've been adapting to the unique challenges of the most recent year, one of those challenges has been to look back beyond last March and continue the process of evaluating and celebrating our successes that were achieved. This report has details on our largest ever Green Build Festival as well as our Cold to Cosy Homes service which as since gone from strength to strength. Also included is the partnership with the Carbon [...]

Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership update

We are delighted by the interest in Zero Carbon Cumbria and the momentum that's building in support of the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2037.   The partnership brings together more than 70 organisations from the public, private and third sectors. Its work is led and inspired by our local communities and built around the voices of our young people.  New staff  Thanks to National Lottery funding, several of the partnership’s key staff are now in post including Tim Gale, Partnership Manager, based at Cumbria County Council; Karen Gardner, Communications Manager, based at CAfS; David Pickup, Carbon [...]

By |2021-03-31T18:26:43+01:00March 31st, 2021|Food, Homepage, News, Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership|

Are EVs too expensive?

You certainly wouldn’t be blamed for thinking so. In a recent series of surveys we ran in association with Charge My Street, when asked what the biggest factor was that was holding them back from buying an electric vehicle, around 40%-50% of respondents answered “the cost”. This was by far the biggest concern among respondents, some of whom viewed EV driving as the exclusive preserve of the lavish and well-off. On the face of it, it’s easy enough to see why. Glancing at Nissan’s website one can see a new Leaf EV retailing at just under £28,000 whereas their [...]

By |2021-03-29T12:52:15+01:00March 26th, 2021|Electric vehicles, Fossil fuels, Homepage, News, Renewable energy|

Upcoming: The cost of EVs

How much does it cost to buy/run an electric vehicle? That's the question that we're going to be investigating over the next few weeks. Over our time working to expand the Cumbrian charging network, this question is always one that surfaces during any discussion with a petrol or diesel driver. And it's a fair one. Certainly from initial impressions, buying an EV can look like a daunting financial endeavour. A lot of the time they appear to be a lot more expensive than their equivalent in the petrol/diesel world. We're going to be looking at some of the options [...]

By |2021-03-19T16:19:02+00:00March 19th, 2021|Electric vehicles, Homepage, News|

New EV video series from CAfS

Along with the help of some of our fantastic EV volunteers, we are delighted to announce that our new video series on electric vehicles is now complete. At CAfS, we are keen to delve deep into some of the popular ideas surrounding EVs, especially seeing as a lot of us in Cumbria will have no choice but to adopt the technology fairly soon because of the governments impending ban on petrol and diesel cars. This is why we have begun this series to become more informed on this topic and hopefully to help some others who are struggling with [...]

By |2021-03-15T15:11:43+00:00March 12th, 2021|Electric vehicles, Homepage, News|
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