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Due to a successful first phase, we can support four more farming families in Cumbria to benefit from a fully funded Home Retrofit Planner for your farmhouse – a comprehensive energy audit for your home. In this call out we are looking for farmhouses on “working farms” located anywhere in Cumbria. Farmhouses are often older properties that can be draughty, hard to heat, suffering from damp or water ingress, losing heat though walls, doors, windows and roofs. These beautiful traditional properties need an understanding of heritage skills, appropriate materials to fix and maintain. We know that for farmers, your farmhouse, [...]

Valentine’s Day may traditionally be the day we show love and appreciation for our partners, but how we choose to do that can have an enormous impact on our planet.   Did you know that out of season cut flowers have one of the largest carbon footprints per pound spent at the till? Red roses definitely aren’t a seasonal bloom in February in Cumbria and as a result many of the roses in the shops this week will have been imported from as far away as Kenya and Latin America, picking up the hefty carbon price tag of 2.4kg carbon per [...]

This month we are looking for climate-conscious, challenge-loving individuals to join us on the Keswick / Coniston to Barrow Walk. On 11th May, several of the CAfS team will be taking part – walking 40 miles or 21 miles respectively – to raise money for local climate action and we would love it if you could join us.  The walk is highly scenic running from Legburthwaite (Keswick) down the length of Thirlmere through the villages of Grasmere and Elterwater before passing through the Langdales and Coniston and onto Kirkby Moor, Dalton-in-Furness and Barrow itself. The Coniston to Barrow alternative starts [...]

CAfS along with several partners are celebrating a significant funding boost of £571,359 to establish a pioneering business decarbonisation hub. The initiative, set to exclusively support the Westmorland & Furness area, is funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and aims to bolster the sustainability efforts of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), charities, community businesses, and social enterprises.  Up to 300 local organisations looking to reduce their carbon footprint and save costs will be able to benefit from a range of free and subsidised services, a comprehensive ‘one stop shop’ of carbon reduction support. The services available from the project [...]

Tuesday saw the selection event for the Centre for Leadership Performance's 'Dream Placement'. The project places young people in a work based placement for a week, encouraging them through a rigorous application process, attendance to networking events and interviews with a range of businesses and sectors. CAfS are very proud to take part this year, adding a 'green careers' theme to the scheme by offering an insight at events and leading a  workshop with students about linking their interests to their careers. This week we were interviewing those young people who had got through the application process for their work-based [...]

What is ‘COP’?  COP stands for Conference of the Parties – and it is the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, now in it’s 28th year. The ‘parties’ are the original countries which signed up to the UN Climate change treaty in 1994. . The president of this year’s COP, which begins on 30 November in Dubai  is Sultan Al Jaber, who is the president of the state oil company of the United Arab Emirates – a highly controversial choice.  Over the years there have been numerous targets, agreements, hopes and disappointments at different COPs.   The Paris agreement in [...]

And we're winners! We were very proud indeed to receive not one, but three awards on Friday night at the Community Energy England awards in Salford. We took home the Community Energy Organisation of the Year (large) award and the Climate and Environmental Impact award. We were also highly commended for the Fuel Poverty Action award. The awards are recognition of the work, passion and dedication of all of the team here at CAfS, and acknowledge the breadth of work that we do. Our projects from our Cold to Cosy Homes, through to our Solar Made Easy work to make [...]

Monday 4 December sees the world's largest climate education-and-action training event - Carbon Literacy Action Day - and we are very proud to be playing our part! Carbon Literacy Action Day (CLAD) is led by the Carbon Literacy Project and coincides with the UN Climate Change Conference; COP 28. And whilst world leaders gather in Dubai, Carbon Literacy learners everywhere will undergo training that educates and inspires them to take meaningful action on climate change. It offers an opportunity for as many learners as possible from organisations, sectors, backgrounds and nations all around the world, to complete their Carbon Literacy [...]