Green Drinks at the Green Dragon (Bungay) This month's theme: Energy and Communities Copy and paste this link into your browser for more information: http://www.sustainablebungay.com/2010/11/green-drinks-energy-and-communities/ After the great success of last month's economics and livelihoods themed Green Drinks evening (we thought we'd just fill a few tables, but in the end we took over the whole of the public bar; you can read about it here) we've invited not one but two excellent guest conversationalists to bring their expertise and insights to our second evening. Simon Weeks is a member of Cookpole Energy Action, a community group that plans to set up its own wind power scheme - the only one in this part of the country. John Taylor is the Community Advisor for the Suffolk Climate Change Partnership where he advises communities on energy saving and generation schemes. John and Simon will speak for a few minutes each before we open the floor to questions and then devolve into the more relaxed conversational style that makes Green Drinks evenings so enjoyable. We'd love you to join us too and bring your thoughts and questions about energy (generation, saving and efficiency) and how communities like ours can take more control and reap more of the benefits. Not only is there a surge of interest and confusion around feed in tariffs (whereby small generators are paid a fee for the energy they produce), but the Government is about to introduce a new energy bill (The Energy Security and Green Economy Bill). Once law this will provide a new financing framework to enable the provision of energy efficiency measures to all households funded by a charge on energy bills (rather than up-front payments). It could make it much easier for people to invest in a range of energy saving measures - from better windows and draft exclusion to loft and cavity wall insulation - but does it really go far enough? Last week Sustainable Bungay, as part of the Big Climate Connection, sent a team to lobby Peter Aldous (MP) and raised some of the issues that will undoubtedly come up on the 16th. Peter's response was very positive (you can read more here), but the pressure needs to be kept up because grassroots initiatives and low-carbon communities in general need greater backing from government and ideally the creation of an infrastructure with secured resources to implement projects - without these neither top-down government, nor bottom-up initiatives will get very far.
