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What can I do about climate change?

With the latest IPCC report published today on the urgent need for co-ordinated global action on climate change, we thought an article on how to make your own contribution would be timely. Here are 10 simple tips to save energy in your home:

  1. Switch all your light bulbs to LEDs. Not only do they use 90% less electricity than old-fashioned filament light bulbs, and 50% less than compact fluorescents, but they last significantly longer too!
  2. Check the timer settings for your hot water. As a guide, 30 minutes morning and evening should be sufficient for 1 person. Settings of at least 60˚C are recommended for safety reasons, but also check your settings are not too high.
  3. Unless you live in Castle (i.e. have very thick walls), switch off your heating when you are out, which is much cheaper than leaving it running.
  4. Every additional 1C of heating adds 8% to your energy bills. Setting at 19-20 ˚C is the generally recommended temperature.
  5. If you’re feeling a little chilly, make your first response to be putting on an extra layer!
  6. Check your loft is well insulated (27cm insulation is the recommended standard) and if you have cavity walls, get these checked too.
  7. Unless heavily soiled, wash your clothes wash at 30C, and only when you have a full load
  8. Use that microwave sparingly! Defrost food naturally whenever possible
  9. Defrost your freezer regularly; particularly when you can see ice starting to build up
  10. Whenever possible, put a lid on your pans when cooking on the hob!

For more advice, visit the Energy Saving Trust – http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/

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ICN Schools Summit

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It was my great pleasure to attend the InterClimate network (ICN) National Summit, on the 27 June. And it is great that the RCCP have been able to contribute towards the work of ICN, and helped to support the event.

The day itself was fantastic…it did help that it was held at Portcullis House, and was attended by MPs, which gave it a real feeling of importance. There were schools in attendance from across the country, sharing ideas and inspiration. There was a brilliant energy in the room.

Read the full write-up on the ICN website here: http://interclimate.org/projects/climate-voices/national-summit

Little Heath school represented Reading

“I just wanted to say a huge thank you to you both for giving us the opportunity to attend the conference today. It was very well organised and our students were really inspired by your guest speakers and the students from the other schools, as were we, as teachers. The students already have plenty of  ideas to take back to Little Heath and are already planning to meet the head to kick start some campaigns. 

As a school we already look at food insecurity and actively support our local food bank, as well as looking at ways in which we can save water. We now have fresh ideas for plastics and energy efficiency in the school and look forward to making more changes and educating our students.”

E Park, Head of Geography, Little Heath School

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Little Heath School student giving feedback to plenary after a workshop (Chris in the background)
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28 Sept – Reading Town Meal

Lunch is ready

Come and join us at the Reading Town Meal on Saturday 29th September. We are going to use this as an opportunity to launch our new website and the revised Reading Climate Change strategy.

Please do come and find us on one of the stalls. You can find out more about our aims for the next couple of years, and find out how you can get involved.

and there’s still time to sign up and help with this year’s meal. Can you provide some excess vegetables from your garden? help to collect equipment and supplies? help on the day? see the main town meal website  for more options and to sign up

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Tawny Owl Surveying: help needed

The British Trust for Ornithology is commencing two tawny owl surveys this summer to assess distribution.

The first, the tawny owl point survey,  starts in August and asks people to adopt one of many 2 km squares selected across the country, stand in the centre on two nice evenings roughly one month apart, and estimate owl territories. Reading is not on the survey, but there are many squares to survey around Wokingham (and nice pubs for afterwards)

The second one, the tawny owl calling survey, starts at the end of September and simply asks you to listen out in your own garden for tawny owls.

You really don’t need any previous knowledge to do either of these surveys as the instructions on the BTO website are very very clear. Please have a go.

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Reading & Caversham flood scheme consultation

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Map showing Proposed flood alleviation scheme for Reading and Caversham (option 3)

 

The Environment Agency has just finished a consultation on a proposed flood alleviation scheme for Reading and Caversham. This finished on the 26th July but you can view the plans here:

 

The website describes what happens next:

The Environment Agency will consider all of the following information and use it together to make a decision on which, if any of the options we will take forward.

  • Landowners wishes, as shared through results of this consultation, feedback from individual meetings and feedback from the landowner drop-in held on the 26 June 2018.
  • Public views, as shown by the results of this consultation and feedback gathered at our public drop-ins.
  • Planning application requirements and recommendations.
  • Technical restrictions. When we develop the detail of the design we may discover physical restrictions that have not shown up during our initial investigations, these could include space available for construction, size of foundations required, archaeological findings, endangered species, to name a few. Any such findings could mean that we have to change the detail of the option or even consider a different, previously discounted option.
  • Cost of the proposal and funding available. The project would be partly funded by central government, but there is still a need to find more funding, for example from organisations and businesses that will benefit.
  • The time it will take to design, build and construct
  • Maintenance. We would need to agree who would be responsible for maintaining any new structures before putting a new structure in place.
  • Wildlife and landscape. If we develop an option then wildlife and landscape will be taken into consideration, and where possible we will look to improve landscape and habitat. We will always mitigate for any habitat and species that has been unavoidably impacted as a result of work we do to reduce flooding.

 

There is an opportunity here to take advantage of some of the £2.8 billion that the government has made available for flood alleviation, between now and 2021. All schemes will need to be partnership funded though so we will need to raise money to make this happen.

Hopefully, we can get the consultants to model the impacts of climate change on future River Thames floods. We do expect floods to be bigger and more frequent in the future so it is important that we prepare. It is not just people’s houses and businesses that will be affected in a big flood: notice that both Caversham and Reading bridges could be affected, which would have knock-on affects for many people trying to live and work in the town.

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Climate Just website

Climate Just logo

“Climate Just is an information tool designed to help with the delivery of equitable responses to climate change at the local level. Its main focus is to assist the development of socially just responses to the impacts of extreme events, such as flooding and heatwaves, as well as supporting wider climate change adaptation. It also includes issues related to fuel poverty and carbon emissions.”

 

There is a lot of useful information on this website, which will be useful for many members of RCAN.

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Ground source heat pumps for Reading

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This ‘Reading Climate Forum’ event was held at on  20 November 2017, in the conference hall at RISC – 35 London Street, Reading.

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Ground source heat for Reading

 

Rayner Mayer (Sciotech) – explained the need for ground source heat pumps in Reading, and the opportunity we have to take advantage of the chalk that underlies the town.

Chris Beales (Environment Agency) – talked about how groundwater is used, and some of the challenges faced in London by users of a different version of the technology.

Darren Wilkinson (Vexo International) – explained the technical solutions for making existing domestic heating systems a lot more efficient…which is very important for a scheme like the one being proposed.

Stuart Gadsden (Kensa Contracting) – explained how the closed-loop systems work in practice, and gave us examples of successful schemes for housing associations.

Pilot Project

We finished with a discussion about a pilot project, to test the technology in Reading. This has the support of the Reading Climate Change Partnership, and we are looking forward to seeing the results.

 

 

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Reading’s Water Supply in a Changing World

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Reading’s water supply in a Changing Climate

Michael Bright and Chris Beales – Friday 4th November 2016

“We live in a water stressed area. Learn about the impact of climate change on our water supplies with wetter winters and drier summers, where our drinking water comes from and what we can do to be more efficient in our water use.”

Chris Beales is a hydrologist working for the Environment Agency. He will talk about the current pressures on our local river system, and how change change is predicted to affect our rivers in the future.

Michael Bright is a water industry consultant. He will talk about how Thames Water supply water to our homes in Reading. He will discuss some of the challenges and what we can do as individuals to reduce pressure on our water resources.

We look forward to welcoming you to this, the fourth of our Autumn series of talks. It will be a lively and interesting discussion.