Transition St Gennys

Response to our survey was nearly one third of the forms delivered, which we think is a very high return rate at this busy time of year.

Thank you very much to everyone who filled them in!

One or two of you may have gone to the trouble of filling in a survey form only to find we didn’t collect it, in which case, please accept our sincere apologies. Our small team of volunteers was struck down by illness in the second week of August, so we didn’t manage to get back to every house. Several people kindly phoned us and arranged the return of their form; if you still have a form that you wish us to collect, please either drop it into Trelay Farm or give us a ring on 230 423. Or if you didn’t have time, have lost the form and now want
to participate, please let us know. Our final cut-off date for any last-minute forms will be the 12 September.

Our initial analysis shows some fascinating results. More work on the data is needed, and a full report will be put up on the new Transition St Gennys website and will be available toview in the Parish Office by the end of September; a brief initial report will be available on the website soon.

• The results show that people in the parish use over £1 million worth of electricity every year.
• The majority ofhouses are dependent on electricity for cooking and hot water and nearly half rely on electricity for heating.Many houses in this parish are poorly insulated, with only about one in 6 having adequate loft insulation.
• There seems to be little knowledge about building construction, wall insulation and draught-proofing.
• There are about 550 vehicles in the parish. More than half the population did not fly at all last year, but nevertheless nearly 300 flights were taken.

At the Legion Hall feedback meeting on 20th August, a talk was given by Fabien Bidaud, the French student who has been studying the possibility of setting up a resilient supply of electricity for St Gennys.

One idea of setting up a not-for-profit community interest company to own local renewable energy plant and supply electricity at low cost to local people was discussed.

Fabien showed that the total capital cost of such a scheme would be between £7 and 9 million (possibly reduced by half through community grants currently on offer). Although this sounds a massive amount of money, with the recently announced Government feed-in tariff support scheme for renewable energy, the capital costs could be recovered in 2 or 3 years. Then the parish would have a secure local energy supply and local people would have energy for life that would be almost free. However, there are hurdles in the form of planning permission and the need to change current regulations. The report by Fabien will also be put up on the Transition St Gennys website soon, and more feedback from local people is welcomed.

Thanks Fabien, for all your hard work!

At the meeting, people agreed that it would be good to get some young, local, dynamic people involved, and we might even be able to create some local jobs. Saving energy through improved insulation will of course save people money. It was agreed that Transition St Gennys will talk to the Parish Council and consider the relevance of the survey results to the Parish Plan.

Using the survey data, we plan to establish a carbon footprint for the parish, and to carry out more surveys to monitor our footprint in future. We can then creatively, with as many people as possible, think of ways of reducing our carbon footprint without reducing our quality of life in this beautiful part of Cornwall.

Please contact us if you wish to become part of Transition St Gennys, which is aiming to plan a resilient way forward for local people in the face of the twin threats of changes in our climate and the declining availability of increasingly expensive fossil fuels.

By Jackie Carpenter 230 423. Also feel free to contact Ron Muckleston 230 127 or Paul Jennings 230 423