Aylesbury Vale Zap Carbon NI 186 Trial
Background:
Aylesbury Vale District Council has been using an innovative system for engaging people in reducing their Energy use and Carbon emissions at home. Recently launched by ZapCarbon, the system allows householders to manage their Carbon emissions online and see the positive differences they are making – all via entering readings from their electricity meter online.
Before spreading to the entire population of the Vale, AVDC wanted to trial the ZapCarbon NI186 system in-house. The idea was to run a low-key trial to gauge the natural uptake rate that resulted from minimal publicity. To this end only basic posters and a single email were used to inform people of the energy saving initiative.
To make it a little more fun, an element of competition was introduced, pitching one council building against another.
Results:
Even with basic publicity 30 people visited the website http://www.zapcarbon.com and registered to cut their Carbon emissions at home. Moreover 55% of registrants actively stuck with the process until the end of the 6 week period, regularly entering meter readings to find out how much their consumption changed.
Created to help change energy-use behaviour at home, the trial has certainly been a success. Despite the fact that the trial has ended, many people continue to use the site. Furthermore there has been at least new one “eco-evangelist” created within the council as a result.
It was interesting seeing how energy use varied amongst the participants. The most energy excessive house used an amazing 6 times more electricity than most energy efficient (see graph).
Overall, the ZapCarbon works extremely well at engaging people to start thinking about their energy use and Carbon impacts.
Projecting a wider roll out throughout the Vale, it would take only a 2% engagement to produce community Carbon savings that exceeded the entire council NI185 programme.
Contact Email:
Organisation:
Aylesbury Vale District Council
Status:
Pilot complete
Organisation’s website:
http://www.aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk
South East groups case study relates to:
Communities
