Progress with Energy Efficiency Retrofit Projects

Two local projects, both aimed at reducing carbon emissions from buildings are moving forward through the work of the Southern Uplands Partnership and the Scottish Borders Construction Forum.

The first SUP project has support from the Shared Prosperity Fund and is looking to work with a small group of local householders who want to jointly improve their energy efficiency. The idea is that a collaborative retrofit project will be cheaper and more efficient and the project is designed to test that theory. A call went out to Borders communities and the project now has a shortlist of three. The project hopes to start home-survey work shortly.

The second project is an initial step in the implementation of the Scottish Borders Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy managed by the Council. A pilot project is looking at how a typical Borders rural community can reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. It will produce a costed plan for community-wide decarbonisation. It is hoped such a plan may help target future funding to best effect. Swinton has been selected as the preferred community for this initial pilot. “It was a difficult decision to make as we had strong interest from a number of villages” said Neil Robertson, LHEES coordinator at SBC. “At this stage, we wanted a particular mix of house-types and Swinton was the best representative of Borders villages”.

The hope is that developing the Swinton plan, will benefit all Borders communities in due course and efforts will be made to share the experience as widely as possible so that the benefits are shared.