Energyshare vote: Transition Initiatives’ clean sweep plus podcast
By Ben Brangwyn 7th December 2011
From the Transition Culture blog:
Last Saturday (3-Dec) was the final day of the River Cottage/British Gas Energyshare vote, an innovative approach to raising awareness for, and supporting, community renewables.
When voting closed, at 5pm, the winners were, in the large category, Hexham River Hydro, in the medium category, the Portobello and Leith community wind energy project, and in the small category, the North Devon Hospice and the Shrewsbury Hydro. Three of the four are Transition initiatives. There were also Transition groups who didn’t win, and also quite a few who didn’t make it through to the final vote (the many fantastic projects in the vote gave a sense of the huge hunger out there for community renewables).
I talked to each of the 3 Transition winners, Portobello (here‘s a piece from their local paper), Shrewsbury and Hexham about the Energyshare process, how they rustled up enough votes, how the last hours before the vote closed were spent, and how being winners makes a difference to their project. This short podcast captures their stories:
Thanks to everyone who voted and well done to each of the winners and all the people who, through this process, raised awareness levels regarding our urgent need to decarbonise our energy systems.