Muswell Hill low carbon zone (Haringey)

The Muswell Hill low carbon zone encompasses a cross section of the local neighbourhood, including businesses, private and council owned housing, community buildings, schools, faith groups, and a library.

Haringey is well on track towards achieving its carbon reduction target. The area was chosen as a LCZ because of strong local support for the initiative. The approach has been innovative and constructive, reflecting both the council’s commitment to climate change mitigation and the active participation of an engaged local community, led by Muswell Hill Sustainability Group. The group is active in the management of the zone and has brought through 15 volunteers to act as community champions.

Key challenges faced by the Muswell Hill low carbon zone includes a thermally inefficient and old housing stock, planning constraints due to the presence of a Conservation Area and high levels of private car use.

Activities:

• The zone’s domestic retrofit project in is proving popular. This is almost certainly due to the trusted social marketing that these volunteers provide. Haringey is looking to evaluate formally the success of this approach and to quantify the carbon saving worth of the indirect emissions projects (waste, food, travel) they are delivering. Together, these are providing some key learning for the other zones and the LCZ programme as a whole.
• En10ergy, a community owned social enterprise company launched and has recruited around 100 members. This organisation has developed a photovoltaic (PV) array installed at the local Marks & Spencer on leased roof space, selling electricity back to the store. It has set up a bulk-buying group for more expensive measures (boilers, solar thermal and PV) and the uptake of these measures is expected to accelerate as a result. It is looking to use any revenues to re-invest in energy efficiency.
• Haringey has been successful in a bid to DECC’s Low Carbon Communities Fund, providing over £300k towards PV arrays installed on three schools and a zero-carbon teaching cabin, the Living Ark. This has been complemented by energy efficiency improvements at the schools and also at Muswell Hill Community Centre and Muswell Hill Library utilising the Council’s Sustainable Investment Fund.
• The council is looking to bring forward a loan scheme in the zone in 2011-12 and is working through the internal funding options. This could bring between £200-500k of additional investment to the zone.