Renewable Energy in Social Housing Project
CWEC is currently working with 7 registered social landlords, Cheshire East Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council and Warrington Borough Council to develop the "Renewable Energy in Social Housing" project.
The project will create opportunities for local businesses in the renewable technologies sector and will link into various employment programmes with local contractors such as the Future Jobs Fund and Train to Gain.
The CARE project is Cheshire and Warrington’s partnership approach to installing energy efficiency and renewable energy measures. A creative way of generating business in the sub region and assisting the government in reaching targets for savings in CO2 emissions.
The project will be installing these measures in hard to treat, and sometimes rurally isolated, homes in order to improve their energy efficiency and generate renewable energy. In turn we are hoping this will create a demand incentive for businesses to develop expertise and capacity to install measures such as solid wall insulation and solar thermal panels. All properties must already have standard insulation measures in place e.g. loft insulation and double glazing. ERDF will be pay for installing external / internal solid wall insulation including on low level and high rise tower blocks and solar thermal hot water heating systems.
There are opportunities for local businesses to become involved through the procurement methods. MCS accredited installers of solar thermal equipment, biomass systems will be notified of the ITT being issued.
All registered social landlords (RSLs) will be issuing Invitations To Tender for this work through local supplier networks, the media and a variety of websites. Individual partners will identify specific technical specifications necessary to fit with existing equipment in their housing stock. For solar thermal, biomass and insulation companies a scoring system has been developed to appraise the tender submissions.
The use of local manufacturers and suppliers, to avoid importing equipment from abroad, will be an extremely important aspect of this project.
