Hay on Wye Climate Talk Event

Session: Climate Talk
Date: 17/3/09, 7.30-10.00pm
Location: The Globe, Hay-on-Wye
 
Attendees: 16
 
A good turn out given that the town has had possibly the most climate change talks and presentations - we were following in the footsteps of Al Gore, Jonathan Porrit, George Monbiot and Mark Lynas. Most were from Hay and attendees included three members of the local Transition Town group, a ‘local energy champion’, chemical engineer and a local light bulb salesman. Harry Fitch, Herefordshire Council’s HECA officer, was also in attendance and was trained in the use of the Climate Talk tool.
As expected, there was a high level of understanding of the issues and discussions flowed freely and very quickly moved to solutions and sharing experiences. Most people in the room had a good understanding of what they should do and indeed had done many things already (although no one had completely sorted their own houses out). The discussion centred around how to engage other members of the community and community level projects such as a car or electric bike share scheme, a waste digester and co-ordinating energy efficiency advice for householders. We also discussed engaging the council and their local MPs more significantly.
After closing the session Harry Fitch gave a brief overview of grants and funding available from the council for energy efficiency and renewable installations. Attendees were given low energy light bulbs, powerdown units, and action packs.
There was very positive feedback on the session from all the attendees and several were keen to run the session themselves in the future.
The Transition Hay group are now keen to move on to assisting the wider community to access and understand energy efficiency and renewables better.