Energy

PEDAL wants to help loc­al people and busi­nesses reduce the amount of energy (power and heat) they use, and reduce their reli­ance on fossil fuels for the energy they do use. This means, for example, insu­lat­ing and draft-proof­ing build­ings bet­ter and encour­aging bet­ter design of new build­ings. It also means help­ing people to become more aware of how much energy they use and reduce this, for example by mon­it­or­ing their fuel bills, using less hot water or switch­ing off house­hold appliances.

Why is chan­ging our energy use important?

Lots of energy is also used in trans­port­ing ourselves and goods around, so we also want to make pub­lic trans­port, bikes and walk­ing more attract­ive than using the car, and also encour­age the pro­duc­tion of more goods loc­ally as well as redu­cing our water use wherever possible.

If you have an interest in devel­op­ing loc­al renew­able energy sources and redu­cing energy use why not join our Energy Group?

Saving Energy at Home

To help with this we’ve pro­duced a guide to sav­ing energy at home, writ­ten by energy experts. The book­let answers some fre­quently asked ques­tions and sug­gests a range of ways you can make your home more energy effi­cient – from using energy sav­ing products to chan­ging the way you run your home, and from installing insu­la­tion to gen­er­at­ing your own renew­able energy.

There are lots of tips with check­lists in this book­let for you to record what you’ve looked at and done. We’ve included actions that are appro­pri­ate for older houses and tene­ments, as well as newly built ones.

You can down­load a copy here — PEDAL Energy Saving Booklet

We also want to encour­age the gen­er­a­tion of energy from renew­able sources, right here in Portobello, using the plen­ti­ful resources we have such as sun­shine, wind and waves.

Portobello and Leith Community Wind Energy Project

The text on this page will be updated very shortly, mean­while see our very excit­ing latest news (5th May 2014) on our ‘Next Steps towards a New site for Community Wind Energy Project’ here … and see the Community Energy web­site PEDAL has developed with our part­ners Greener Leith.

Old Text may be of his­tor­ic­al interest:

PEDAL, in part­ner­ship with neigh­bour­ing com­munity organ­isa­tion Greener Leith, is look­ing to devel­op a large scale wind tur­bine on land adja­cent to Seafield WasteWater Treatment Works.  Depending on the size of the tur­bine, it could save between 400 and 2000 tonnes of CO2 equi­val­ent each year, power­ing between 300 and 1300 homes. We have had a feas­ib­il­ity study com­pleted that shows the site is indeed a good one for this type of facil­ity. Read more about Portobello & Leith Community Wind Energy Project. You can also view inform­a­tion on our bid for EnergyShare fund­ing for the tur­bine in the box on the right-hand side of this page.

Past projects

In early 2010 PEDAL was awar­ded a one-year grant from the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund to take for­ward a range of pro­jects focussed on help­ing people in Portobello to use less energy, and increas­ing the amount of energy we gen­er­ate from renew­able sources. This included the wind tur­bine pro­ject (above) and three oth­er ini­ti­at­ives. For more inform­a­tion on these, click on the links below.