The community centre is currently reviewing a bid to the East of England Development Agency, CutYourCarbon(CYC) competition. The aim of the competition is to encourage everyone to try and reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide they emit each day. The Community Centre will act as a focal point for this activity by looking at alternative ways to supply energy for the centre and reducing our demand.

Our initial bid was assessed by the Cutyourcarbon team but did not receive funding in the first round. The feedback we received was that our bid needed to show more community commitment to cutting carbon emissions---------------------so get your friends to complete their Carbon Footprint and sign up to the Palgrave Community on

http://www.cutyourcarbon.org.uk/ . If sufficient numbers do this, and commit to actions to reduce their carbon emissions then we stand a much better chance of being successful in December.

If successful the funding will be used to REDUCE our demand for electricity by RETAINING as much as we can, RE-CYCLING the surface water to use in the toilets, RE-USING the heat extracted from the cellar and installing RENEWABLE energy sources to provide the electricity we do need.

The feasibility of a wind turbine(on a nine metre mast) at the centre will be further investigated as part of the project. In parallel with this we will be looking at providing heat more efficiently using air source heat pumps, and providing heat using ground source heat pumps.

In addition to reducing our carbon footprint these measures will substantially reduce our utility bills which currently cost us approximately £4000 p.a.

We hope that this work will also focus the communities mind on how it can reduce its' carbon footprint.