Carbon 60 Project

In 2008, the Co-op completed a large scale project called C60, so called because it aimed to slash carbon emissions by 60%. This was successfully realised, with carbon emissions calculated to have reduced from 228 tonnes in 2003 to 91 tonnes in 2008.



Most of Britain's carbon emissions come from housing and most of the existing (carbon hungry) housing will still be here in 40 years (including us, we hope). The government's policy is to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050 so housing refits are an essential part of any carbon reduction strategy.

Among other things, we replaced our gas boilers with high-efficiency wood pellet boilers, installed lots of extra insulation, moved to green tariff electricity and fitted solar hot water arrays. We are in the process of replacing our appliances with highest efficiency and are looking into localised electricity generation either with biomass or wind if either becomes practical on our scale.

This a very exciting time here at the Co-op, and although it can sometimes seem like we are living in a building site, things are progressing steadily. The buildings are over 35 years old and rather than just do a cheap refit we've raised our rents (to fund some extra borrowing), applied for some grants and gone for a sustainable option that has us at the cutting edge of sustainable refits.

Our Partners

Before I start on a quick history of the project, I'll give a brief introduction to our partners:

• The Energy Saving Trust is a Government body which has provided a chunk of funding.
• The Centre for Sustainable Energy is an organisation that advises on energy issues, they did the original feasibility study.
• Our local council Lewisham has sent advisers to some of our meetings and given us advice on regulatory issues.
• J3 building futures are our project managers for the implementation stage.
• Architype are the architectural firm we first employed to make concrete designs from the feasibility study.
• XCo2 are the mechanical and electrical firm who assisted architype on the M&E portion of that.
• EDF are the local electricity company who gave us a grant towards our boilers and for some display boards.

History of the project

The carbon 60 project started life as a review of long-term maintenance issues. We started by taking a group of people to the Center for Alternative Technology (https://www.cat.org.uk) to do a two day crash course on various environmental technologies. A feasibility study was carried out by Centre for Sustainable Energy, half paid for by EST. This cost us about 5,000 pounds, but was a very good assessment of where we were and what we could do about it.

We decided to look into replacing our old gas boilers with more carbon neutral fuel such as wood or bio-fuel oil.

It quickly became apparent that the industry was very weak in the UK, but developing fast. The main problem was fuel supply, but not fuel production. The UK produces a lot of bio-fuel, but exports it to other European countries where the infrastructure and market is more developed.

The appearance of various grant funding, from EDF and central government, made it financially feasible for Sanford to become an early adopter and take the risk of such a big project. The project was not without its troubles, but we have successfully reduced our reliance on fossil fuels and seem to have steamrollered most of the bumps!

You can read a Guardian article about the project here.