Ali-Energy
Argyll and Bute Council · 12 February 2025
Back to Oban Lorn & the Isles Area Community Planning Group — 12 February 2025 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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ALIenergy – Report to OLI Area Community Planning Group – January 2025 Lynda Mitchell ALIenergy has a long history of working to alleviate fuel poverty in Argyll, 2025 being our 25th anniversary year. ALIenergy works to help people and the planet. Our activities include supporting local sustainable energy initiatives, providing energy education in schools and communities, and running our Affordable Warmth Service to combat fuel poverty. Current funders include Energy Redress Scheme, Argyll & Bute Council (various funds), Robertson Trust, Bank of Scotland, Big Energy Saving Network, SGN Safe and Warm Fund, Scottish Government (various funds), Centrica’s Energy for Tomorrow, ScottishPower Renewables, SSE Renewables, Drax Foundation, Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Affordable Warmth Service Our beneficiaries are vulnerable/disadvantaged for reasons such as low income, poor health, disability, unemployment, single parenting and old age. We assist households who cannot afford to heat their homes. They are living in cold, damp rooms. They frequently must choose between eating and heating. Fuel poverty is associated with multiple deprivations: poor physical and mental health, loneliness and isolation, poor educational outcomes, low employability and debt, and ultimately, shockingly, loss of life through excess winter deaths, due to cold and damp living conditions. We provide intensive support to guide our most vulnerable households towards greater energy security, often working with each client over a period of several weeks or months, with multiple advice interventions. Our work consists of a combination of home visits, telephone advice calls and associated follow-up work. The value of client gain that we achieve, directly to the most vulnerable households in greatest need, is well over one million pounds per year. This is a combination of immediate crisis interventions and actions to increase resilience to fuel poverty into the future, including accessing available heating and insulation grants, advising on energy saving behaviours; helping to understand bills and meters, comparing and switching suppliers and tariffs; assisting with complaints and metering / billing issues; helping people to access fuel vouchers, free white goods, debt relief and help with ongoing costs from various sources. We also assist with referrals into the Scottish Government and UK Government funded schemes for free home insulation and renewables, and we provide free cosy kit items (blankets, thermal socks, hot water bottles). Winter is a very busy time of year for our Affordable Warmth Team as people struggle with heating bills. There is usually a waiting list for our advisors during the colder months.
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Storage Heaters Across much of rural Scotland, mains gas is unavailable, and many households use electric storage heaters, which can be difficult to control and expensive to run. The exorbitant price of electricity compared to gas has meant that households using storage heaters may have heating bills which are several times as high as those with gas - or they may self-ration to use much less heat than people with gas. In Oban we are running a pilot project with technical partner Connected Response to provide free smart controls for storage heaters which can help to reduce energy consumption. Education ALIenergy STEM Education Programme covers all of Argyll and Bute. This project encourages and facilitates young people to seek careers in STEM subjects and the green energy sector. We make first contact with young people during their transition from P7 into S1 and S2, with energy and climate change-related activities and workshops, careers events, and stands for the whole community at summer events. Local Energy Developments We are working with local communities and various renewable energy developers, mostly around the Oban area, to explore the potential for community shared ownership of potential wind farm developments. We held public meetings in Oban in February and September 2024. An application to Scottish Government CARES fund to seek advice on potential legal structures for shared ownership was successful. Shared ownership could potentially create a long-term income stream for our communities which could prove transformative, supporting a wide variety of activities and improvements. The Shop The Shop (Re_Store) in Oban was founded through a partnership of local charities: Hope Kitchen, ALIenergy, Oban Youth Café, Lorn & Oban Healthy Options and Atlantis Leisure. The shop sells second hand and repurposed goods as well as redistributing surplus food and running a variety of classes and events including arts, crafts, sewing and mending, including making blankets and draught excluders to give out to those in need, and hosting drop-in advice sessions. We are delighted that the venture is a great success and recently won an Innovation Award at the ScottishPower Foundation Awards 2024.