Making a rain garden

This new little garden is flooded after the storm - but no worries because it is a rain garden and this is meant to happen. The idea is to take water off the road - hence the kerb cuts to allow water to flow into the three new sunken gardens along the grass verge. Fallowfield has poor drainage and floods regularly after heavy rain, but this time there was much less flooding than usual and it dissipated more quickly. The plants need to tolerate both floods and droughts, as that is the weather we get these days.

After the rain, Fallowfield rain garden number 1

Why a water usage survey?

Transition Cambridge is running a survey on how we use water, and what water saving measures we take. Why? Water shortage has been a concern for some time but seeing the film Pure Clean Water reminded me again of the acute need for us to reduce water demand. Lack of water has recently stymied government plans for growth but even with no extra homes or businesses we do not have enough water. I could go on but perhaps you know already – or you can read about it here.

Suffice to say, climate change means more extreme weather – wetter winters like this one but also drier ones and longer droughts. Our water supply from the chalk aquifer under the Gog Magog hills buffers some of the variation but has its limits – and our current level of demand has already caused irreparable damage to chalk streams which is why Nine Wells is no longer an SSSI [1].

Our water is incredibly cheap: in Cambridge the average water bill (excluding sewerage) is currently £163/year – 45p/day - which is 29% lower than the national average [2]. This price hardly reflects its value to our health and wellbeing, and does little to encourage water saving, even if you do have a meter. However there is a lot we can do with little or no effort. How often do you wash your clothes or bedlinen? Do you save water from cooking vegetables to pre-soak the dirty dishes? Do you flush the toilet every time you have a pee?

A Christmas wish – community heating in Cambridge?

District heating is a potential low carbon option for some homes, though it is hard to say at the moment which homes (if any) will have the opportunity. Compared to switching to a heat pump or getting an electric storage boiler, district heating can be a low hassle option - as villagers in Swaffham Prior have discovered and it seems likely that residents of Grantchester will also get the opportunity too. Compared to air source heat pumps, community heating is quiet, less bulky and you don’t need space for an outside unit; also it is a lot less weighty than an electric storage boiler: a 40kWh Tepeo weighs 375kg. A community heating system means digging in the street and into your home for the pipework. Apart from that you swap your boiler for a heat interface unit that provides you with heat and meters your consumption. Depending on the setup, you may also need hot water storage. There is no need for an annual service, as you should have with a gas boiler.

Transition Cambridge at 15

Transition Cambridge is now 15 years old. Here is an extract from our AGM, listing the various activities we have been doing over the past year.

 

Hydrogen for domestic heating is not going to happen

Experts have been saying for years that hydrogen is not a sensible solution for home heating on any scale. However gas suppliers and gas suppliers are very keen to convince us of the opposite. This has been going on for a long time and the government has been sitting on the fence. The Heat and Buildings Strategy published in 2021 delayed the decision until at least 2026 – after trials at village and town scale. However, the village trial – at Whitby – has been cancelled after massive opposition from the residents. Now Grant Shapps, the Energy Minister, has indicated that it is ‘less likely’ that hydrogen would ever be piped into people’s home, because of issues on cost, safety, and continuing reliance on fossil fuels.

What are the other options?

Do you have a low carbon heating strategy for your home? Have you been crossing your fingers and hoping for hydrogen? Unfortunately this is looking ever more unlikely. Alternatives include various sorts of heat pump, electric storage boilers and direct electric radiators. For a small proportion of homes, bottled biogas could be a solution but supplies for biogas are limited and they will also be in great demand for industrial uses. (There will be an Open Eco Homes talk on low carbon heating options on 9th October. This should be announced mid August.)

Culture and Sustainability - Why is change so hard – yet sometimes so easy?

 The climate emergency requires us all to make substantial changes in our lives – and sometimes they are easy but sometimes they are hard. A lot of this is to do with aspects of our culture influencing  how and why we do things. We each belong to several cultures at different levels – our friends, our family culture, our workplace, where we live, the way we are supported and constrained by our finances and the state. The result is that often well-meaning policy changes fail spectacularly while other efforts can succeed dramatically. It’s complicated!  So I am looking forward to hearing directly from an expert, Janet Stephenson, having read (large parts of) her book ‘Culture and Sustainability’. On June 20th she is coming to Cambridge and has agreed to give a talk and answer questions.

Climate justice – personal actions

There are huge differences between carbon footprints of people in different countries. Here in the UK we are worse than average but by no means the worst. However there are also huge differences between people within the UK, even in Cambridge. What are each of us doing and how does this vary by income?

How income and wealth affects what we can do

Sometimes when I am on an outreach stall I use an actions survey – you tick the actions you are doing. The answers we get are affected by how well-off people are. Less well-off people tick fewer boxes. This is partly because some of the actions do not apply, and partly to do with cost. 

Well-off people often tick: solar panels, or even low carbon heating; eating vegetarian or vegan, and buying from a local farm shop. They may say they walk or cycle for short trips. Hardly anyone ticks car sharing but they often say they have cut down on air travel.

Less well-off people cannot afford solar panels and their diet choices are constrained by cost (good quality veggie burgers and sausages tend to cost more). Also less well-off people are often time poor which means they use more convenience foods and less farm shops. They may not have a car at all and rarely go on holiday abroad, but if they do they fly because the trains are more expensive.