City-wide energy partnership launched in Coventry

09 December 2010

E.ON has launched an innovative project to help Coventry become a pioneering green city and develop sustainable energy and district heating schemes for homes and businesses.

E.ON, Coventry City Council and the Chamber of Commerce have forged the Phoenix Low Carbon Enterprise – a public-private partnership which will work with other partners to regenerate the city and to develop sustainable energy projects including solar energy and district heating schemes.
The Phoenix Low Carbon Enterprise comprises organisations including Coventry City Council, Whitefriars and Orbit Heart of England housing association, Coventry University and a number of local businesses. It is one of the UK’s first city-wide approaches to tackling energy efficiency and environmental issues while also working to attract investment and improve skills and jobs. The Coventry 2020 Low Carbon Task Force, of which E.ON and Coventry City Council are already key members, will start the process by prioritising the projects that are required for a greener future for Coventry. The partnership will then take responsibility for organising and allocating initiatives to help speed up the implementation of sustainable projects across the city – including retrofitting homes on a street-by-street basis.
Michael Woodhead, managing director of E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business said: “We must get better at using energy smartly, being more efficient and saving money as well as carbon. We call that being energy fit.In the same way that people have become accustomed in the home and at work to thinking ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ we need a similar approach in energy to insulate, moderate and generate. If we work together as a community and a city, if we can build energy efficiency into our everyday lives – homes, businesses, how we travel, how we shop – then we can all really start to make a difference.”
Cllr Linda Bigham, Cabinet Member for City Development, said: "The Phoenix Low Carbon Enterprise represents a superb opportunity for Coventry City Council, our partners, and local businesses to develop the Low Carbon Economy in Coventry and Warwickshire. “It will bring about the creation of new jobs, and significant business investment and growth whilst reducing our carbon emissions."
The enterprise will look to use the Government’s green deal to fund much of the work but also intends to use the feed-in tariff, the renewable heat incentive and Community Energy Saving Programme funding.
Alongside the Phoenix enterprise, E.ON has also announced a £625,000 scheme with Orbit Heart of England to help 315 homes become energy fit through a range of energy saving measures such as solid wall and loft insulation and new ‘A’ rated boilers.The work, due to start in April 2011, is being carried out under the Government’s Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) which could save each home more than £600 a year on their energy costs.