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Dales village that's a powerhouse of creative energies
In Malhamdale they were being prompted to think about carbon savings this week. But as Frederic Manby discovered, they are already ahead of the game.
Sandy Tod is the sort of Dales villager Becki Tighe approves of. She is part of the team tackling climate change by reducing energy consumption in the Craven area of the Yorkshire Dales. It is a two-year project for her, with a long way still to go.
Sandy Tod is already in step. He has turned his house into an energy saver. A retired civil engineer, living in Malham, famous for its limestone scenery, Sandy is the founder of the Renewable Energy Group in Malhamdale and has equipped his converted barn with an advanced solar panel for heating water and an equally smart boiler which burns wood pellets to heat the radiators, provide underfloor heating and hot water and looks pretty good in an open-plan room.
The bill was about 11,000 for the lot but he takes the long view. In time the system will repay the investment by cutting his fuel bill, while operating to green principles. He decided against heat pumps, which extract warmth from the ground. His property would have needed two big bore holes, and the costing estimate of 4,000 did not stack up.
His barn home is not as efficient as it would be if he were planning it now. Ten years ago he chose oil for its cheapness, which is no longer the case. He would have put more insulation into the structure, too.
Even so, he has cut his electricity bills from 5,000 kilowatt hours a year to 3,000 kwh, and although electricity costs more his bills are lower.
An electricity measuring device shows which household appliances create a spike in consumption. One of the offenders is the familiar electric kettle, which consumes up to 3kw. The Tods keep their kettle on top of a wood-fired pot-bellied stove. Tea-makers will say this depletes the oxygen from the water and gives an inferior brew. It is a sacrifice worth making.
Sandy Tod envisages a communal heat generator for the villagers. A large boiler running on wood chips would send hot water on a loop through the village. Householders on the scheme would tap it into their homes through a heat exchanger, with a meter billing them pro rata. He already has a sample grid map, placing the heat plant on land behind the Lister Arms hotel. It may sound a big thing but not to Sandy (James) Tod. He worked as a civil engineer in the 1960s on the now-closed Thorpe Marsh Power Station in South Yorkshire. In the 1970s he was planning the Tarbela Dam on the Indus in Pakistan's North West Frontier, which saw 80,000 people relocated to make way for the reservoir. He was also on massive irrigation schemes in West Africa and Iran, and on a railway in Kuala Lumpur. Malhamdale must seem like an egg cup.
Ideally, to ensure a reliable supply of fuel for their big boiler, the Dales villagers would crop their own trees, grown in fields with sheep and cows grazing alongside. Mature trees would be sold to meet the demand. Mr Tod told a meeting of Dales folk at the primary school in Kirkby Malham that electricity costs 14 pence a kilowatt hour, twice as much as liquid petroleum gas. Wood pellets and oil (at current prices) work out at just under 5p a kwh, or 3.5p if the pellets are bought in bulk. Coal is 3.65p and traditional logs are cheapest at just under 2p per kwh.
Becki Tighe is just 28 and her specific title is climate change development officer in the Craven Local Strategic Partnership. She grew up in Halifax, went to Crossley Heath Grammar School and left Leicester University with a degree in biological sciences. She also has a Masters degree in Sustainable Development from Leeds – where she spent six months with the council.
Becki worked on environmental projects for 30 months in Calderdale – carbon management and travel plans, that sort of eco-green movement – for the council's sustainable community strategy.
Her current two-year contract in North Yorkshire is funded by North Yorkshire County Council and she works from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Office in Grassington, Upper Wharfedale.
Becki is the leader of the environmental improvement team. Her work sets targets to do with strategy, to help 10 businesses become greener, help five communities to produce sustainability projects, write an environmental directory for Craven, promote greener thinking to people and communities, and so on.
Some of it may sound dry and boring, but Becki has a bright, engaging manner. She's a vegetarian but lives with a meat-eater. She's enjoying the locations she visits and the people she meets but it is a long way from the three-month project she worked on at Kenya's Lake Naivasha. Here she examined how the fly larvae linked in to the food chain, and how this was affected by the lunar cycle.
And? "It was inconclusive", reports Becki. She lives in Leeds and needs a car for her new work in the Yorkshire Dales, so bought a low- impact Toyota Yaris, one of three in the staff parking area at the YDNP offices. She has already met a number of influential groups, including the management at the Duke of Devonshire's vast Bolton Abbey estate, which comprises two hotels, various shops and cafes, forestry, tourism and shooting.
They are on-message and pursuing their own targets. Getting energy for free is part of her brief, and when she came to the Dales there were already three water turbine projects being planned, on the Wharfe, Aire and Ribble. There are also two wind farm schemes, both of which were turned down.
One of those taking an interest was Gary McHale, head teacher at the school, where the pupils' take on Tudor life, lots of red and gold tunics, were displayed on the walls.
Gary would be keen to cut his costs and get greener by using alternative energy, and knows the 52 children would find it fascinating. It is their future that is being protected.
They have already enjoyed sustainability days, and the school has worked with Becki Tighe on the way forward. The school needs extra funding to replace or augment the costly oil-fired boiler that runs the school.
In the hall were stalls promoting wood, wind and water power. The Energy Saving Trust was there to advise on heat pumps, which scavenge heat from the ground and transfer it to buildings. Also hard to miss – a gaily-painted BSA shopper bike, linked to a dynamo from an old BMW Mini Cooper, and built by Geoff Harper, a heating engineer from Scawton, Richmond. A variety of light bulbs with equivalent wattage were screwed into a base plate.
They light up individually, depending on how hard you pedal the bike.
The most demanding was the normal filament light bulb. After a few minutes of hard-spinning, the thighs began to ache. In contrast, it was easier to keep an energy-saving light bulb lit, and easier still with an LED bulb, which uses less power and saves fuel when used for car lights. Unfortunately, not many householders would pay 10 per bulb.
"This bike shows how much physical energy it would take to light your house with ordinary 100w bulbs", explains Mr Harper, a keen cyclist. He says the maximum energy a very fit human can pedal is just 400 watts, or half a horse power.
It does make you think every time you throw a switch in the home or office.
Communities can reach Becki Tighe at www. yorkshiredales.org and the Malhamdale Initiative scheme is on www.malhamdale.com. Energy Saving Trust: 0800 512012.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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