PEDAL wants to help local people and businesses reduce the amount of energy (power and heat) they use, and reduce their reliance on fossil fuels for the energy they do use. This means, for example, insulating and draft-proofing buildings better and encouraging better design of new buildings. It also means helping people to become more aware of how much energy they use and reduce this, for example by monitoring their fuel bills, using less hot water or switching off household appliances.
Why is changing our energy use important?
Lots of energy is also used in transporting ourselves and goods around, so we also want to make public transport, bikes and walking more attractive than using the car, and also encourage the production of more goods locally as well as reducing our water use wherever possible.
If you have an interest in developing local renewable energy sources and reducing energy use why not join our Energy Group?
Saving Energy at Home
To help with this we’ve produced a guide to saving energy at home, written by energy experts. The booklet answers some frequently asked questions and suggests a range of ways you can make your home more energy efficient – from using energy saving products to changing the way you run your home, and from installing insulation to generating your own renewable energy.
There are lots of tips with checklists in this booklet for you to record what you’ve looked at and done. We’ve included actions that are appropriate for older houses and tenements, as well as newly built ones.
You can download a copy here — PEDAL Energy Saving Booklet
We also want to encourage the generation of energy from renewable sources, right here in Portobello, using the plentiful resources we have such as sunshine, wind and waves.
Portobello and Leith Community Wind Energy Project
The text on this page will be updated very shortly, meanwhile see our very exciting latest news (5th May 2014) on our ‘Next Steps towards a New site for Community Wind Energy Project’ here … and see the Community Energy website PEDAL has developed with our partners Greener Leith.
Old Text may be of historical interest:
PEDAL, in partnership with neighbouring community organisation Greener Leith, is looking to develop a large scale wind turbine on land adjacent to Seafield WasteWater Treatment Works. Depending on the size of the turbine, it could save between 400 and 2000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year, powering between 300 and 1300 homes. We have had a feasibility study completed that shows the site is indeed a good one for this type of facility. Read more about Portobello & Leith Community Wind Energy Project. You can also view information on our bid for EnergyShare funding for the turbine in the box on the right-hand side of this page.
Past projects
In early 2010 PEDAL was awarded a one-year grant from the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund to take forward a range of projects focussed on helping people in Portobello to use less energy, and increasing the amount of energy we generate from renewable sources. This included the wind turbine project (above) and three other initiatives. For more information on these, click on the links below.