Towards Carbon Neutral Churches in Craven

Thank you for clicking on this page! 
We are very enthusiastic about this project
and hope that you will support us in our aims.

If you are a church or individual looking for help and advice on this topic,
please have a look at our 'Useful links' page, or contact us on
tcncc2021@gmail.com.

*LATEST NEWS!

We are continuing to raise awareness of our work towards achieving the
goal of being net carbon zero by 2030, in line with the target set by the
Church of England's General Synod.

Music in the Meadow, Embsay with Eastby, July 2022: donations from
this event will be used for the work of the church, and particularly for our
carbon zero work.  We gave an update on the project and our new
feather flag had its first outing!

Local consultations: Peter Edwards spoke at the Annual Parish Council
Meeting of Embsay with Eastby Parish Council on 11 May 2022, talking about
our plans for St Mary's to become carbon net zero by 2030, including our
exploration of options for replacing the fossil fuel boiler and the possibility
of having electric vehicle charging points in the church car park.
 

One year on: We held a service at Holy Trinity, Skipton, to mark one year
since our project launch, on Sunday 8 May 2022. The Bishop of Ripon gave
an address to mark the progress in the project.  There is also an
updated display about the project at the back of the church.

  After the service, members of the TCNCC group gave an update
on the project and outlined the next steps, including encouraging
everyone to spread the news about the project amongst our communities.

Research: On 6 April 2022, two members of the TCNCC group spoke
with an MA research student from the University of York who is doing
research in the area of Sustainability Studies and who is interested in
including the project in her dissertation.

Our project video is mentioned in the March edition of the Diocesan
newsletter 'God's Green Fingers'.

St Mary's Embsay with Eastby have set up a working group
to discuss the issues and to formulate a plan for how
the church in Embsay with Eastby will achieve the
carbon net zero target by 2030, with staged implementation,
and using the Diocese of Leeds 'Template: Carbon Net
Zero Parish Plan' as a guide.  The group also 
plans to consult with the village residents soon.
The first meeting was held on 3 March 2022 via Zoom:

Members of the TCNCC group spoke at St Mary's Embsay
with Easty, after the morning service, on Sunday 27 February
to bring the congregation up to date with the work of the
project and to discuss the next steps for St Mary's. 

There was also an updated display with detailed information
about the options for St Mary's:

St Augustine's Church Draughton:

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On Saturay 19 February 2022,
Draughton held a pop-up pub in the Village Hall,
with an exhibition and talk with powerpoint
about the ongoing work of TCNCC in the church,
and thoughts about how the village and the church
might work together to achieve net zero carbon by 2030.
Included a bar, talks and a showing of the TCNCC video,
followed by drinks, nibbles and discussion.

We held a free webinar for anyone interested in
finding out more about our project, on Tuesday 25 January 2022.
Panelists were the TCNCC group, our two Locogen engineers
and two representatives from the Diocese of Leeds (the
Diocesan Environment Officer and the chair of the Leeds DAC).
The webinar was hosted by the Church of England and
over 160 people joined us!

An edited recording of the webinar is here.

Our project and webinar feature in the January 2022 edition of the Diocese of
Leeds God's Green Fingers Environment E-Newsletter.

Our Feasibility Study has now been published.  Please have a look at
our covering notes to the report which are here, together with a
link to the report.

We have produced an Information Guide, which we hope will be
useful to other churches and organisations who are starting on
the path to net carbon zero.  Please download and use it if this
is useful to you (click on the picture) - and please let us know!

Our project features on the Carbon Copy website, which lists climate action
initiatives all over the country.  Our story was submitted by the co-ordinating
body for our RCEF grant, the North East and Yorkshire Energy Hub:

We have been making a short film about our project (and an even shorter
trailer) so that we can share the lessons learned as widely as we can.  The
film premiered on Monday 20 December at 7pm and is now available to view
on our YouTube channel and by clicking on the picture below.
Please give us a 'like' if you like the films!

Our project featured in an article in the Yorkshire Post
on 18 December 2021:

In the autumn of 2021, we displayed updated exhibitions in our churches:

We have taken part in a new video created by the Diocese of Leeds to raise
awareness of the issue of working towards net carbon zero.

The consultant engineer has carried out site visits to all the churches in the study. 
She visited St Augustine's Draughton on Wednesday 18 August and
Holy Trinity Skipton, St Mary's Carleton, St Mary's Embsay with Eastby
and All Saints' Burton in Lonsdale on Thursday 19 August. 

The site visit to Embsay with Eastby was reported in the Embsay & Eastby Post

We have reached the end of Phase 1 of the grant-funded feasibility study
project and held a meeting with the Locogen team on 20 July 2021
to discuss progress to Phase 2

We held a project launch Climate Change service at St Mary's
Embsay with Eastby, on Sunday 27 June,
outside in the church grounds and
with members of the local community,
and took part in the Wave of Hope campaign

We held our project initiation meeting on Wednesday 26 May,
with two engineers from Locogen, via zoom.

Our project launch was held at Holy Trinity Skipton
on Sunday 2 May, with the Bishop of Ripon.       

   The order of service is Thhttps://issuu.com/dlinford/docs/tcncc_launch_climate_sunday_service_ht_skipton The order of service is here and a video of the main parts of the service is on YouTube is here.

The event was reported in the Craven Herald.

Towards Carbon Neutral Churches in Craven is a group of churches  who are actively investigating ways
to become carbon neutral, in line with the Church of England’s commitment to become ‘Net zero carbon’
by 2030.  Similar targets have been announced by Craven District Council and the Yorkshire Dales
National Park.

The churches in the project are:
St Mary’s Embsay, All Saints’ Burton in Lonsdale, St Augustine’s Draughton,

Holy Trinity Skipton and St Mary’s Carleton in Craven

We are delighted to announce that our grant application to the Rural Community Energy Fund to pay for a feasibility study into options for renewable energy generation for our church buildings has been approved (18 March 2021).  Options may include ground or roof based solar panels, or other technologies such as heat pumps.  We intend that our feasibility study will become a model to be used by other churches in the Diocese (and potentially nationally).  We also hope to show to what extent such schemes might be self-financing. 

This Feasibility Study project is supported by the the BEIS funded Rural Community Energy Fund which is managed by the North East Yorkshire and Humber Energy Hub and administered by Tees Valley Combined Authority.

We now have a logo!  Many thanks to Abbie Wagstaff for donating her time and expertise and designing this great logo for us.

   If you are able to help with anything in this project, or would like to find out more, please contact the project co-ordinator, Peter Edwards, tcncc2021@gmail.com
We would love to hear from you!