Energy Saving Trust and Housing Corporation Tenant empowerment training Energy Saving Trust, 21 Dartmouth Street, London SW1H 9BP Tel 020 7227 0305, www.est.org.uk CP158 © Energy Saving Trust March 2006. E&OE Printed on Revive Silk which cont ains 75% de-inked post consumer waste and a maximum of 25% mill broke Maple House, 149 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 7BN Tel 0845 230 7000, www.housingcorp.gov.uk Energy Saving Trust and Housing Corporation Tenant empowerment training CONTENTS Tenant empowerment training Toolkit contents Session 1 Fundamentals of energy and climate Session 2 Energy and housing Session 3 Are you spending too much on your energy? Session 4 Action you can take in your home Session 5 Action you can take with your provider Session 6 Taking things forward Training activities Tenant energy tools Prepared for the Energy Saving Trust and the Housing Corporation by the Centre for Sustainable Energy, the Tenant Participation Advisory Service and Energy Inform. Programme for the day Session 1: Fundamentals of energy and climate 10:00 – 10:20 Session 2: Energy and housing 10:20 – 11:00 Coffee Break: 11:00 – 11:15 Session 3: Are you spending too much on energy? 11:15 – 12:00 Session 4: Action you can take in your home 12:00 – 12:45 Lunch: 12:45 – 1:30 Session 5: Keeping your house warm 1:30 – 2:15 Session 6: Taking things forward 2:15 – 3:00 Session 7: Feedback and looking at the tools 3:00 – 3:15 Trainer brief Tenant empowerment training The main aims of the training are to: • To encourage people to make changes to their life styles in order to save and energy • To inspire individuals to press for action by working with other individuals and organisations The following training brief provides some hints and tips that should help you deliver the training. The PowerPoint slides also contain further information that will help you deliver the information contained on the slides. It may be that a group of tenants is attending to develop or skill up their tenant’s participation (TP) group. So check if they are from different landlords or not. Session 1 Session 1 is designed to investigate why climate change is happening and why sustainable energy is important. It is worth asking how much the tenants know about climate change and its effects. If they already know a lot about climate change you may want to have a short 5 minute group discussion. Group Discussion: • Ask tenants to spend a few minutes thinking about what our climate may look like in 30 years time • Ask tenants to feed their ideas back and flip chart them • You could use this opportunity to talk about the potential consequences of climate change e.g. the gulf stream switching off – see notes from slide 1/10 It’s important to mention that the toolkit contains handouts 1 & 2. Handout 1 covers the basics of energy and climate change. Handout 2 acts as a jargon buster and glossary. For example, you may get asked how carbon dioxide is formed – the glossary contains the chemical formula. Session 2 Session 2 starts with a quiz, but you don’t have to do this exercise if you are running short of time. You can use the quiz as prompts for the relevant slides, throw the questions out to the audience and flipchart up their answers. Rural issues If you are delivering to a rural housing association it is worth remembering that rural circumstances will have an effect on housing and fuel poverty. Rural areas are likely to have higher proportions of hard to treat homes. So these tenants are more likely to: • Not have access to mains gas (presently the cheapest fossil fuel) • Live in solid walled properties • Under claim benefits they may be entitled to • Have a higher overall cost of living i.e. transport, food and other goods Excess winter deaths Excess winter deaths (EWD) are the additional deaths that occur each year in winter above and beyond the expected average. When covering EWD your audience may automatically assume that hypothermia and influenza are the main causes of death. This is a ‘red herring’, the main cause of EWD are cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. It’s important to make this distinction clear. Condensation slide - brainstorm If you have time you can do a brainstorm on a flip chart at slide 2/10. Ask tenants how they could prevent condensation and then write their answers up on a flip chart. Handout 4 covers condensation and mould growth in more depth and may provide some ideas to use as prompts. Session 3 Be prepared for lots of debate in this session. There are likely to be a wide range of issues cover tenant’s previous bills and their experiences of switching. You may find that a number of the tenants in your group are eligible for the priority service register. If they are you may want to provide them with more information on the service. Priority service register You may be eligible for free gas and electricity services and other benefits, if you are a domestic consumer and one or more of the following applies to you: • Of pensionable age • Have a disability • Have long term ill health • Are blind or visually impaired Eligible householders can choose from a selection of free services. Every gas and electricity supplier provides a range of free services, so tenants need to contact them to find out what’s available i.e. what services each supplier offers. Typical services provide include some or all of the following: • Password protection service • Meter reading • Free meter moving service • Free gas safety check • Advance notice if your electricity supply has to be interrupted • Special help if your gas supply is disrupted • Special controls and adapters • Bill nominee scheme • Services for visually impaired, or hearing impaired consumers This energywatch leaflet contains more detailed information to help you explain these services http://www.energywatch.org.uk/uploads/Free_Services1.pdf. Activity 4 - after slide 3/12 The toolkit contains an example energywatch table for tenants to use in this exercise (see handout 5). You may wish to download the most recent table from energywatch’s website or explain that they will need to do this to examine their own bills. Cold weather payment You may be asked by tenants what cold weather payments are and if they are eligible for them. They will be eligible if they are receiving pension credit, income support or income- based jobseeker's allowance. This payment is not subject to taxation and is different from a winter fuel payment. A cold weather payment helps towards extra heating costs when there is a spell of cold weather in the area. The Department for Work and Pensions will automatically pay you when the average temperature is recorded as, or is forecast to be, 0ºC (freezing) or below over seven days in a row at a given weather station. Session 4 It is important to ask tenants what sort of houses they live in. The weight you give to various topics in the later sessions will vary depending on their own circumstances. If they live in new well insulated properties their heating energy use will make up a lower proportion of their heating bill than those in older properties. For older properties the largest proportion of energy use and fuel costs will come from heating costs. It’s therefore important to highlight the simple measures they can employ to reduce their heating costs. Activity 5 In order to deliver activity 5 you will need to make activity 5. The toolkit contains a guide to producing the activity. If you have time after activity 5 you could use handout 7 to examine appliance running costs in more depth. The handout examines the running costs for appliances based on a unit cost of electricity of 10.5 p/kWh. You could use the examples to examine the cost of watching a TV for 6 hours and leaving it on standby for 18 hours. It is important to note that the maths ability of your audience will vary dramatically. You may therefore want to use the table at the end of handout 7 to discuss running costs of appliances for one hour in more depth. Reducing your bills brainstorm – slide 4/4 Reducing your bills brainstorm. Tenants are likely to have lots of ideas, but if they haven’t you can use these cooking tips as prompts: • Keep the flame (gas) or hot ring (electric) smaller than the base of the pan you are heating? • Cook extra and freeze for use on another day. • Put several items in the oven at the same time to make the best use of the heat? • Put lids on saucepans when cooking? • Boil just the water you need in the kettle rather than fill it? • Steam vegetables using one pan? Handout 9 has some useful cooking tips. Session 5 The first discussion should get tenants thinking about the areas in the home that require insulating first i.e. walls & roof. Slide 5/4 shows some warm and cold roofs in winter – point out that tenants are paying to heat an empty space if they don’t have loft insulation. Use slides 5/5 and 5/6 to examine heat loss from the home in more depth. The paybacks relate to the savings and the costs of the measures. You may want to mention that there is a large range for double glazing as the efficiency of the old windows has a large effect on savings.