How did a rural Cambridgeshire village switch en masse to renewable energy? Thanks to one fateful pizza night, 100 huge boreholes and heroic navigation of the planning system, they have trailblazed their own zero-carbon heat network
That eureka moment can strike at any time. For Emma Fletcher it came as she chatted over pizza with neighbour Mike Barker. Fletcher wanted to bring a green heating network to their village of Swaffham Prior where, with no access to mains gas, locals were lumbered with oil-fired heating. Barker, it transpired, had the sustainability chops to get them started.
Five and a half years later, their electric dreams have become reality. Fletcher and Barker have turned their quiet corner of Cambridgeshire into Britain’s first ‘heat pump village’, and in the process mapped the confounding maze of planning and legal red tape for like-minded souls to follow.
“Did it feel slow and painful?” Fletcher ponders. “Yes, it did. I don’t think at any stage we thought we’d get to the next one. But nobody’s coming to help rural communities – they need to stand up and start helping themselves.
Pumping hot: inside Britain’s first heat pump village - Positive News - Positive Newshttps://www.positive.news/environment/pumping-hot-inside-britains-first-heat-pump-village/