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Home > Current Projects > Eco Easterside

The Easterside area of Middlesbrough is leading the way in energy saving thanks to a partnership between local residents, Middlesbrough Environment City and Middlesbrough Council. The project, ‘Eco Easterside’, received £391,000 from the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Low Carbon Communities Challenge (LCCC) in February 2010. Easterside joins 21 other communities across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to receive funding through the LCCC to pilot community level energy saving projects.The success of Eco Easterside is down to the willingness of the community to engage and succeed.

For the project to work technology and ideas couldn’t just be forced on the residents, they had to be understood, with the community taking ownership of the project. The last twelve months have been very busy working with schools, local residents and businesses to install measures which will reduce energy use in community buildings and homes, and install a range of renewable energy technologies including wind, solar PV, solar thermal and air-to-air heat pumps. The establishment of an electric car club and community allotment site ensures a holistic approach to sustainable living is promoted across the estate.

Why Easterside?
Situated to the south east of Middlesbrough town centre, the Easterside estate was a prime candidate for a community energy project because of its strong community spirit.  With a population of 3,250 in 1,328 homes and in the top 20% of deprived areas in England, Easterside is representative of many areas across the Tees Valley. Because of this, the project presented a new set of challenges in encouraging low carbon living compared with projects in leafy green suburbs with affluent, green-fingered activists! Easterside also represents One Planet Living in action. One Planet Living is a model of sustainability that Middlesbrough Council is using across the town. By working out the amount of resources we currently use, the One Planet Living model outlines how we would need three planets if everyone in the world used resources like we do here in Middlesbrough.  

What did we achieve in 10 months?

Community measures
  • One air-to-air heat pump fitted in the EDRA café.
  • 4.8kWp  of solar PV installed on the Easterside Community    Centre.
  • Low energy LED street lighting fitted down two roads.
  • Purchase of Peugeot Ion electric car and establishment of community car club.
  • Installation of two electric car charging points.
  • Rainwater harvesting tank and hand pump for new allotment sites (2x1,200 litres).
School measures
  • Two  6kW Proven wind turbines – Easterside Primary and St Thomas More primary schools.
  • Eco schools training.
  • New cycle storage at schools and subsidised bikes.
  • Insulation improvements to both St Thomas More and Easterside Primary school buildings.  
 Domestic Measures
  • Twelve homes fitted with solar PV panels (2.3 kWp systems)
  • Four homes fitted with air-to-air heat pumps
  • Six homes fitted with solar thermal systems
  • 280 homes fitted with cavity and loft insulation, targeted at residents on a low income.
  • 600 energy monitors handed out across the estate.
Education and engagement
  • Twenty one community champions to be trained to deliver energy saving advice to OCN standard.
  • Training provided by the Energy Saving Trust on use of the electric car.
  • All three schools on the estate working towards Green Flag Eco School status.
  • Cycle surgeries and cycle training for pupils and parents at the schools.
  • Food growing sessions and healthy living advice at the community allotment. 
Project in practice

From the start, the project team wanted to engage the community and ensure they felt ownership of the project’s aims. This required that the right elements of the project were ‘sold’ to a variety of community activists. Many people were supportive of the project because of the perceived future jobs potential for local people in renewable energy and the potential to save money on energy bills.  Others were excited at the prospect of the community benefiting from the Feed in Tariffs and Renewable Heat Incentive, with the funding being ploughed back into more green projects on the estate. The proposed installation of two wind turbines at the primary schools on the estate raised a few concerns at first around noise and flicker issue until residents were made aware that the turbines were small and reasonably unobtrusive relative to the large-scale wind farms in the surrounding area.

Residents were able to visit similar installations locally to address their concerns.  The financial savings the schools could make by generating their own electricity have proved to be popular.The capital elements of the project were completed within the tight timescale of the 31st March and within budget. All of the technology was bought and installed by North East based companies and has been of an excellent standard. Procuring various pieces of equipment proved problematic due to the tight timescales of the project and the fact that much of the renewable technologies are still relatively new and specialist. For example, it turned out that there were fewer car dealers than we thought that could supply an electric car by the end of March. Feed-in Tariff rules also turned out to be more complicated than we first imagined as we encountered problems with state aid. 

Although the technology and measures are now installed the hard work doesn’t finish there.  The next step is to ensure the community takes full advantage of the energy saving and renewable technologies. The Easterside Partnership will receive the Feed in Tariff and Renewable Heat Incentive funding and recycle these payments to pay for the maintenance of the installed technology and funding of new renewable equipment. Community champions are being trained to spread advice on energy saving to other residents, 20 residents are receiving training on the new Peugeot Ion electric car and volunteers are taking advantage of the support on offer to grow fruit and vegetables at the community allotments. The Easterside community is demonstrating what a low carbon, sustainable future looks like.