We’re recruiting for three new jobs. We want to hear from people from anywhere in the UK who are keen to work in the climate change sector. You don’t need to have all the skills listed, but do need to be keen to learn and apply your knowledge to support our projects, some of which are summarised below.
We need to replace our Finance Administrator, the fabulous Isobel Godding who’s completed her Masters in Geographic Information and Climate Change and is leaving us to work as a Climate Analyst.
We’re also recruiting for two new 6-month trainee roles – a Finance and Admin Assistant and a Fundraising and Communications Assistant. Both are funded by the Kickstart programme – so if you know anyone under the age of 25 and on Universal Credit, please encourage them to apply by emailing croeso@awel.coop with a covering letter and CV by the end of January. Both of these jobs would be great opportunities to get a foothold working in climate change action, and develop a range of skills and knowledge. We’d also provide a free loan of an electric bike if it helps and a contribution towards relocation costs if you’re moving to our area.
Egni Share Offer and Hwb y Gors
We’ve extended Egni Co-op’s Share Offer target to £4.8m. The co-op has a total of 4.4MWp on 88 roofs in Wales on schools, businesses and community buildings all backed by a Feed in Tariff (FiT). We’d really appreciate it if you retweet our Share Offer update on Twitter or share on Facebook – most of our new members have come via word of mouth/social media (and it’s free for us which means we can spend more on education projects and Hwb y Gors below!)
We’ve already raised £4.62m from shares. We now want to pay off a £180k loan to our parent charity Awel Aman Tawe so it can reinvest the funds in our exciting new development, Hwb y Gors. In addition to a projected annual 4% interest from shares in Egni, all our members will get a free cup of coffee, cake and tour of the Hwb! We’re aiming to open the Hwb on September 2nd 2022 which is 110 years since the school first opened its doors.
Awel and Egni have continued to generate lots of renewable energy and we’re confident we can pay interest in line with our Share Offers in March 2022.
Would you like to be a new Trustee?
We’re looking for three new trustees for Awel Aman Tawe as two of our longest serving trustees, Mary Ann Brocklesby and Linley Jenkins are stepping down. You can be from anywhere in the UK as we meet on Zoom four times a year. This is a very exciting time to support and guide our work to develop Egni and Awel Co-ops, as well as Hwb y Gors. We’d welcome people with the following skills/interests – teamworking, finance, arts, education, transport, regeneration, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Please email your interest to our Deputy Director, Felicity Crump felicity@awel.coop
What we’ve been upto in 2021
- Egni is now the largest rooftop solar co-op in the UK saving our sites more than £100k in electricity costs and reducing carbon emissions by 1000 tonnes/year. We’re currently identifying sites for installation on a subsidy free model and will be launching a new Share Offer in 2022.
- Awel wind turbines continued to spin and we secured planning permission for a 1.2MW ground mount solar farm to share the grid connection. We’re currently securing other permissions and looking to secure some grant funding to help build this project.
- Hwb y Gors – our new arts, education and enterprise centre – is taking shape. This is a £1.5 million redevelopment of the former Cwmgors primary school in the Swansea Valley, close to Awel community wind farm. You can see a film of Phase 1 of the project which shows how the school was left here, and a recent community/Climate Cymru event that we held there in August. They’re both by Mike Harrison who lives locally and has won two Welsh Baftas – so they are beautiful! The most recent updates including the current installation of our ground source heat pump can be seen on our dedicated Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hwbygors/posts/200168878978109
- Our Education Officer, Jen James has been developing a fantastic schools programme – ‘We are Energy Warriors’ – working with schools in Pembrokeshire, Newport and Swansea. You can see a video of how Saundersfoot Primary are reducing their energy consumption here. We’re working in partnership with our fellow charity, Energy Sparks who have a brilliant energy data platform – Welsh schools broken down by Local Authority are here. The top performing school in Wales is Bro Ingli whose energy data can be seen here.
