The Go Carbon Neutral project ran from 2008 to 2009. It sought to explore ways of effectively engaging deprived urban communities in taking action to reduce their carbon emissions. We worked on two separate housing estates to explore how this could be done. These were:
• The Cranberry Lane Estate in Newham, East London which is part-owned and managed by the East Thames Housing Association.
• A part of the Council-managed Knowle West Estate in Bristol , where the project was run by the Knowle West Media Centre.

Social housing makes up around 13% of England’s housing stock and consequently has the potential to make a huge contribution to the climate change agenda. Social landlords themselves have an environmental and social responsibility to let properties which are energy-efficient. But it is also a matter of persuading the people living in these homes to change their lifestyles and sustain such changes over time.

The idea of seeking to encourage “behaviour change” has gained currency alongside the need to produce or retro-fit more carbon efficient housing since tour programme was conceived and started. But sustained behaviour change will actually prove hard to achieve without the use of legislation, financial incentives and technological solutions if the UK is to meet its ambitious target of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2050. Our project sought to shed some light on the problem of creating lower-carbon living amongst residents of social housing and how it might be addressed.

The programme explored five ways of encouraging behaviour change:
• Community champions working at neighbourhood level.
• Carbon diaries or passbooks for residents to log their behaviour and changes to their behaviour around key issues of energy, transport and food
• Community leadership awards, for individual residents to develop their own “solutions”
• Promotional events and participatory activities
• The distribution of smart meters to provide people with information on home energy use.

The programme was evaluated by Dr Alina Cosgrove of the University of Reading, and was supported by the Wates Foundation, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Pontin Charitable Trust and CIVA, with community leadership awards from UnLtd.

To find out more, download the project reports as follows:
• The Executive Summary and Recommendations:
• The Main Report, including the University of Reading Evaluation: