The Hanover Centre Carbon RACE

The Hanover Centre Carbon Reduction Awareness and Community Engagement (RACE) project, is a Hanover10:10 Project based on a three-way partnership between the Hanover Community Association, the University of Brighton and Hanover10:10 (an action group of Hanover Action for Sustainable Living – HASL).

The focus of the project is centred around reducing the carbon footprint of the Hanover Community Centre building, which is located within 1.6 miles from the University of Brighton’s Cockcroft Building. The Centre has poor thermal performance resulting in high energy costs and associated CO₂ emissions, issues which it shares with a lot of the residential buildings in this area.  

We hope the project will achieve:

1.  To provide volunteering opportunities for staff and students at the University of Brighton and the Hanover community to provide both the basis for knowledge exchange and promotion of local neighbourliness and mutual respect.

2. To establish the specific sources of energy used and consequent carbon footprint of the Centre, within a 5-10 year historical ‘script’ that highlights relative changes over time (usage, carbon, comparative energy costs).

3. To identify measures that can reduce the energy use of the community centre through a feasibility study that will enable the HCA to prioritise action and investment to reduce its energy cost and associated carbon footprint.

4. To identify the range of sources of funding to implement intervention measures identified in the feasibility study and overall community education opportunities.

5. In partnership with ongoing work in Hanover10:10 to further enhance community interest in practical building-based energy conservation in Hanover, via the focus on the Centre as a beacon, that illustrates challenges and solutions that could be similarly applied to local housing.

6. To develop teaching resources, and hands-on real-world student community-based projects designed to improving the sustainability of the Centre, ensuring that the partnering

The Project proposal promotes the exchange and dissemination of information from volunteer staff and students at the University of Brighton and the Hanover community. Some of our students reside in the Hanover community, so their input will be:

- putting back into their own community in a unique practical way.

- encourage the students to engage, interact and become part of the wider community.

- increase awareness of the diverse avenues for community engagement, and so help foster understanding, communication and mutual respect between all the communities of Hanover.

For further details please see 

http://hanovercommunity.org.uk/environment/student-projects/

and

The Carbon RACE at: http://www.hasl.org.uk/carbon-race.html