Energy Plus is about the wider impacts of our intense use of energy, particularly fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal, on our environment and our climate. Everything we do is connected with climate change: the way we build, heat, and light our homes and buildings; how we travel; how we use land and how we treat our forests, fields, soil, and rivers; how we exploit the fish in our oceans, lakes, and waterways, and how we use water; and the pressures we put on wildlife, birds, animals, insects and bugs with human activity.  

We rely on energy for almost everything we do, but as we burn energy, we create greenhouse gases that put a blanket of emissions around our planet causing it to warm, leading to climate change. The rise in temperatures and the damage to the natural environment that go with it threatens our survival, according to the government’s top climate change advisers. Our Government and most European governments are so worried that they have declared a climate emergency.  

Through the Think Tanks, participants will expand their knowledge, build their motivation and confidence to taking action, and link up with active groups already working to tackle environmental problems. Based on our experience to date, people will go back to their communities and workplaces motivated and confident with clear ideas and plans to bring about change.  

We estimate that each Think Tank will attract 30 participants, from 15 groups or organisations. Assuming 10 of the 15 groups deliver a project or promote organisational change, this will create 150 new environmental projects or developments a year. With on average 10 people benefitting from each new project, each workshop will help 100 people take action to protect the environment, causing a ripple effect. We will record success stories, describing the pathways alongside the barriers faced and how to overcome them. Over two years, we will produce an Energy Plus Academy handbook, documenting what can be achieved and how to deliver ideas that work.  

A wide body of individuals and groups working to tackle the climate change crisis will benefit from the Energy Plus Academy. Our special focus is on social landlords and helping to make an impact in the areas where they operate, working directly on energy–saving and environmental protections. Groups that will be interested include:  

• Social landlords and some private landlords; 
• Tenants, leaseholders, low-income home-owners; 
• Community organisations, social enterprises, community land trusts, community energy initiatives; 
• Developers, builders, planners, surveyors, architects;  

• Energy companies and agencies linked to energy provision and renewable energy; 
• Public bodies including parish and district councils, regulators, government organisations and civil servants;  
• Organisations and individuals involved with environmental and climate change issues, including energy use (fossil fuels or renewables); energy–saving in the built environment; protection of nature and the natural environment; low energy travel (cycling, walking, public transport); greening projects; decarbonising human activity and development; 

The idea of the Energy Plus Academy came out of LSE Housing’s work in communities: estate and area regeneration; housing renewal; fuel poverty; energy saving; environmental rescue; and community involvement. Both landlords and tenants face major environmental problems in low-income areas due to a lack of joined-up thinking about how we build and its impacts on the environment: about how we maintain, manage, and care for what we build, and how we control pollution and other environmental damage. In the past, numbers of homes have dictated policy.  

We now face a huge task. We must rescue and restore millions of existing homes and thousands of neighbourhoods, preventing millions of tons of carbon emissions leaking into the air. Where we add new homes to our existing stock, we must do this without using more land or emitting more carbon. These are huge challenges, but to reach zero carbon by 2050, we should strive for a zero-carbon approach immediately. To come near to this goal, we must tackle virtually everything we do that uses energy. This is the core idea of the Energy Plus Academy.  

The Energy Plus Academy also builds on our sister ‘Housing Plus Academy’ which has successfully been exploring innovative social housing management and development ideas with professionals, residents, and third sector agencies since 2014. For more information visit the following link on the LSE website: https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/LSEHOUSING/research/Housing-Plus-Academy/