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21 Community Groups bid to become finalists in NESTA’s £1 million prize Big Green Challenge

16/07/2008

Twenty-one community-based climate change innovators have been shortlisted to become finalists in NESTA’s ‘Big Green Challenge’.

The Big Green Challenge is the first project of its kind in the UK, offering up to ten community groups the chance to compete for a £1 million prize with their imaginative and successful approaches to cutting carbon emissions and tackling climate change head-on.

NESTA has launched the prize to stimulate the profile of practical climate change innovation within communities.

From the hundreds of initial entries received by NESTA, the 21 shortlisted projects will unveil their plans in a Dragons Den-style pitch to an influential judging panel including:

• Philip Pullman, author and domestic climate change activist

• Juliet Davenport, CEO and founder of Good Energy

• Maria Adebowale, Capacity Global Founder and Director

• Nick Starr, Executive Director of the National Theatre and
NESTA Trustee

The judges are looking for community-led initiatives that can radically reduce carbon emissions, be replicated nationwide and be sustainable in the long term.

Ten finalists will be announced in September 2008, securing £20,000 funding to pilot their projects for a year. The judges will decide on the overall winner – or winners - in November 09, with the prize money going to those projects that can prove their ideas will have an impact on their carbon footprint.

CEO Jonathan Kestenbaum said, “Big Green Challenge was launched to encourage communities to come together to generate new ideas on how to save the planet. We had an amazing response from a wide cross-section of groups, and these 21 finalists prove that new ideas to tackle climate change can be found within our own communities. Too often people only associate innovation with technology. The Big Green Challenge shows that people-powered, social innovation can make a difference to the big issues of today.”

Amongst the 21 finalists are:

• The UK-wide Carbon Rationing Action Groups (CRAGs). Like diet clubs for the carbon-heavy, CRAGs are support groups for people trying to cut down on their carbon footprint. Members survey their present carbon footprints and use CRAG tools to map their own steady and achievable carbon descent path.

• The Three Green Valleys - Brecon, Wales. This group aims to develop micro hydro generation on steep valley sides that will produce enough electricity to finance further installations and provide capital for habitat restoration, efficiency measures at home, and community food and transport projects.

• Used Cooking Oil Alliance – Arundel, Sussex. Work This Way aims to set up a bio-fuels production programme in conjunction with Ford Prison in Sussex, collecting used vegetable oil from other prisons in the region to offer to local communities.

• Food waste separation and recycling in communities in the NorthWest. Lancaster Recycling Community plan to dramatically raise levels of food waste recycling and implement a range of green initiatives to over 1,000 local households. Plans include a kitchen food waste collection scheme and the introduction of a special ‘rocket’ composter.

ENDS

The pitches to Judges are taking place this week. Telephone interviews with the judges are available from 9am - 9.30am and 5.30pm – 6pm on Tuesday 15 July, or on Wednesday 16 July.

Contact:

Contact NESTA Big Green Challenge PR consultants:
Hilary Carter, Email: hilary@societymedia.co.uk, Tel: 0789 013 7074
Anna Hollis, Email: anna@societymedia.co.uk, Tel: 020 8983 1858

About NESTA

NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - a unique and independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative. It invests in early-stage companies, informs and shapes policy, and delivers practical programmes that inspire others to solve the big challenges of the future.
www.nesta.org.uk

The Big Green Challenge

Launched in October 2007, the Big Green Challenge is a £1 million prize fund to encourage and reward people working together to find new and better ways to tackle climate change. NESTA is challenging not-for-profit groups and organisations to develop and implement approaches to achieve significant reduction of C02 emissions in their communities.

Through the Big Green Challenge, we aim to reveal, and better understand, the potential power of new forms of community-led action on climate change - and improve the infrastructure (support, finance, organisational structure and policy) needed to maximise the potential of these innovations.

Biogs of Judges

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946. A prolific novelist, he is best known for 'His Dark Materials' Series.

Northern Lights (1995), won a Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and a British Book Award, and was shortlisted in 2007 for the Carnegie of Carnegies. The Amber Spyglass (2000) was the first children's book to win the Whitbread Book of the Year.

A film adaptation of Northern Lights - The Golden Compass - was launched at Cannes Film Festival 2007, and opened in the UK in December 2007.

His new novel ‘Once upon a time in the North’ has a strong environment message. He has just installed a ground source heat pump in his Oxfordshire home.

Juliet Davenport, Big Green Challenge Vice Chair

Juliet Davenport is Chief Executive and founder of Good Energy, the 100% renewable electricity supplier.

Good Energy is committed to providing solutions to climate change. The company does this by generating and supplying renewable electricity to homes and businesses throughout the UK.

Good Energy also supports individuals and communities by providing information about climate change and with financial schemes that pay them for generating their own electricity.

Juliet is a graduate of Oxford University and Birbeck College. She sits on Ofgem’s Environment and Advisory group and the Ofgem microgeneration steering group. In 2006 she won the Triodos Bank Woman in Ethical Business Award.

Maria Adebowale

Maria Adebowale is the Director of Capacity Global a social enterprise specialising in environmental justice, sustainable development, diversity, community participation and human rights.

Maria works on research and policy development in these areas for non-governmental organisations, the private sector and government.

She has a Masters in Public International Law from SOAS, University of London and is also the author of numerous publications in her specialist areas. Maria is also the Access and Inclusion Commissioner for English Heritage. She is also the Chair of Water Wise.

In addition Maria is an advisory member the Communications Committee for the Economic and Research Council and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was formerly a Commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission.

Nick Starr

Nick Starr has been Executive Director of the National Theatre since 2002. He is a NESTA Trustee.

In 1991 Nick was appointed the National Theatre’s head of planning.

In 1996 he became Director of Warwick Arts Centre, and the following year joined the Almeida as Executive Director, working alongside Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid to broaden the company’s scope with touring, seasons in the West End, the Malvern Festival, the conversion of Gainsborough Studios for ‘Shakespeare in Shoreditch’.

Before joining the National, he ran a production company that commissioned and developed projects (‘Power’, and ‘Jerry Springer The Opera) and produced ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore' in the West End.