Grants between £500 and £1,000 are being made available to businesses by the five councils in Somerset as part of the Somerset Climate Emergency Strategy. And communities in the county are being invited to bid for grants of up to £75,000 to assist with carbon reduction projects.
Carbon-reduction grants for businesses
Businesses in Somerset are being asked to consider how they can reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their use of energy. For example, businesses could replace conventional lighting with low energy lighting or implement a car sharing initiative.
Reducing your carbon footprint offers benefits to your business as well as the environment. These include:
- Reduced energy bills and reduced exposure to future energy price rises
- Improved cash flow
- Increased profitability, productivity and competitiveness
- Improved green credentials, which helps to attract and retain the right quality of staff
- The ability to win new contracts, especially with the public sector
- A more comfortable working environment and improvements to air quality
The grants are available to any Somerset-based business, but your business must match-fund it on 50:50 basis.
To find out more and apply, visit www.somerset.gov.uk/climate-emergency/carbon-reduction-business-grants/
New climate emergency funding grant for communities
A new grant scheme has been launched to help local communities take positive action to help Somerset become carbon neutral and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Cities, towns, parish councils and community organisations in unparished areas across Somerset are invited to bid for between £5,000 and £75,000 for innovative projects that can make a real difference in reducing carbon emissions and contribute to making Somerset resilient to the effects of climate change.
Such projects include ones relating to:
- Reducing the reliance on car travel locally, encouraging walking, cycling and low carbon transport
- Creating community electric car share and charging points
- Supporting local sustainable food markets and co-operatives
- Community energy initiatives
- Lowering energy use in the community (e.g. within public buildings)
- Lowering carbon demand and consumption
- Supporting biodiversity and ecological adaptation and resilience
- Capturing and storing carbon (including tree planting and other sequestration initiatives)
- Having a demonstrable impact on addressing the human impacts on the climate by affecting behaviour and lifestyle-change in local communities and the residents of Somerset
- Empowering the local community to promote a culture of sustainable living
- Helping the environment to mitigate against, and adapt to, the impacts of climate change (e.g. flood and water schemes, hedgerow planting)
- Supporting waste reduction initiatives that assist the local community to reuse and promote products that help reduce consumption
- Increasing local recycling of goods, especially plastic pots, tubs trays and reduces single-use plastics
- Increasing community composting
To find out more or apply, visit www.somerset.gov.uk/climate-emergency/somerset-climate-emergency-community-fund-2020-2021/