Applying For A Grant
technology
All of our projects are chosen according to strict guidelines, including:
- Our projects are additional to a 'business as usual' situation without our support
- The project delivers benefits to the city and the north east, including social improvement, providing employment and helping the local economy
- The technology in the project has to promote a more sustainable future.
We may support:
- energy efficiency
- renewables (wind, solar, benign hydro, biomass)
- fuel switching/mixing to biomass
- combined heat and power (CHP)
- transportation/logistics projects
- recycling
If you would like to become a technology partner to the campaign please contact us.
Note:
The reductions delivered by the project have to be readily verifiable by a third party.
We do not invest in deep-sea storage, deep-mine storage, enhanced oil recovery, coal bed methane capture/recovery, gas pipeline leak fix, large scale hydro or nuclear projects, because they have a limited (or no) possibility of promoting sustainable development.
Forestry
All our forests must satisfy the following conditions:
- the forest must be a new planting scheme. Although often of benefit to the environment, not cutting down a forest ('avoided deforestation') or replanting recently-felled rotational forestry does not meet our qualifications for a climate change tool
- the forest must contain a very high proportion of native species. For example, we do not support the use of fast-growing conifers
- forests must be managed for a minimum of 99 years
- the sites must be easily accessible to the public.
Because our forests require long-term planning and management, we invest in schemes that are controlled by professional foresters.
For forestry balance projects, we also need to ensure:
- monitoring it over the lifetime of the project
- investing in additional technology projects (to ensure there will be enough carbon credits)
- verification
- administration
- legal and insurance costs
- marketing / education / building awareness
These are all-important areas - they help us to ensure that your money is well invested (e.g. that the requisite number of trees stay in the ground).
Note:
The amount of CO2 absorbed by a given forest over 99 years depends on many factors, including latitude, rainfall, soil type, species mix and management regime. Our forestry science partners - the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM) - calculate how much carbon dioxide our sites absorb.