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North Leigh Energy Efficient Village

The North Leigh Energy Efficient Village Project is an ongoing local venture in North Leigh, rural West Oxfordshire. The Village has around 1000 domestic properties of mixed design and era as well as a small industrial estate, primary school, church and a few other public amenities.

Tags: energy efficiency, energyuse, lowcarbon, North Leigh

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Thames Valley Energy Centre - TVEC offers free, expert and impartial energy saving advice to help you save money, energy and the environment.

The vision ...

An interested resident of North Leigh, who had attended a presentation from TVEC (Thames Valley Energy Centre, now United Sustainable Energy Agency), contacted TVEC with the ambition of making North Leigh the most energy efficient village in the UK...read on to see how the story unfolded..

Latest: See Challenge North Leigh's Website

Completion of the first North Leigh Energy Efficiency Project December '08

North Leigh's first Energy Efficiency Project has been completed. In March 2005 the project asked, "Could North Leigh be Oxfordshire's Leading Energy Efficient Village?" The two aims were to save energy and to decide whether an energy label, rather like those on refrigerators, could be applied to a village. For two years from June 2006 to June 2008 volunteers submitted quarterly gas and electricity meter readings. The first year provided a baseline and in the second year residents were asked to pull out all the stops to improve their energy efficiency. Then the results were analysed by Dr Christian Jardine of the Environmental Change Institute.

The analysis showed that families who provided meter readings over the two years achieved savings of 8% of electricity during the second year. The use of gas is different because it is mainly used for heating but when the effects of different winters were taken into account a saving of 7% had been achieved.

The project showed it would be possible to "energy-label" a village but it would not be helpful to do so because the results are too dependent on the types, age and condition of the housing stock to allow friendly, helpful competition between communities.

Other achievements include a trial of part-night street lighting has been completed and it is proposed to extend it throughout North Leigh. Wind-powered generation for the school and photo-voltaic generation for St Mary's Church have been considered both unfortunately, impractical for technical reasons. The North Leigh Primary School has done splendidly, gaining a Silver Award as an Oxfordshire ECO School.

What else? North Leigh has taken a leading role by supplying information to villages in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Scotland.

And last but certainly not least, the project attracted the attention of Scottish and Southern Energy who adopted North Leigh as one of their three national projects. Known as "Challenge North Leigh!" the village is now aiming to secure a £20,000 award by showing how to reduce the use of electricity by 10% during 2009 compared with 2008. Motivation is the key to getting everyone to "Think global. Act local" and the new project is trying a wide variety of ideas to involve everyone in the village. One is particularly interesting: it is hoped to attract funds for the development of an electronic display to be placed in a prominent position in the village to display the progress of the energy saving measures - an idea which would have widespread applications in other communities. Watch this space!

Setting the scene...

Between them, it was decided that the best way in which to meet this eventual aim would be to measure the energy efficiency of the village in a way that would allow a comparison to be made with other villages in the UK following the same methodology. It was decided that the Energy Label device was the most appropriate vehicle in which to do this, being a recognisable and easily understood method of displaying energy efficiency. TVEC and the project steering group, in conjunction with the Energy Saving Trust, agreed the methodology for the implementation of this label and it was defined in a feasibility study finalised at the beginning of 2006.

The project today...

The project is now in its third round of data collection, and as set out in the methodology, is utilising meter readings from participating households to quantify carbon emissions for the village. The project has also received further money from European Leader+ funding scheme, showing the value associated with the project and its significance at a European level.

We recently had a screening of An Inconvenient Truth to over 30 people at the Village Hall, contributed to the School Fete, and held an info evening with Scottish and Southern Energy.