Geeta Lakshmi (Fellow Director) and I have been working on a research paper using Sustainable Hockerton as an example. We were inspired to look at valuing what we have done incorporating financial, social and environmental aspects rather than the finances alone. By doing this we hope to find a mechanism to demonstrate the return on capital is better for community projects like ours. This should make borrowing perceived as less risky and hopefully, cheaper. If you would like to read the full paper you can follow this link as it has just been published and available for open access for a limited time. In previous work Geeta et al has also looked at how community groups like ours can help to avoid exploitation of a common resource. This may be of interest too, click here.
Monetarising the social and environmental benefits is fraught with difficulty and is potentially controversial. However, we hope by speaking the “language” of financiers we may draw attention to areas often ignored by classical accounting and highlight their importance.
In other news we are still actively looking for local roof opportunities for PV installations including the local school, leisure centre, medical centre and supermarket. Any help with this much appreciated. We are also starting the initial exploratory phase of work with a local hospital (Kings Mill) with an innovative anaerobic digester manufacturer (H2AD) to supply heat and power to the hospital from gas made from their waste product streams. This is progressing with samples being taken to see if the waste stream is viable.