Green Streets - About Green Streets

Green Streets 2010

British Gas Green Streets is a groundbreaking project helping Britain’s communities to be greener. The competition ended on 31st March 2011 after fourteen months and the winner has now been announced.

The residentsof Llangattock in the Brecon Beacons National Park were named as the winning community on the Final Event on 1 July. They received £100,000 to put towards a further environmental project in their community.

Over the course of the programme, British Gas has invested £2 million to fund microgeneration and energy efficiency measures that have helped the 14 communities around the UK to save and generate energy.  From inner city communities in London and Birmingham to a remote Scottish island, the 14 communities came up with their own innovative energy projects and were selected from almost 100 applicants to take part in Green Streets.

These Green Streets communities are living case studies of how we can all change our energy use through efficiency measures and new technology.  

What have the communities done?

Each community came up with an innovative energy project, that focussed on saving energy, generating energy locally and engaging their wider community. Each community has at least one community building and at least 20 homes. As a team, they worked with British Gas to choose how they execute their plan.
 
British Gas has provided advice and support, as well as expertise in the technology that has saved and generated the energy, and has carried out energy assessments on all of the residential homes to help all those participating to choose how to save energy; whether it be advice on energy saving, installing loft and cavity wall insulation, or solar panels to generate their own hot water or electricity.  

The communities were judged on criteria such as:

- saving energy
- generating energy locally
- getting the local community involved
- making a sustainable, remarkable difference

In the “How To…” section of Green Streets, you can read how to adopt some ways to help you do this at home and in your own community too.

Where are the communities?

Take a look at the Green Streets map to see where the communities are located.

How did you select the 14 projects?

In October 2009, the Green Streets team set off on a tour of Great Britain to select 14 communities from 40 community shortlisted applications. The shortlisted communities were invited to pitch their idea to a panel of experts who would have the tough job of deciding the winner of each heat. The panel consisted of a British Gas director, an expert from the Centre for Alternative Technology and where possible someone from the local media.

The panel was chaired by the institute for Public Policy Research who ensured the decision was fair.  The decision was made on the evening and considered the overall community idea and support they had locally and the approach they’d taken to saving and generating energy locally in their proposal. At each heat, it was a tough decision!

12 projects were selected at the heats plus 2 ‘wild card’ places which were allocated after all of the heats had taken place.

Thinking about starting your own community project? Find some helpful tips by visiting our “How To…” Guides, or why not get in touch with one of the Green Streets communities near you for inspiration?