Grant funding and technical support for Dorset organisations to reduce their carbon emissions will continue for another two years thanks to additional funding of over £5m secured by Dorset Council.
The funding, provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), will extend the Council’s existing three-year Low Carbon Dorset programme by a further two years until 2023.
Through Low Carbon Dorset, organisations across the county have been accessing free technical advice and grant funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy measures.
Since its launch in April 2019 the programme has given out 91 grants worth over £2m. And provided free advice to over 100 Dorset based businesses, community groups and publicly funded organisations. This support has helped save just under 4,000 tonnes of CO2 a year – the equivalent of taking around 800 cars off the road.
Dorset Council’s Sustainability Team Manager, Antony Littlechild, has been leading the bid for additional funding and said – “Uptake of this support over the past three years has been phenomenal with over 350 applications received. It has been especially encouraging to see the appetite from Dorset businesses to be more environmentally conscious. We are thrilled to be able to extend the support to even more organisations and projects.”
The Council will continue to work in partnership with Dorset AONB to deliver the programme. Through which they hope to reduce Dorset’s emissions by a further 5k tonnes and help fund the installation of another 5MW of renewable energy in Dorset over the next two years.
Councillor Ray Bryan, Dorset Council’s portfolio holder for Highways, Travel and Environment, said of the recent news “The Low Carbon Dorset programme has been hugely successful over the past three years, and we are over the moon that our bid for funds to secure its extension has been approved. The programme has, and will continue to be, a core component of the Council’s response to the Climate & Ecological Emergency. And these additional funds offer an exciting opportunity to support Dorset in its move towards a low-carbon future.”
