 If you've never switched energy company before and are on a standard tariff, did you know you could make an average saving of around £300 per year on your bills by switching? Tips like this are exactly why CREW’s free energy advice helpline is proving useful for the residents of Tooting! We are piloting a hyper-local, multilingual approach focusing on the Tooting Ward. The team are creating links with local organisations to generate referrals, such as Wandle Housing Association, DONS Local Action Group (a network of Covid-19 volunteers) and Mushkil Aasaan. Project flyers are available in Hindi, Spanish, Tamil and Urdu and CREW can offer advice in these languages as well as French, Polish and Portuguese. Our energy advice is aimed at people on low incomes, older people, families with young children, people with long-term health conditions or anyone else who is vulnerable in some way. We aim to save people money, assist them in navigating the often-confusing world of energy companies and tariffs, and make sure people are getting all the discounts, funding, freebies and support they are eligible for. One of our clients saved £440! Read on to hear just some of our success stories.
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 We are pleased to announce that with over £30,000 of investment and additional booster funding from the Community Shares Booster Programme, we have successfully raised £50,000 to install four air source heat pumps at Devas Club in Battersea! We'd like to firstly sincerely thank everyone who invested in our share offer and welcome them into our CREW. This was our very first share offer, launched mid-pandemic, mid-Brexit deadline, with Christmas and lockdown to contend with. With a lot of hard work and community support, we made it happen and we could not be happier. A special shoutout goes to all our members and Directors, Andre Pinho who assessed our documentation for the Standard Mark certification, the team at the Community Shares Unit for supporting our booster funding application, Simmons & Simmons for their pro bono legal support, and countless other community groups who helped us spread the word. But don't worry if you missed this round, we'll be back with more exciting funding opportunities very soon - watch this space and register your interest here!
 We’re pleased to announce that CREW Energy’s community share offer has been awarded the official Community Shares Standard Mark!
Both our share offer document and our business plan have been under assessment by an independent licensed assessor since late 2020 to ensure that:
 CREW is aiming to raise £50,000 throughout January 2021 to fund a renewable heat project in south-west London with our longstanding partners, Devas Club. The share offer launched on 14 December 2020 and will be running throughout January 2021. On 8 January 2021, we reached £10,000 of our investment target! Shareholders will entirely fund the cost of 4 community-owned heat pumps to be installed at the youth club and, in return, will get a targeted 3% return on their investment. Not only will these heat pumps generate huge energy savings in the Devas building – £962 per year in fact – they will reduce carbon emissions in the area by 17 tonnes CO2e annually and provide CREW with a means of hosting yet more climate outreach and education across Wandsworth, Merton and Lambeth. A challenging but pivotal year for a share offer While community share offers are an established means of funding community energy, ours is the first of its kind in London to focus on renewable heat! Luckily for us, heat pumps have been a hot topic in 2020 through the Government’s Green Homes Grant and the so-called Green Plan, where they were cited as a key element in the UK’s race to net zero by 2050. This certainly made it easier to shout about the green power of the mighty heat pump. However, in the midst of a pandemic, it sometimes feels like there is, understandably, little room in people’s newsfeeds for a community project. This means we’ve had to work extremely hard all through 2020 to not only combat lockdown delays in surveying the building and quoting for the heat pumps, but also to navigate the fast-paced news sphere (not to mention launching at Christmas time and the Brexit deadline) in an entirely digital campaign! Find out more about investing in CREW Energy’s community share offer here. Or follow our journey on social media and through our newsletter. |
