Lincolnshire's Low Carbon Business Network

Welcome to Lincolnshire's Low Carbon Business Network

The Lincolnshire's Low Carbon Business Network is committed to promoting a low carbon economy based on sustainable consumption and production. The aim of the network is to facilitate collaboration between members in order to promote and develop a sustainable, low carbon economy for the benefit of the whole community. Members are encouraged to collaborate on projects, share best practice and refer customers along the chain to maximise the reduction of carbon emissions. 

The aim of the Low Carbon Business Network is to bring together businesses and organisations across the County interested in developing a low carbon economy. The work of the Network is co-ordinated by a steering group. It meets every two months. It is currently chaired by Stephen Palmer of Place Architecture and secretarial support provided by Lincolnshire County Council. As it develops, the site will act as a meeting place for those involved in or thinking about the environmental economy, get them talking to each other and ultimately working together. As the site develops further, it will disseminate best practice and signpost to further information sources. The environmental economy of the East Midlands is a vibrant and growing part of the regions economy, representing approximately 71,000 jobs, around 3.5% of total employment and 3% of regional GDP. The network is managed by Lincolnshire Low Carbon Network Steering Group.
 

Building with Bio- Renewables

Low Carbon Business Network draws a countrywide audience to Lincolnshire

The reality of building with local or renewable, low carbon building materials such as straw was examined in detail at the EPIC Centre on Tuesday November 24th. The audience of architects, construction companies and self build enthusiasts heard from the UK’s leading exponent of straw bale construction Barbara Jones the MD of Amazonails describe the history of strawbale building in the UK since their first project in the early 1990's. Barbara explained that "Keep the head and the feet dry and straw walls will last at least 200 years!"

One major talking point was the ability of straw walls to take the loading of upper floors and roofs making for simple and economical structures. The audience learnt that, contrary to popular belief, straw under compression in a wall doesn't burn easily. Tests at the Building Research Establishment showed a straw wall wistanding fire for over 2.5 hours! 
 

The second speaker, Robert Ward Booth, explained that "Being green doesn't mean costing the earth" as he took the audience through “how to build a big one”. Sworder Auctioneer’s auction rooms are currently the largest low carbon straw bale building in the UK. This is a project that has produced several advances in straw bale building techniques especially around how best to effect the lowering of a pre constructed roof onto the straw walls. Debate still rages between the more conservative approaches that use timber faming to share the load versus fully load bearing straw walls.

Dr Behzad Sodagar lifted the curtain on some ground breaking research on the energy efficiency and whole life carbon foot-printing of straw buildings. His current project is to monitor the performance of the new straw built houses at Waddington and the new community hall at Hill Holt Wood. It is hoped that within the next three years some robust data will be available that will enable buildings to be viewed in terms of their whole life impact on carbon emissions. 
 

The symposium was supported by the Sustainable Construction Innovation Network. Their presentation illustrated the support  mechanisms and funding opportunities that are available to  small businesses in the design, construction, building materials and energy efficiency sectors of the built environment. 

The "Big Business Refit" by the Carbon Trust

Short video featuring Theo Paphitis from the Dragon's Den and Tom Daley CEO of the Carbon Trust promote the energy efficiency interest free loans programme.