By Chris Skellett, Co-Chair Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust
For the last couple of years, you will have been reading increasingly in the Blueskin News about the wonderful array of activities that have been underway in the Blueskin area, most notably the Weggies, WOO, Get the Train, Blueskin Low Oil Commuting, the W3 Rideshare scheme and the Blueskin Energy Project. What a fantastic range of community projects, all geared towards providing us with a sustainable lifestyle in an uncertain future.
Anyone who attended the Nicole Foss presentation last month could not help but feel alarmed at the inevitability of an impending global economic collapse coupled with a total breakdown of carbon based energy strategies. Something has to change, and it has to change soon.
It's all too easy for us to sit at home and watch the global dramas play out on the six o'clock news, but here in Blueskin Bay (including Purakaunui of course) we have a great opportunity to actually do something about it. Most people choose to live in the area because of the lifestyle. We love growing our own food, looking after our own and (historically) chopping our own wood.
In the last two years, however, the wood chopping has become a little un-PC. Burning trees to keep warm just doesn't quite tick the boxes in terms of global warming/ low carbon footprints, etc. However, within our area, there is a growing level of excitement about creating a viable source of renewable energy from the planned wind cluster, probably sited on Porteous Hill behind Warrington.
We now seem to have the technical expertise, the financial know-how and the political goodwill to make something quite special happen in our area. Whatever business model is eventually used, the commitment of BCRT is for the project to be owned as much as possible by the community, either as shareholders in a limited company or as members of a cooperative. Any shortfall in local funding can be made up by contributions from ethical investment funds. Community ownership, both financially and psychologically, is the critical factor in the projects success.
As the wind cluster plans are being prepared for public consultation, the Trust is aware that we would be establishing the first community-owned wind farm in New Zealand. As a prototype of this kind of venture, we have become a nationally significant project and would provide a model for other communities to follow. We would be able to disengage from our current reliance on the big five energy companies and generate our own power.
It would be a great feeling to look out at the four turbines slowly rotating on the hill and know that they were built by us, owned by us and were pulling us together as a community. We will have greater control over our power prices. We will have greater certainty over a sustainable power supply. And we will have achieved something quite radical as a community.
I joined the BRCT as one of six trustees. We have a governance role to ensure that the Trust stays true to its objectives. Encouraging Blueskin Bay to be as resilient as possible, through local food production, local transport initiatives and local energy projects (the retrofit house insulation scheme, a planned energy advice service and the proposed wind cluster), all seem to be excellent goals for our community.
I would encourage anyone who has an interest in the Trust to log on to the website or to visit our office at Waitati School. These are exciting times for the Bay. I hope that everyone will feel connected at some level to the idea of developing a more 'resilient' community, and that you can be supportive of the many different and worthy initiatives that are already underway.
