Within Energy Retail, community sponsorships are designed to help young people become more energy efficient and educate them about the environment. That’s why we sponsored a range of initiatives designed to encourage young people to switch off their TVs and do something different! Sponsorships include Scottish schools athletics through the Energising Scotland’s Youth initiative and Read for the Future, a literacy programme developed with Friends of the Earth. We also help fund green energy projects in the community through our Green Energy Trust Fund.

Energy Retail supports the “Energising Scotland’s Youth” initiative in a bid to persuade kids to switch off their televisions and computers to save electrical energy and get active – by using energy of a different sort.  Our involvement with schools athletics began in 2004 and in 2007 we announced a new two-year sponsorship. Our funding provides sports clinics, enabling young athletes to train with support from national champions, and supports athletics’ meetings.

More than 10,000 young athletes were put through their paces at a series of events, including the ScottishPower National Cross Country Championships at Falkirk’s Callendar Park, the Secondary School Indoor Championships at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall International Sports Arena, the Celtic Cup Youth Festival at Grangemouth Stadium and primary and secondary schools cross country events.

The Read for the Future campaign with Friends of the Earth is not only encouraging children campaign which challenges primary seven pupils throughout Scotland to raise sponsorship by switching off their televisions and electronic gadgets and reading as many books as possible over eight weeks.

The aim of the initiative is to encourage children to become more energy efficient and to improve literacy standards, while raising money for Friends of the Earth Scotland's Greener Homes campaign, which helps people to make their homes more environmentally friendlyto switch off electrical gadgets in favour of reading, but is helping to improve literacy standards and raising money for energy efficiency projects.  For more information see Read for the Future case study.

The ScottishPower Energy People Trust is an independent charity set up by ScottishPower to help end fuel poverty throughout Britain. The Trust awards grant funding to not-for-profit organisations and groups that represent some of the most vulnerable people in our society, with particular emphasis on projects that involve children or young people.

During 2007 the ScottishPower Energy People Trust awarded grant funding of almost £1.45 million to 31 projects, helping 132,172 individuals in 42,633 households. Since its formation in November 2005 to March 2008, the ScottishPower Energy People Trust has awarded total funding of £3.57 million to 87 projects, helping more than 215,000 individuals in over 88,000 homes.

For more information, see ScottishPower Energy People Trust website.

ScottishPower, as Scottish Business in the Community Large Company of the Year, sponsored The Prince of Wales's May Day Business Summit on Climate Change in Edinburgh on 1 May 2008.  We also sponsored the first Prince of Wales's May Day Business Summit on Climate Change in Edinburgh on 7 November 2007, which followed the inaugural event in England in May 2007

These events were unique in their emphasis on action. Companies were asked to make firm commitments to reduce their carbon emissions, leading Scotland to a low carbon economy, working not only in their companies, but with their employees, suppliers and customers.  Over 100 of Scotland's top business leaders pledged to take action on climate change.

The May Day Network is growing and has around 900 members in the UK – 114 in Scotland.  It provides a hub for businesses to share their experience in tackling climate change and engaging suppliers, customers and employees to do the same.  For more information, see Scottish Business in the Community’s website or Business in the Community’s website.

Our independent Green Energy Trust Fund supports projects such as small-scale wind and solar energy schemes in community and educational settings, including schools.

During 2007 the Green Energy Trust funded 16 projects across the UK, investing £200,963. Many of the Trust’s projects are in schools, and are helping to educate people about the benefits of renewable energy, and, in many cases, helping save money on fuel bills.

The positive impact these projects have on local communities was recognised in 2007 when the Green Energy Trust was reaccredited with a Big Tick from Business in the Community in its annual awards scheme. Here is a selection of some projects supported in 2007:

• The Trust helped with the restoration of a 15th Century stable block at Castlemilk House, Glasgow, which was once visited by Mary Queen of Scots. Trust funding provided a ground source heat pump system, which recycles heat energy from the ground to warm the building. The historic site is now owned by the community through the Cassiltoun Trust.
• Funding from the Trust enabled the Earthship Fife Visitor Centre to install energy meters to highlight the amount of renewable energy used at the attraction. Attracting 4,000 visitors each year, the Earthship, the only one of its kind in the UK, is entirely self sufficient.
• Glenkens Community and Arts Trust in New Galloway has installed a wood-pellet biomass boiler to heat the building thanks to a £20,000 grant from the Green Energy Trust. The former school has been transformed by volunteers as a hub for the entire community.
• The Trust supported New Cumnock swimmers by awarding £20,000 to install a heat-store air pump to heat their outdoor swimming pool for the first time. The energy efficient system is also helping reduce the energy bills for the community-owned pool.
• Partick Housing Association residents are benefiting from warmer homes and lower fuel bills after a £18,000 grant from the Trust helped provide energy efficient features at their Crathie Drive building. The new-build flats are insulated with wool and feature a water tank pre-heated by a solar panel.

The Trust celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2008 and is on course to deliver funding worth £1 million to 100 different projects.  For more information please visit the Green Energy Trust’s website.

Other projects we have been involved with are:-

Energy Retail teamed up with local radio station Clyde 1 to celebrate Scotland’s National Green Day and raise awareness of energy efficiency. We gave away two energy-saving light bulbs to the first 500 visitors to our Green Day exhibition stand and ran a radio campaign to highlight energy saving tips.

ScottishPower sponsored the Carbon Neutral Climate Dome, a six-metre inflatable Dome which tours around the region and aims to raise awareness of the climate change message among people who may never previously have given the matter much thought. Climate Dome aims to make the complicated subject of climate change simple, local relevant and immediate and asks people to make a written pledge to cut their carbon emissions.

ScottishPower sponsored WWF’s Local Footprints project helping schools and local authorities cut their environmental impact.  The Local Footprints project builds on innovative work already achieved in Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire and in North Lanarkshire looking at how we can live well, and still live within our environmental limits.

ScottishPower Renewable Energy funded environmental improvements at St Patrick's Primary School in Shotts, North Lanarkshire, near Black Law Windfarm. The grant was used to fund a project to improve the school grounds undertaken in consultation with the council and RSPB. The project included safety improvements (a stream flows through the school grounds), ground levelling, the creation of new pathways and habitat enhancements through planting trees and shrubs and installing nest boxes.