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Located in rural Cheshire, Ashton Hayes is a well knit community of about 1000 people that is aiming to become England's first carbon neutral community. We started our journey in January 2006 and since then we have already cut our carbon dioxide emissions significantly - by working together, sharing ideas and through behavioural change. We now have our community owned renewable energy company.
This website encapsulates our journey towards carbon neutrality and offers free advice and guidance. Please feel free to use anything from our website (we'd like a credit if you can).
Friday, October 8, 2010 at 12:57PM 
With the help of Paul Clarke, founder of the green-car-guide.com, and the DECC LCCC finance, Ashton Hayes residents should be driving one of the first true electric 5-seat hatchback cars in the New Year. Paul has persuaded Nissan UK to release one of its new Nissan Leaf vehicles to us, even though demand is immense. Here is Paul talking to the community about the car - looks fabulous.
Friday, October 8, 2010 at 12:52PM 
Cakes and bubbly draw a large audience at our 5th Anniversary event. The audience learned about the project history, found out how we did on our carbon surveys and how our behaviours have changed (download full summary), heard about the Nissan Leaf community electric car that we hope to have in Spring 2011 and discovered how the microgrid and heat store will work. We are also treated to the children's views on sustainable living and heard about Beth Barlow's plans for our new film entititled 'Letters from the Future'. Thanks to everyone who came along.
Find out more about green cars on green-car-guide.com
Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 1:05PM Everyone is welcome to join us in celebrating the 5 year anniversary of the project. There will be bubbly and soft drinks and cupcakes plus presentations by the school children, the 2010 carbon footprint survey and information about how we plan to spend the £400,000 DECC grant on a microgrid and community electric car.
We'll be filming the event too. Please try and come along
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 1:54PM Our proposal to engage the younger people of the village by producing a 'Letters from the Future' film with producer Beth Barlow has received the go ahead and been awarded a £4000 grant from DECC. We'll explain more at our public meeting on the microgrid project and electric caar plans (see story below) on 7 October, 7.30-9pm at the Primary School. All welcome.
Friday, August 13, 2010 at 4:02PM We are delighted to report that the Ashton Hayes Going Carbon Neutral Project has weathered recent government spending reviews to be awarded a £400,000 grant that will finance a range of zero-carbon energy generation technologies for the village. The funds will be managed via the Parish Council.
The grant, awarded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change under its Low Carbon Communities Challenge project, will be used to install a sustainable combined heat and power biodiesel boiler to supply heat and electricity to Ashton Hayes Primary School and feed the surplus into the community microgrid. The grant also covers the installation of photovoltaics on the roof of the primary school and a ground heat store to accumulate excess heat for use in the winter. Wind power generation is not being funded by the DECC grant. The project is due for completion in this financial year.
