Housing association wins Ashden Award

A Hampshire housing association has won the top UK prize at the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, for improving the efficiency of its properties.

Radian was presented with the overall UK Gold Award and a £20,000 prize for its achievements in retrofitting hard-to-treat homes and in building new energy-efficient houses, which have helped lower the energy bills for more than 40,000 residents.

The organisation was one of five UK and five international winners announced at this year’s Ashden Awards, which were presented last night (16 June 2011).

The awards, now in their 11th year, were created to recognise innovative, practical initiatives that help to combat climate change through cutting carbon emissions.

Ghanaian company Toyola Energy was awarded £40,000 and the international Gold Award, for its efforts in creating a stove that uses 30% less charcoal and allowing 150,000 low-income families to buy one on credit.

“Toyola Energy has taken a simple stove technology, adapted it to make it more robust and efficient and then focused its efforts on making this stove technology accessible to the poor so that they can save money and have cleaner, healthier environments to cook in,” said Sarah Butler-Sloss, director of the Ashden Awards and chair of the judging panel.

“In the meantime Ghana’s forests are protected and greenhouse emissions reduced. This is a perfect example of how much can be achieved through the use of simple, clean energy technologies and clever, pro-poor marketing strategies.”

Other winners included ToughStuff International, a company that manufactures low-cost, robust solar products and then markets them to off-grid communities in Kenya and Madagascar, and the Severn Wye Energy Agency in Gloucestershire, which runs a programme in secondary schools to promote the values of energy saving and provide vocational skills.

The patron of the awards, The Prince of Wales, said the winners reveal what is possible in saving resources and cutting emissions.

“The awards remind us how, as individuals, we can make a huge difference to the world in which we live,” he said. “In a nutshell, they remind us that acting locally is, in fact, acting globally.”

A full list of the 2011 award winners and information on how to apply for next year’s awards is available from the Ashden Awards website.