If you want to bring about lasting change, you have to show people how it can bring benefit to their daily lives. That is the thinking at the core of the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE), which for over 30 years has been helping people and organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors to meet the twin challenges of rising energy costs and climate change. CSE does this by providing energy advice, managing innovative energy projects, training others, and undertaking research and policy analysis. At any time there are typically 50 or 60 different projects under way.
One influential piece of work was the Energy Matters education programme, which showed children how to carry out simple energy audits of their schools and homes. CSE found that over 75% of families involved had taken some energy-saving action as a result. One step towards the CSE vision of "a world where sustainability is second nature, carbon emissions have been cut to safe levels and fuel poverty has been replaced by energy justice".
