How did the project come about?

Groundwork is a key partner in a major regional transnational ESF programme designed to train individuals to become ?climate change champions? for their organisation.

The programme includes funding for a transnational exchange visit to Groundwork?s European partner Nadace Partnerstvi, the Czech Environment Partnership.  The partnership builds on a history of transnational exchange between Czech Republic and Groundwork UK.

The aim of the visit was to understand how climate change issues are being managed in the Czech Republic and look for opportunities to collaborate and share best practice.

Visit Details

Twelve delegates from the UK attended the 2 day visit which took place between 13th and 15th October 2010.  Delegates represented the Public, Private and Voluntary Sector and included urban and rural sub-regions.

The first evening featured presentations and discussion with strategic leaders from the city of Brno and the surrounding region ? Moravia.  Cllr Timothy Huxtable from Birmingham City Council set the scene with a presentation showing work being done in Birmingham to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Day 2 featured a visit to rural Southern Moravia.  First on the agenda was the village of Hostetin.  This small village has become the centre of low carbon innovations and is the base for the Veronica Institute, an environmental NGO.  Highlights of Hostetin include an apple pressing plant which produces apple juice from local farms, a reed-bed sewerage filtration system, a wood-fuel district heating plant, a photo-voltaic solar power station, low impact street lighting and the first non-domestic property in Czech to be built to Passiv-haus standard.  Whilst at Hostetin we also held discussions with Miroslava Knotova, Director of the Energy Agency for the region.  These discussions gave us a valuable insight into the issues that will have to be faced to realise the vision of a low carbon economy.  Getting local communities on board and understanding the need to go green has been particularly difficult against a history of communist state intervention.

The afternoon and evening focussed on how the area is using its traditional culture of wine making to promote sustainable tourism through cycling routes.  Working with Nadace Partnerstvi over 1,000 km of cycle routes have been opened up and are now linked with guesthouses and vineyards providing bike friendly accommodation.  The drive is towards encouraging Czech tourists rather than those from overseas, fitting in with the concept of low carbon tourism.  This initiative was particularly of interest to our representative from Herefordshire Council where a similar scheme based on apples and cider operates.

Day 3 focussed on the urban areas in and around Brno, the ?second city? of the Czech Republic.  The morning session featured discussions with Petr Chladek representing the South Moravian Innovation Centre.  The concept of supporting embryonic technology businesses is less well established than our science parks in the UK but is resulting in notable successes relevant to stimulating low carbon enterprise.  The discussion was very relevant to the Skills for Climate Change Project and may help to shape how the project develops with our Higher Education partners.

The final session was a visit to Novy Liskovec, a typical communist era housing estate of low quality high rise tower blocks.  We were told how state subsidised energy meant that there was no incentive to consider resource efficiency, but how higher energy prices are now causing fuel poverty issues.

Through a gradual programme the residential blocks are being insulated and renovated resulting in CO₂ and cost savings to residents.  The techniques and application were of particular interest to our delegates from Birmingham which shares similar issues.