Exciting months ahead for QCAN

AN EXCITING year awaits for Queenscliffe Climate Action Now (QCAN) following a productive first meeting of 2024, according to its president.

QCAN president Stuart Kent, who was appointed to the role in November, said there was an exciting mix of new and continuing projects lined up this year.

“It was a good first meeting for 2024, we had a real busy end to 2023, so we thought we’d put a bit of a pause on this January.

“Because of that we had a lot of content to go over in our February meeting and a great turnout of committee members and peripheral members.

“It was a good energy and only confirmed our suspicions of a strong year ahead.”

Mr Kent outlined major projects the group will aim to tackle this year.

The first will be the second part of QCAN’s Community Solar Program, supported by the Borough of Queenscliffe and in partnership with delivery partner Vortex Electrical.

QCAN will announce the results of the program, providing the community with tangible evidence on how much energy was saved as a result of the program.

As a result of the success of the program coupled with a state government grant, Queenscliff Primary School will unveil a 30kW solar system next month.

“It is an excitingly oversized system, which has come as a result of a new partnership we have struck with the Queenscliff Music Festival,” Mr Kent said.

“The system won’t be used by the school over the busy summer period, which provides a number of options not only for the QMF but for businesses in the community as well, where the system is pumping excess solar energy into the local grid.”

Mr Kent is hopeful other oversized systems can be expanded into other local education institutions in the future.

QCAN will also move forward with the state government’s Batteries 100 program, an initiative providing grants through multiple funding rounds to support the installation of 100 neighbourhood-scale batteries.

The batteries aim to improve energy reliability and provide energy storage capacity for locally generated solar power, thus lowering energy bills.

QCAN will also continue its work with the borough and Geelong Sustainability through its Energy Efficient Homes Program, informing residents on how to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

“Everything we have done to this point and will do moving forward is does through the lens of the Borough of Queenscliffe’s Climate Emergency Response Plan, which we helped produce when it was released,” Mr Kent said.

“We’ll continue to refer back to the pillars stated in the plan and it will drive how our projects this year will be shaped.”

For more on QCAN’s programs and plans, click HERE.