Here at 10:10 we pride ourselves on keeping our finger firmly on the carbon-cutting pulse, but things do slip through the net from time to time. Case in point: this amazing story that came out of Perthshire in March 2010.

Anyway in the spirit of better-late-than-never (and because most of the mainstream media seems to have missed the story too), here’s our belated shout-out to Alyth, a village in Scotland that managed to cut its collective electricity use by 10% in two years as part of a groundbreaking energy-efficiency experiment run by Scottish Hydro.

A community can pull together to reduce its use of fossil fuels, lower its carbon footprint and save money on bills

The 2,500-strong community in rural Perthshire was chosen for its manageable size – around 1,200 houses – and a good track record of grassroots energy-saving work through the Alyth Environmental Group.

Armed with a budget of £30,000 for awareness-raising and efficiency improvements, the community was challenged to reduce its energy consumption by 10% in two years and offered a £20,000 prize if they managed it.

The residents became some of the first people in the country to have smart meters installed in their homes, while thermal cameras helped identify draughty walls and roofs in some of the houses.

Cutting carbon in town

This technology, backed up by a series of events and advice workshops and a heroic joint effort from the population, finally took Alyth over the 10% threshold in March 2010. This was three months longer than the agreed two years, but they managed to catch Scottish Hydro in a generous mood, and the £20,000 prize was theirs.

Clive Bowman from Alyth Environmental Group reckons that the benefits of this sort of project make it a, ‘no-brainer’. It has shown, he says, ‘that a community can pull together to reduce its use of fossil fuels, lower its carbon footprint and save money on bills.’

It’s been two years since the project ended but the community certainly isn’t sidelining its environmental commitments. They have established a social enterprise that helps local people heat their homes with locally-sourced wood, reducing their dependence on more carbon intensive energy sources.

And this kind of ambitious action is exactly what 10:10 is all about. Alyth’s success goes to show that we could, with a bit of motivation and organisation, turn our individual efforts into community-wide, nationwide, and even worldwide action! As world leaders start packing for another round of climate negotiations, next month in Durban, they could learn a lot from Alyth’s example.