Friends share sustainable buildings experience
‘COP26 has been and gone but the climate emergency and need for urgent action at all levels is still with us.’
Central England Quakers (CEQ) is sharing its experience of making Meeting houses sustainable with other faith groups. The commitment is one of two key objectives set out by the CEQ Climate Emergency Action group.
The work is part of the Footsteps’ Project 4F work to reduce faith buildings’ fossil-fuel carbon emissions. Greening places of worship has been placed increasingly under the spotlight as churches pledge to divest from fossil fuels. Last year there were a number of new, highly-acclaimed low-carbon places of worship, including Baildon Methodist Church, on the outskirts of Bradford; Cambridge Central Mosque (shortlisted for the 2021 Stirling Prize and featuring on the DeZeen top ten list of low-carbon buildings); and Hammersmith Meeting House, which won an Environment Award at The Hammersmith Society’s Annual Architectural Awards event in October.
Baildon Methodist Church was recently rebuilt to Passivhaus standards. It features 50cm-thick walls, nine layers of insulation, 8kW of solar panels on its roof, and infrared heating.
Meanwhile, Cambridge Central Mosque uses timber as a carbon-storing material to form its structural walls and pillars. Naturally lit and ventilated, solar panels cover cooling and hot water needs, as well as thirteen per cent of the heating, and harvested rainwater is used to flush the toilets.
The other ‘action area’ for CEQ Climate Emergency Action group is: ‘Working with other faith communities to educate and communicate about the need to eat sustainably: eat less meat, reduce plastic use and food waste and the need to burn food waste.’
Both priorities were set out at the ‘Action not Words’ conference in November, organised by the Birmingham Faith Leaders Group and Footsteps. They will be taken forward with the Birmingham faith leaders’ group by the CEQ CEA co-clerks.
Barnaby Waters, Chris Martin and Ginnie Wollaston told the Friend: ‘COP26 has been and gone but the climate emergency and need for urgent action at all levels is still with us.’
CEQ climate action is diffused across Area Meetings, they said, and ‘much involves working with others’. ‘For example, a vigil has been held regularly outside St Phillips Cathedral; Cotteridge Quakers held a COP26 Community fair; [and] individual Area Meeting Quakers took part in, and were arrested, in direct action in London. In Birmingham, the Peace Hub and individual Quakers have supported Footsteps interfaith low-carbon work with its new Project 4F providing fuel poverty advice, repair workshops and energy assessments for faith buildings, as part of Birmingham’s just transition to net zero.’
Forty-seven faith institutions from twenty-one countries announced they would divest from fossil fuels in November, following COP26, marking the largest-ever joint divestment by religious leaders in history.
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