In 2020 The Church of England’s General Synod set new targets for all parts of the church to work to become carbon ‘net zero’ by 2030. At the time the then Bishop of Salisbury, Nick Holtam, who was the Church of England's lead bishop on Environmental Affairs said, “To reach Synod’s target of 2030 will not be easy and requires each of us to hear this as an urgent call to action. But this is a clear statement of intent across the Church and to wider society about our determination to safeguard God’s creation.”
In the next few months, we will be following a number of the church communities in Bath and Wells, as they think about some of the environmental challenges they face in order to reach the target set.
One of those we have talked with is St Cuthbert’s Church in Wells, who are considering changing their heating system to make it more sustainable, environmentally friendly and cheaper to run. Piers Rose is Churchwarden, “St Cuthbert’s is a big, drafty, medieval church. As a community we were getting painted into a corner as our boiler is twenty plus years old. It’s not going to go on forever, so, I decided that we ought to be doing more to improve the heating and the General Synod decision to go for carbon neutral by 2030 provided us with a stimulus.
“We commissioned an initial report, and it was paid for by Mendip District Council’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Fund. The report came in, in the way you might expect an engineer’s report to be, with lots of very detailed and technical information, so the incumbent Revd Sam Denyer and I decided to put the report into a more manageable power point which could be presented at a PCC meeting.”
The power point presentation was then sent back to the engineer so he could check it, make sure all the information was correct and nothing important had been left out. The PCC meeting only had one item on the agenda – the heating. Piers said that rewriting the report meant everyone at the meeting could easily understand the complex information and having just one item on the agenda allowed the PCC members to give the discussion all their attention.
“It was important that we really thought about the proposals as we are talking about a system which may cost around £200,000. At the end of the meeting there was a positive response and the whole PCC agreed unanimously to go ahead and commission a full report.”
We will follow the progress of St Cuthbert’s as they continue their journey.