Tenby Point’s goal to become totally renewable!

By Celeste Brittain 

TOTALLY Renewable Tenby (TRT) is a movement of people within the Tenby Point community who have come together to protect their way of life, and the beauty of Tenby Point, in a climate emergency.

Laura Bulmer, coordinator of TRT explained: “Totally Renewable Tenby is about saying we want to protect our way of life here and the way of life of all the critters that we share this place with so that means we need to think about our emissions, what is our carbon footprint and it also means we need to think about how to protect nature.”

TRT started in April 2022 and currently consists of a voluntary working group of seven people. 

It is a movement inspired and supported by Totally Renewable Phillip Island and formed within the context of the Bass Coast Shire Council’s climate emergency declaration and climate change action plan.

The first community session was held in Tenby Point in April 2022 with the support and presence of Totally Renewable Phillip Island. 

That session, Laura said was “just to put the idea out there” of a Totally Renewable Tenby. 

“On that first day before we even knew what TRT would look like, thirty households in Tenby Point said they were interested in keeping in touch about what the project might become and in a small community like ours, that’s huge.” Laura said. 

TRT has since developed its vision and working plan which was shared at another community information session in April 2023. 

The vision of TRT and focus of the working plan, is for Tenby Point to become totally renewable by 2030. 

One of TRT’s goals towards that as Laura explained is “to become an island-able mini grid by 2030 and that means we can generate, share, sell, trade energy all in a local context, in a mini grid that consists of Tenby Point and that within that mini grid we have battery storage which could be in the form of batteries in people’s homes or it could be community batteries or a combination but we have sufficient battery storage that we could withstand basically being disconnected from the Ausnet grid, that’s what the island-able component refers to, that we could operate self-sufficiently as an island.”  

In TRT’s road map, there are seven areas that are focused on to become totally renewable. These areas are coordination, community energy, energy efficiency, transport, land, water, food and waste. 

Those who are interested in becoming involved in TRT, who have ideas, would like to learn more or join the mailing list, can reach out to TRT through their email totallyrenewabletenby@gmail.com