Welcome to ACT’s first newsletter of 2026 keeping you informed of the latest activities our Groups have been working on. Do get in touch if you are tempted to join in with any of our projects!

Featuring:
The Sun Will Still Shine – A climate song
Climate Action event
Two Ducks to Go Please
National Emergency Briefing
Carbon Cutters – More less rare, less high tech
I may be addicted to My Electricity
What is a Heat Pump, and will it work in my house?
Wildlife Warden Update
Carbon Cutters update

Produced by Scott Williams

The Sun Will Still Shine – A climate song

Richard Large is a member of the Bovey climate action group CABH. Richard has produced a video of his own climate action song called The Sun Will Still Shine which you can see here: 

The lyrics are:

The sun will still shine

You directors of doubt
You that draw the black gold
You that tear up the earth
You’re destroying our world
You that try to deflect
You that seek to deny
We no longer accept all
your odious lies.

As the wildfires scorch
And the waters they rise
The glaciers recede
And the snowline gets higher
You think that your
petrodollars protect
But no they won’t keep you
from what could come next.

While you scorn all the young
Whose anger will hold
your guilt to account
As the changes unfold
The darkening ice
The dry wells abound
No birds in the sky
In the forest no sound.

D’you think of your children?
And your grandchildren too?
In thirty years’ time
Their shame will be you
They’ll not admit to your name
Disbelief and disgrace
That their forebears’ self-serving
Could’ve been so misplaced.

Not a soul would look up
Not a soul would look down
And would heartland care
if Bangladesh drowns?
The hurricanes reap
The flood on the tide
D’you really believe you have
God on your side?

So the young will fight back
at your petrified scorn
Your foxy-fake news
Your deceits are all torn
We know what you do
We’ve opened your door
This is not about doom
We just need to do more.

Great-grandchildren will
Look forward and know
The sun will still shine
The tides will still flow
The waters will fall
The winds come around
And the carbon we’d’ve burnt
Stays deep in the ground

Mandy Cole
ACT Public Engagement Group

Climate Action event

Bovey & Heahtfield Climate Action Group are holding an upcoming event this week, in partnership with First Draft Books, when Tim Lenton, Chair in Climate Change & Earth System Science at University of Exeter, will explore the part we each play in triggering vital positive tipping points that accelerate us out of the climate crisis.

There are a number of ways in which you can get tickets. For more information click here.

Kate Benham
ACT Director

Two Ducks to Go Please

We’ve all heard about Artificial intelligence (AI), what great things it can do for us but also some of its downsides. The most recent controversial use in the news was about Elon Musk’s social media platform X and its built-in Grok AI function.

I think AI has an important role to play in improving many aspects of our lives, including decarbonisation. Like fossil fuels the technology causes significant ghg emissions. Also, like the internet and computing, it can be misused and cause harm. In themselves, these are not reasons to stop using AI, but they are reasons to consider how/where/when it is used.
ACT’s focus is of course the impact AI has on climate change, global AI energy use is forecast to double by 2030 to 945 TWh p.a. The UK’s annual electricity use in 2024 was around 319 TWh. While investment in new renewables has outstripped those for fossil fuels by 2:1, our ghg emissions are still increasing. That’s because demand for energy is growing faster than renewables and technological efficiencies put together.

What benefits are we getting from AI, do they justify the negative consequences?

Considering only the energy consumption, it seems unreasonable that AI should be used for frivolous things especially those that are unnecessary. What is frivolous or essential is a personal choice and can vary over time.

We often debate who’s responsible and therefore should take action. Some say it is the governments because they are ‘in league with’ or ‘beholden to’ the fossil fuel industry. Others say it is businesses ‘enticing’ the consumer, while others say it is the consumer. In the end we will all suffer the consequences, maybe not at the same rate, but as more irreversible tipping points are reached, everyone will.

It therefore makes sense that we all act on the things we can control. Some may already have turned off the AI internet search feature in their browsers, turning this on occasionally when necessary. We may even have two browsers with the AI feature enabled and disabled. What many don’t know is that doing this simply hides the AI search which still takes place and consumes additional energy. There are some 10 billion browser searches every day, 90% of these are using the Google search engine.

The default search engine in most internet browsers is Google. Unfortunately, the search engine cannot be turned off. Luckly there are alternative search engines that allow you to both hide AI search results and turn them off. A leading example is Duck Duck Go. Here is a 1 minute video guide on how to change your search engine in Google Chrome. Remember to set the setting of the search engine to stop AI not just hide it.

Fuad Al-Tawil
Energy group coordinator

National Emergency Briefing

It’s an emergency!
At a National Emergency Briefing (NEB) on 27th November 10 of Britain’s top scientists and experts warned over 1,200 politicians, business and community leaders of the major climate-related risks to the UK’s economy, public health, food systems and national security.

Newton Abbot MP Martin Wrigley attended the briefing. Central Devon MP Mel Stride did not.
Attendees heard from experts on nature, climate, tipping points, weather extremes, food security, health, national security, economics and the energy transition. You can watch videos of the presentations on the NEB website, and at 10-15 minutes each they are not too demanding, although the presenters do not mince their words.

Lt General Richard Nugee said: “We are facing the potential of an ungovernable state unless government takes this seriously.”

Prof Tim Lenton noted we have already passed some tipping points. He said the biggest tipping point risk for the UK is the failure of the ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). It is already weakening and could tip at around 2C of global warming. If it tips, winters would be much colder (-20C for three months in London, -30C for 5.5 months in Edinburgh),summers hotter and rainfall lower. “This would end large-scale agriculture in the UK”, he said.

Prof Kevin Anderson said there is no viable way to stay below 1.5C of global warming, and if we keep burning fossil fuels, 2C of warming is highly likely by 2050, and 4C is possible by 2100. “3-4C of heating means the collapse of our systems,” he said. “We would face the widespread breakdown of society and the loss of any meaningful global economy.”

So far, so apocalyptic. But Tim Lenton also talked about positive tipping points, noting we have already passed one in phasing out coal from power generation. Strong policy helps trigger such tipping points, but if politicians are to take the emergency action needed, they need to see strong public support for such measures.

The NEB organisers are calling for a televised national emergency briefing by the government and public broadcasters, like those staged during the pandemic, to inform the public and counter the misinformation flooding the media. You can sign the petition calling for this.
A follow-up film from the Briefing, to be released in March or April, will be available for community screenings. You can register an interest in hosting a showing on the home page of the NEB website or on its Take Action page.

To help show public support for government action on the climate and nature emergency, please ask your town or parish council to sign up as a supporter of the Climate and Nature Bill. Check first to see if it is already on the list of supporters. Teignbridge District Council and Devon County Council are already signed up and Teignmouth Town Council recently agreed tp do so too.

Pauline Wynter
ACT Public Engagement Group PE Co Chair 

Carbon Cutters – More less rare, less high tech

I write regular articles in Reconnect Magazine, here’s one about my new concept – Enough Tech – a new strand of sustainability innovation that deliberately avoids rare, scarce, or geopolitically sensitive materials….

Last issue’s article on salt batteries was well received, and it got me thinking more deeply about what kind of future we are actually trying to build when we talk about sustainability. Not just which technologies we adopt, but the assumptions beneath them: about progress, materials, complexity and resilience. Salt batteries are compelling not because they are flashy or futuristic, but because they quietly challenge the idea that a renewable future must be ever more high-tech, mineral-intensive and globally fragile.

This line of thinking – I’m calling ‘Enough Tech’ points towards what might be called a post-tech philosophy of regenerative modernity. It is not anti-technology, nor nostalgic for a pre-industrial past. Rather, it asks a simple question: what if the most resilient future is one that blends modern insight with abundant materials, biological intelligence and time-tested physical principles?

Much of today’s green transition risks replicating the bad extractive logic of the fossil age. Lithium, cobalt, rare earths and complex global supply chains promise decarbonisation, but often at the cost of new forms of ecological damage, geopolitical dependency and social injustice. Regenerative low-complex ‘enough-tech’ modernity takes a different path. It prioritises systems that are repairable, locally sourced, materially humble and ecologically embedded.

Energy storage is a clear example. Alongside salt batteries, gravity-based storage systems use weight and height rather than rare metals, lifting heavy masses when energy is plentiful and releasing it when needed. Thermal storage systems rely on sand, stone, water or clay to hold heat for hours, days or even seasons. Pumped hydro—one of the oldest forms of energy storage—continues to outperform many newer alternatives when designed at appropriate scales. These technologies succeed not through novelty, but through alignment with basic physics and long lifespans.

The same principles apply to buildings. Passive solar design, natural ventilation and thermal mass dramatically reduce energy demand before a single gadget is added. Insulation made from hemp, straw, wool, cork or wood fibre replaces petrochemical products while locking carbon into the built environment. Masonry heaters and rocket mass heaters deliver steady warmth using a fraction of the fuel of conventional systems. Here, efficiency emerges from design intelligence rather than technological escalation.

Water and food systems reveal perhaps the clearest expression of post-tech thinking. Gravity-fed water networks, long used in traditional settlements, offer reliability with minimal energy input. Regenerative agriculture and agroecology replace synthetic fertilisers and precision machinery with soil health, biodiversity and timing. Productivity arises from living systems working in relationship, not from increasingly complex external inputs. Biochar, made from waste biomass, improves soil fertility while sequestering carbon—turning a by-product into a regenerative asset.

Even materials themselves are being reimagined. Timber, bamboo and earth construction reduce reliance on steel and concrete, while mycelium-based materials are literally grown rather than mined. Repair, reuse and low-tech recycling challenge the idea that progress requires constant replacement. In my worldview, durability and care are signs of advancement, not stagnation.

Energy generation, too, benefits from a enough-tech lens. Solar thermal systems use mirrors, pipes and water rather than rare metals, providing hot water and heat with remarkable efficiency. Modernised wind and water wheels can perform mechanical tasks directly—pumping, milling, lifting—without converting everything into electricity and back again. Sometimes the most elegant solution is to remove steps, not add them.

What unites these approaches is a shared orientation: from scarcity to abundance, from complexity to appropriateness, from global dependency to local resilience. Regenerative modernity recognises that the future will not be secured by ever more intricate systems that only specialists can maintain, but by technologies that communities can understand, adapt and steward over generations.

I guess what I propose is a cultural shift as much as a technical one. It asks us to value sufficiency over optimisation, resilience over speed, and relationship over extraction. It reframes progress not as domination of nature, but as deeper participation within it.
Salt batteries were never just about salt. They were a signal—one example among many—that a sustainable future does not have to be rare, brittle or extractive. It can be grounded, accessible and regenerative. In embracing a enough-tech philosophy, we are not stepping backwards, but choosing a form of modernity mature enough to live within planetary limits while still meeting human needs.

We need to recognise that sometimes the most radical innovation is learning to build wisely with what we already have.

If you’d like to join our Carbon Cutters group email Scott our CC coordinator (scott@actionclimateteignbridge.org)

Scott Williams
ACT CC Coordinator

I may be addicted to My Electricity

This is a warning to anyone who hasn’t yet joined a My Electricity session – playing detective with your electricity usage is habit-forming! Read on to find out how it all started for one anonymous participant.

What was meant to be an evaluation session with a facilitator got me going. I’d heard about this joint ACT/TDC initiative, My Electricity. The session got me thinking about what and how much electricity I was using and where. I’m not a numbers person and don’t really like to use gadgets to measure things, but the session got me interested, it was a bit like a detective game.

I managed to do enough during the session to practice the basics. I wanted to give feedback, so I got going soon after the session. Getting help from ACT when I got stuck made it really easy to measure things using the tool they lent me and the smart meter app I already had but never understood.

I’m over the moon that I managed to quickly find about 79 kWh of saving in the first month. I’m especially pleased with that as there isn’t anything significantly different about the way we led our lives compared to before, apart from:

• Changing underfloor heating in kitchen to come on 2 hours later on weekday mornings.
• Ensuring we run the washing machine when the sun is shining and therefore using solar.
• Being much more conscious of switching lights off when not in a room. 

I also found electrical items I’d been stressing about, my fridge freezer, turned out to be quite efficient. I cleaned it instead of buying a new one.

Ongoing, the changes I have made require no further input or time commitment, they were one-off easy and quick to implement. The energy monitor is easy to use and not a big time commitment. 

Next I will be filling in the My Electricity online tool (app), this will help me to be a bit more systematic to find out where else I can cut out unnecessary consumption. When I first heard about My Electricity I thought it’ll be daunting and boring, it turns out to be fun and rewarding. I must make sure I watch screens other than my electricity app!

Fuad Al-Tawil
Energy group coordinator

What is a Heat Pump, and will it work in my house?

ith the future homes standards coming into force in 2025, new homes will be banned from installing gas and oil boilers with a total ban on the sale of oil and gas boilers planned from 2035 (with a few exceptions).
Assuming no other breakthrough solution or significant reduction in the energy intensity of hydrogen, our domestic heating and hot water will be provided by heat pumps in the future.
What is a heat pump?
A heat pump absorbs heat into a liquid refrigerant from the outside air, ground or water. The refrigerant is compressed to increase its temperature. This heat is then distributed to radiators and / or underfloor heating and the hot water tank.
Heat Pumps are powered by electricity. As the grid reduces its carbon intensity this will increasingly be most people’s lowest carbon emission source of energy for domestic heating and hot water supply.
Will a heat pump work for me?
It depends on what you are trying to achieve. Cost reductions? Greenhouse gas reductions? Improvements to the comfort of your home?
Most heat pumps operate efficiently at lower temperatures than gas and oil boilers. If your house is particularly poorly insulated, very draughty or has few or small radiators it is possible a heat pump will not produce enough heat to keep your home at a comfortable temperature without remedial actions.
For most homes though, a heat pump will be an efficient solution.
Will I need to upgrade my pipes and radiators?
If you can keep your house at a comfortable temperature today and you consume less than around 100 KwHs of energy per sqm of heated floor space annually to heat your home, then a heat pump should work for you.
What next?
Contact us at Action on Climate Teignbridge (independent advice) or another expert on thermal performance and home heating. We can, or they should, guide you through collecting data to determine how a heat pump would perform in your home.

Paul Bloch
ACT Carbon Cutting Team

Wildlife Warden update

The Wildlife Warden diary of recent happenings:

Nov 7th and 9th: Waxcap Walks – Two this year, 1st a Waxcap Workshop with Sean Cooch and Rob, the fungi experts from Natural England. After weeks with very, very few grassland fungi, just one field blossomed overnight, and we had a great day, including Val finding a new one for the farm that has only recently been discovered and named. For the Sunday walk we had a constant downpour – but everyone insisted on continuing and we came back sodden but happy.

Nov 12th: 10 of us wedged ourselves into the kitchen for a seed swap – a great way of sharing local seeds and creating wildflower areas, as well as swapping ideas on where differnet species grow best and how to get them established.

Nov 13th: Shira (WW for Ashton) entertained a full room at Chudleigh Town Hall with ‘Murder in the Garden’ – her very interactive talk that gets the audience really immersed in the complex consequences of pesticide use. We took a lovely wildlife garden and watched it all collapse when we decided that our cabbages were too holey and our roses too scabby! Thank you Shira – a wonderful example of how you can help your audience to discover the message for themselves! Let’s see if we can apply it to every other important message!

Nov 15th: over 20 of us enjoyed a fantastic fungi walk at Stover with Dr Christian Taylor, who must be one of the best mycologists at explaining the tangled and amazing fungal world – including all the ways in which it is essential to our survival. Great for anyone who has pondered on ‘the meaning of life’!

Dec 9th: Sue Smallshire looked at the Dormouse tubes that Teign Valley WWs put out on several local farms in September – and picked up again. She showed us how to detect signs of use by Dormice and other wildlife. 

Audrey Compton
ACT Wildlife Wardens

To find out more about the Wildlife Wardens head to our recent Winter Newsletter

Carbon Cutters update

We continue to have monthly informal meetings, now set at every second Friday of the month.

Our steering group met recently to decide on immediate (rather than longer term) direction, and decided on the following actions:

– My Electricity project:  more sessions and more facilitators. Initially Kate and Rob will take part and attempt to help increase coverage, and others will bring it to the attention of other organisations and groups.  It is worth bringing this project to the attention of as many (willing) people as possible, because firstly it’s relatively tangible and straightforward, and secondly because it is being promoted by TDC as well as ACT. Let us know if you’d like to get involved.

– Identify potential recruits by personal recommendation in order to increase the likelihood of trained CCs becoming more involved. We hope that if such people take the full CC training course they will become actively involved and help ‘spread the word’.

Robert Gillett
Action on Climate Teignbridge, Carbon Cutters support group lead