Innovation is key to tackling climate emergency, says Scottish social enterprise Changeworks

Josiah Lockhart, Chief Executive of Changeworks | Jamie Williamson

At Changeworks, we are constantly innovating and exploring new business models.  Last year, our new services and partnerships meant we were able to support even more householders across Scotland, regardless of tenure. Following the launch of our 2022-25 strategy to decarbonise Scotland’s homes to tackle the climate emergency, we have made a difference to over 150,000 householders.

In 2023-24, Changeworks had a strong impact in the context of a challenging landscape with an ongoing energy crisis and a lack of policy drive to tackle the climate emergency. We provided advice to 64,000 householders through Changeworks' services including our delivery of Home Energy Scotland in the Highlands and Islands and Southeast.

Over 4,000 households in fuel poverty received in-depth support from our expert advisors, achieving over £1 million financial savings for struggling households. Furthermore, 13,000 homes in Scotland received support to install energy efficiency measures and renewables through Changeworks including those supported with loan and grant referrals for measures by our Home Energy Scotland teams in the Highlands and Islands and Southeast, as well as those supported in Scotland through our joint venture partnership Warmworks.​ 

Alongside this impact, we focused on innovative partnerships and building new services to reach even more people. As a social enterprise, innovative service development and partnership working is key for Changeworks to achieve our aim of ensuring a just transition to net zero. In 2023-24, we launched several new services to increase our scale and impact. This included Scotland’s first end-to-end home retrofit service EcoCosi, and a pilot service for social tenants working with the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA).   

This work is invaluable to people like Gina*, who was struggling to keep her home warm due to high energy bills. The anxiety was impacting her physical health. Through support from an advisor from Changeworks’ Housing Association Energy Support Service, she was able to reduce her bills and now feels more confident managing her home energy. Gina said: 

“Speaking to the advisor has got me back on my feet. It was a big impact.” 

This year, we are continuing to grow, evolving our services and scaling our reach to support even more people.​ Using the learnings from the successful Housing Association Energy Support Service pilot, we are now launching Tenant Energy Support, supported by SGN, to help even more tenants living in social housing. Our home retrofit service EcoCosi, which launched in Edinburgh last year, is now expanding to the Lothians. In 2023-24, the service had over 1,000 registrations form interested homeowners looking to improve their home’s energy efficiency through retrofit.

We will also continue to deliver and work with local authorities and housing associations to enable them to understand the energy efficiency of their housing stock, and develop net zero strategies that are interlinked into area wide, place-based decarbonisation and community engagement plans. We are trialling new methods of modelling housing stock against new policy standards and working with our partners to decarbonise Scotland's homes.

We look forward to scaling our impact, reaching more people and working with more organisations to develop further innovative services to tackle the climate emergency and support a just transition to net zero. ​

About Changeworks

Changeworks works with partners, organisations and householders to drive transformation in energy efficiency and to tackle fuel poverty. Find out more at www.changeworks.org.uk.   

*Name changed to protect anonymity.