UK: The big green challenge: tackling climate change with public creativity

The Big Green Challenge is a £1 million (1.340m euro) fund, launched by NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts), to encourage creativity and ideas from the general public to tackle climate change.

NESTA is looking for innovative ideas and new approaches from not-for-profit groups that will help to reduce the carbon emissions of communities by up to 60%. The best ideas, hopefully, will be used as model to be reproduced in several groups.

The Big Green Challenge from NESTA is not just about ideas, although good ideas are a good start. It?s an active competition which aims to put ideas into practice.

The fund is organised in three steps and it will take place over two years ? from October 2007 to October 2009 requiring a substantial involvement of the entire group or community. The first stage is to submit projects by the 29 February 2008.

During the second stage a group of judges will evaluate the applications and select a group of 100 which will be asked to submit detailed plans about their approach for implementing, monitoring and demonstrating the reduction of CO2 emissions (and other associated factors) in their community. They will receive support and advice from NESTA. During the third stage, then organisations will be chosen within the 100. They will have a year ? from October 2008 to October 2009 – to put their ideas into practice.

NESTA will provide advice and financial support (£20,000 ? 26.800 euro) to help finalists in realising their projects. During the year, NESTA will be monitoring and assessing how each group is progressing. At the end of the year, the winner will be announced and appointed with the £1m prize.

www.biggreenchallenge.org.uk