27. CERES

Project 27: CERES Environment Park, Vic

CERES Environment Park is an award winning, not for profit, sustainability centre located on a regenerated landfill site in East Brunswick, Melbourne.
CERES runs extensive environmental education programs both at the park and into the community: urban agriculture projects, sustainability technology demonstrations, and social enterprises including a grocery, café, community kitchen, organic online supermarket, and a permaculture nursery.
CERES was at the forefront of renewable energy in Melbourne. In 1993 there was a cutting edge grid-interactive hybrid power station that contributed about 25% of electricity needs. But with growth and aging of technology that contribution dropped significantly, so in 2017 CERES adopted a goal to have zero carbon emissions by 2025.
Website: https://ceres.org.au

Project story…

CERES wanted not one but three new solar PV installations to help them achieve their zero emissions goal. We originally agreed to fund a planned 20kW installation on the Chook House roof. However, a very generous philanthropist then offered to pay for the Chook House solar and a separate Merri House installation.

Accordingly we then agreed to fund the 3rd proposed installation, 9.24kW of solar PV on the Human Powered Classroom instead. However, with 3 installations happening, expensive network protection equipment was required in order to enable such a large overall amount of solar PV generation. While that equipment does not reduce emissions in itself, it was necessary to enable the 3 installations to go ahead, so we agreed to lend CERES enough funds to cover that equipment as well.

See what has been achieved via the CORENA loan to CERES so far

* The MWh figure is the amount of grid electricity avoided by solar electricity generation and energy efficiency measures. The resultant reductions in carbon emissions can be visualised as an equivalent number of average households switching from grid electricity to 100% renewable electricity, noting that the subsequent projects have been avoiding grid electricity for less time than the original project.

This project has been fully funded- Thank you!

Honour roll

Thanks to all the people who have donated to this project.