While you are waiting for the next Manchester Climate Monthly (1) , here’s something we didn’t have space for in the print edition.  We emailed various green outfits for their news. Only two got back to us. Kindling Trust‘s news is in the print edition and Carbon Coop‘s news is below…

What has your organisation achieved in the last month?
We’ve been lucky enough to be one of seven projects shortlisted in the Buy Better Together Challenge competition run by Department for Business Innovation and Skills and Co-ops UK.

Buy Better Together is a national competition aimed at identifying innovative, new models for community bulk purchase.

Our project is around developing an online platform to collate and aggregate household energy data and enable householder to work together.

To get to this stage we’ve had to submit our project idea and pitch to an ‘all-star’ panel in London.The project prize is £15,000 but the real value is in the development time and new links we’re making.

We’re now receiving mentoring ahead of our final competition submission in October 2012.

What events/”get involved” opportunites do you have coming up in the next month?
Nothing specifically this month but we have a new website on the way – hence the lack of activity on the current one plus the launch of our membership offer.

To that end we have a big half day engagement and information event coming up on 22nd September (time and location TBC) and another double decker bus tour of eco-houses on 15th September (details TBC).

What specific help would you appreciate from individuals and groups?
People interested in helping out at those events.
Programmers, open data specialists and in particular people with good knowledge of energy monitors.

(1) The editor responsible for this delay has been taken out and shot. Arwa will be editing solo from now on…