This week I've been invited to meet with the local Mayor to discuss the work I'm doing with the Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre, and the Sunshine Coast Energy Descent Action Plan, which is currently being drafted.

It's an interesting process bringing an EDAP to life and working on how it can be delivered and become a useful, usable document and not end up in the bottom of some filing cabinet somewhere.

Just to explain in a bit more detail exactly where we are at currently and how we got here...

About this time last year - after completing a Permaculture Design Course (which Andi Hazelwood was also part of) in October 2006 - I started seriously thinking about how I could start to really do something major in regard to both climate change and peak oil in my community.

David Holmgren (David is the co-originator of permaculture along with Bill Mollison) had been on the Sunshine a few months earlier and spoke of 'Regional Sustainability in an Energy Descent Future' and notes from that talk gave me ideas. He also mentioned the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan....

I contacted my PDC teacher Janet Millington and mentioned how I'd love to do a course that took David Holmgren's text and applied hisprinciples in a sociological context across the region to prepare for peak oil.

A way of reorganising the region using those principles - a rather big project indeed! Like swaling a whole bio region rather than just your own property...

I'd also read Richard Heinberg's books and Powerdown in particular caught my attention - I could see how it would have worked so well for Heinberg and Holmgren to tour together speaking on these issues. Permaculture provides an excellent framework from which to start planning. If you can understand the principles of permaculture, you can see how powering down a region is possible.

But at that time, there was no such course in Australia, so Janet suggested I write an outline and with her expertise as a permaculture educator and school teacher by trade, we could develop it into a 'real' course that has objectives, outcome and structure.

So I did. And the Time for an Oil Change course was born...

Pretty early on it became apparent that we would need some type of centre from which to run education courses and to raise community awareness about peak oil and all its implications. We needed to make people aware of the issues and provide more in depth info to those who already 'get it'.

We identified the local community gardens headquarters which weren't being used on weekends and we decided to turn that into the Sunshine Coast Energy Action Centre and we open up every Saturday morning between 9am and noon and run free events, guest speakers, DVD screenings, workshops etc (all listed at www.seac.net.au)

The centre and the course kicked off and we had 22 people turn up to do the course. Students included architects, town planners, teachers, environmental activists and students, nurses, and concerned residents who wanted to powerdown their own homes and families.

The outcome of the course was to produce an Energy Descent Action Plan for the region.

In the meantime I'd been very busy meeting with local government and had gained the Mayor's support for the project, I'd met with the local university and gained their support and access to lecturers who could present climate change and sustainability presentations at the Centre... it was all starting to come together.

So now here we are six months after we first opened the doors at the centre and ran the first course and we have...
a website with high traffic flow
Australia's first ever energy descent action planning course written and delivered
Australia's first energy descent action plan nearing completion
recognition as Australia's first Transition Town
regular visitors to both the centre and the website
requests coming in thick and fast for interviews
we are part of a university study into sustainability innovators on the Coast
and now, in the context of an upcoming local government election, a meeting with the Mayor to discuss future strategies.

I am also working hard to develop ideas from this that will provide me with an income - I'm doing all this off my savings at the moment and that just isn't sustainable... but things are coming together and it's looking good.

Taking on a lead role in poweringdown a region is a big step, but it is also achievable. It was the blend of my background in state government and my understanding of how governments work, plus Janet's skills in education, curriculum writing and her community links that has got us this far.

What the future holds - who knows - but I'm planning to apply for a scholarship that will allow me to visit the UK and the US later this year to see first hand what's happening, I'm working on a Masters degree in communications and eventually a PhD in this area and looking at gaining an income from this work which hopefully sets a precedence for employment and funding in this field, rather than relying so heavily on volunteerism and government grants.

As for relocalisation - my [very] little town of Eudlo has a great relocalisation group we do working bees, seed saving, bulk buying... - we've been invited by the local town committee to be part of a visioning process or what we all want to achieve in the future and relocalisation is playing a big part in that.

This along with growing most of our own food, retrofitting our home to be more independant of mains supplies and self learning are all part of our lifeboat building in support of regional powerdown - I'm still running workshops in composting, worm farming, and other lifeboat skills for those who want to learn and prepare.

I'll keep this blog going on what we are doing, the challenges we face, the opportunties that arise and the lessons learnt from our process and hopefully it will encourage and benefit others in their regional powerdown plans.

Cheers,
Sonya