Light Up Our Home: Help Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home install energy saving solar panels.
Rising energy prices have been one of the Home’s most pressing challenges in recent years.
Keeping our cat pens and kennels warm and safe all year round is vitally important, but it takes a lot of electricity. With the cost-of-living crisis, increasing costs have been crippling for the Home.
Installing solar panels to the cattery roof will save us over £2,600 every year on our electricity bills.
On top of this, the solar panels would effectively cover the electricity to our entire cattery and clinic, creating a more sustainable future for us and the environment.
Double-whammy benefits
At the same time, our cattery roof is in urgent need of repair. The outdoor section of our cat pens currently has a mesh roof through which bird poo can fall. This is dangerous as bird poo can carry giardia, a highly infectious condition which causes painful cramping, diarrhea and dehydration in cats and can be fatal if left untreated.
We need to provide a solid roof to keep our cats safe. Installing solar panels here is a great opportunity to provide a better environment for our cats and help us reduce rapidly rising costs.
Many of our resident cats, like Mickey who spent about 6 months with us, loved to get outside come rain or shine. Mickey loved to sit in his outdoor area, hoping that passing team members would stop to say hi to him (of course, they always would!) The outdoor pens provide important stimulation and enrichment for cats like Mickey, but at the moment they can’t be used year-round due to infection concerns.
Senior Animal Welfare Carer, Angie, said, ‘Every winter the birds come and sit on top of the wire mesh and poo everywhere. It’s unhygienic as bird poo carries giardia which the cats can catch.’
Installing the solar panels above this section of the cattery roof will provide much needed shelter and create a safer play area for the cats in our care.
Good for us, good for the environment, great for cats.
Not only will we benefit from much needed energy savings, we’ll also improve our carbon footprint.
Installing these solar panels means that 2 tons of CO2 emissions will be avoided every year. Over the panels’ lifetime, this is the equivalent of 69,690 car kms avoided, 50 long haul flights avoided, or planting 448 trees.
Our Business and Facilities Manager, Lynsey, added ‘Installing solar panels will not only give essential cover, which is necessary for ADCH (Association of Dogs and Cats Homes) compliance, but will generate enough green energy for all the electricity in our cattery and our clinic. The welfare of the animals in our care is always at the forefront of our operations. Operating sustainably is essential in our ability to continue to deliver on our mission’