MORE than 1,000 homes could be powered for a year with the electricity racked up by Low Carbon Hub’s projects over the past 12 months.

Since last year, the hub – on a mission to save Oxfordshire some pennies and reduce the county’s carbon footprint – has generated around 2.7million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power a housing estate for a year.

It has also stopped roughly 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide heading into the atmosphere, figures revealed in its second annual social impact report.

Carbon dioxide, which we breathe out, does not weigh a lot.

But in the last financial year the not-for-profit organisation saved the equivalent weight of 85 London double-decker buses in CO2.

Social impact manager at Low Carbon Hub Saskya Huggins said: “We’re really excited to be publishing our social impact report for the second year.

“It’s a great opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the year and to see our growing impact.

“We’ve expanded the report to include examples of the projects that our community benefit income has helped make happen, and some of the many the people whose support has made it all possible.”

She added: “This year’s report includes Sandford Hydro for the first time, and its contribution to our continued growth in our potential to produce clean, green electricity.”

Sandford Hyrdo, the £3.2million hydroelectric power plant, became fully operational earlier this year.

The community-owned plant on the Thames harnesses the power of the river at the weir at Sandford and creates greener electricity.

Now the plant is running in full swing, it has been added to the reel of live projects in the portfolio of Low Carbon Hub.

The 38 installations led by the hub means that 4 million kilowatt hours are predicted for next year- roughly 2 million more than last year, and another million up from this year which was enough to power a thousand homes in the city.

As well as generating energy, Low Carbon Hub also leads the £3.2m OxFutures project, an initiative run to help those who use the most energy in the county cut down, slash carbon emissions and save cash.

Since it secured funding and began last year, the initiative, which is spearheaded by the hub and run alongside the council and Oxford's universities, has now delivered 32 free energy audits to local businesses.

From the surveys of energy consumption, the hub installed five energy-saving measures to save the big electricity users in the city some money.

Its now estimated that the cash saved, totalled together from the bills of businesses, racks up to slightly less than £8,000 a year.

The good news report also comes after this summer's heatwave helped the hub generate a record amount of power from the solar panels it has installed on school roofs across the county. The panels churned out enough to power 100 average primary schools.