SET PHASERS TO STUN! IT’S A BRISTOLIAN BENEFIT!
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Monthly Archives: April 2025
LEAP FLOP – IT’S A VATTENFAIL!
In March 2024, Ameresco’s heat network partner for City Leap, Vattenfall, announced they “expect to invest £475 million to grow the Bristol Heat Network, enabling it to provide heat to supply the equivalent of 12,000 homes.”
Now fast forward to this March and, with no sign of much invested, Vattenfall announce, “After the recent sale of Heat Berlin, Vattenfall is now looking into the remainder of its district heating portfolio.”
This includes Bristol’s heat network, sold to Vattenfall by the council at a knockdown “at cost” price in 2023 by the Reverend Rees.
We’re reliably informed private equity interests are now making enquiries about this opportunity to make a fast buck as monopoly providers of heat to customers in Bristol.
Rumours suggest Vattenfall got cold feet when plans for the government to regulate the wild west heat network sector to protect consumers started to emerge. This could result in making a tidy return on any investment tricky.
City Leap? It’s a city loss.
BRISTOLIAN #76: ON THE STREETS NOW
The ascension of the Reverend Rees to the House of Lords will not leave him short of cash and having to rely on just the £361 per day in attendance allowance with travel expenses and subsidised restaurant facilities.
His recently published register of interests to Parliament reveals he also has some other income streams. Including US multinational Ameresco, Inc, who have paid fees to the Reverend’s ‘personal services company’, Three and Two Ltd.
Ameresco was awarded a £1bn contract by Bristol City Council in 2021 on the Reverend’s watch after winning the tender to run his ‘Billion pound City Leap’ net zero nonsense.
Nothing to see here!
AI BALLS
Ongoing efforts by Bristol City Council to avoid answering the phone to the public who pay them take a new turn.
The Bristolian hears that later this year the council will launch ‘a major generative AI-enhanced service’, ‘the digital assistant Briz’, in their contact centre.
It says here, “Briz will be taking calls and dealing with lots of customer requests, freeing up advisors to work from home and engage with the public as little as is humanly possible.” [we might have made some of that up, Ed].
Best of luck trying to contact the council in the future.
A READER WRITES
A long suffering trapped resident in East Bristol writes:
“Reject the South Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood now before you fall out with your neighbours!
“This is a warning to the people of south Bristol about their forthcoming Liveable Neighbourhood.
“The Greens and their supporters are vile. They will deliberately divide your community with their ideological roadblocks and then claim – without evidence – it’s OK because more people agree with them than with you.
“Who wants to live like this?”