The £500,000 first round of a competition to encourage communities in the east of England to cut their carbon emissions has closed - attracting 24 entries requesting just over £2 million in funding.

The 'Cut your Carbon' campaign, led by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA), is a funding competition and awareness-raising campaign with £2.5 million available over its three-year lifespan. Competing communities can win up to £200,000 per project.

From the entries received, a shortlist of up to eight communities will be selected to go through to present to a panel of expert judges on 8 July in a friendly Dragon's Den style format.

The most innovative and inspiring ways of cutting carbon emissions, which also demonstrate sound business plans, will go on to win funding.

Entries into this first round of the Cut your Carbon competition include the building of a new Community Centre from straw bale construction in Essex, a carbon dieting club along the lines of a slimming club in Hertfordshire, a community bike scheme in Bedfordshire, subsidised solar panels for a Cambridgeshire village, a water heat pump at a mill in Norfolk and an environmental flagship village hall in Suffolk.

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EEDA Chair Richard Ellis, commented: "Cut your Carbon is an exciting, grass roots campaign, which has the potential to really make a difference to the region's carbon footprint over the coming years.

"We are delighted with the response to this first round and it will certainly be a tough job narrowing down this shortlist and selecting the funding winners.

"We hope the impact will be much wider than simply those who win funding, as other communities will be spurred on and inspired by the winner's actions and the campaign. At our website www.cutyourcarbon.org.uk individuals and communities can calculate their carbon footprint and measure their success over time using our unique community carbon footprint calculator, get suggestions on how they can take action and have at their disposal a range of social networking tools to bind the community together. This is available for all to use, whether applying for funding or not, and we would urge individuals and communities to try it out."

EEDA has brought together a range of specialists in the field of carbon reduction, including the School of Environmental Studies, UEA and Renewables East, to form the review panel. Their feedback will be used to draw up a shortlist which will be announced on the 1st of July.

(JM)