Communities across the UK will soon be able to build, own and control their own clean energy projects through the government’s project that aims to allow citizens to “take back control of the country’s energy”.
Great British Energy and the UK government on 10 February published the Local Power Plan, which is backed by funding of up to £1 billion, to help support locally-owned clean energy generation projects such as solar on community buildings like libraries, leisure centres and miners’ welfare clubs.
The plan delivers the biggest public investment in community energy in UK history. Community ownership has already transformed Britain to a certain extent, through community owned pubs, leisure centres and libraries, via thousands of co-operative businesses, and several pioneering community energy projects in, for example, the city of Bristol, the Island of Skye and Wales.
Community owned energy is the norm in other countries. In Germany, for example, around two-fifths of installed renewable energy generation capacity is citizen-owned. But to date projects in the UK have been handicapped by a lack of funding, advice and central government support.
Great British Energy CEO Dan McGrail noted that GBE Energy “aims to support an initial 1000 clean energy projects, helping to deliver clean power by 2030 while improving energy security for the whole country and protecting billpayers”. The projects will be developed and led by communities or local government who best know how to deliver for their area or alternatively allow people to buy shares in nearby larger-scale renewable projects.
Great British Energy has so far invested £5 million for new community energy projects in England – 53 projects have now been approved from solar panels on places of worship in Leicestershire, to a solar farm in Wiltshire and heritage buildings in Rotherham, and £21.5 million for community and public sector energy projects in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
