Responses due 30 June 2024
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is calling for evidence on the barriers to setting up, developing and scaling faced by community energy organisations. This is an opportunity for the sector to have its voice heard by policy makers, including proposing potential solutions. You can find the 'call for evidence' here and read the questions at the bottom of this webpage.
We strongly encourage all community energy organisations to submit a response and to proactively encourage actual and potential partners to do likewise. If you are intending to do either or both of those please let us know here
Positive engagement with this process will demonstrate that the community energy sector stands ready to grow and fulfil its potential as a key driver, putting people at the heart of the energy transformation to net zero. We can send a signal to the government that if they use the sector’s insights to develop policy, they stand to benefit by empowering a network of practitioners with expertise in the energy system, a deep knowledge of local needs and strong leverage to make things happen.
CEE has produced a question by question guide to help you organise your thinking and your response. It is also a template you can download or copy in googledocs to use as the pro forma for your response.
We held a Workshop on Wednesday 15 May, 10-11.30am to share information and insights on how to respond most effectively. The recording of the workshop is here. Members contributed and discussed many ideas of barriers they had faced, evidence of impacts of those barriers, benefits and potential solutions. We are collating those and will share a link to them here and in the question by question guide.
Please consider sending your response (or a summary of it) to your MP, your parliamentary candidates, your councillors and your local paper. This is an important opportunity to raise the profile of the sector, highlight the huge benefits it delivers, and the importance of supportive government policy.
If you are happy for your response to the call for evidence to be made public, please state that in your response.
If you would like to discuss any of this further, please email Duncan (d.law@communityenergyengland.org) or Josh (@j.barnes@communityenergyengland.org).
Call for Evidence Questions
- What are the barriers, financial and non-financial, preventing the establishment, development, and scaling of community energy projects? Please include any relevant quantitative and qualitative evidence.
- Are there any regional issues impeding community energy projects? Please include any relevant quantitative and qualitative evidence.
- Where you have identified possible or actual barriers, do you have any proposals for how these might be reduced or removed, and why do you think the actions you propose would be effective and appropriate? Please include any relevant quantitative and qualitative evidence.
- Which existing or past government support mechanisms and policies have been most helpful in implementing community energy projects and why? Please include any relevant quantitative and qualitative evidence.
- Could you share any evidence, either quantitative or qualitative, demonstrating how community energy projects are supporting the delivery of the UK’s national net zero targets and providing additional benefits (e.g., reducing fuel poverty and improving community well-being).
- Could you share any evidence, either quantitative or qualitative, of the wider system impacts (positive and negative) of community energy schemes and how any negative impacts can be mitigated.