This blog was written for Community Enegy Fortnight by Anda Baumerte
The path to net zero requires everyone to act. We share that responsibility and recognise we have a key role to play in facilitating the low carbon transition. Everyone involved in community energy knows that the benefits are far-reaching – these locally-led projects cut carbon while delivering invaluable social and economic benefits. It is therefore essential that we work with the communities we serve to address the climate emergency.
The latest Community Energy England figures (to be released on Friday 12 June) show that, nationally, community energy projects already generate enough clean renewable energy to supply over 74,000 UK homes. Local research shows that in North East and Yorkshire, community energy has delivered more than £250,000 worth of local benefits through various projects. At a time when these benefits are needed most, distribution network operators (DNOs) are uniquely placed to support community energy, build on the momentum of community togetherness that’s been necessitated by COVID-19, and ‘Build Back Better’ once the pandemic has passed.
COMMUNITY POWER
Whilst the pandemic has had a significant impact on our world as we know it, as with any challenge, it has also highlighted some of our society’s best examples of endurance, resilience, ingenuity, and togetherness.
At the start of this year, few would have expected that renewables could dominate the energy mix without a significant disruption. Now, as a result of reduced energy demand and our ability to flex our electricity network, that’s exactly what has happened. The country is in its 8th consecutive week without using coal generation, setting the record for the lowest grid carbon intensity on 24 May. Equally, many of us would have – perhaps reluctantly – admitted to not knowing our neighbours at the start of 2020. Then throughout April and May, many of us joined together every week to clap for carers.
Recognising that a renewables-led energy system is within reach and that communities are an important cornerstone to our prosperity and wellbeing provides us with a unique opportunity to harness those qualities and ‘Build Back Better’ during the recovery. We are determined to continue building a system that uses every unit of low-carbon energy in the best way possible by enabling communities to provide power back to the grid, or take it from locally generated, sustainable sources. Without the support for clean, local energy solutions, we risk ignoring the lessons from COVID-19 that could help accelerate the transition to net zero carbon emissions.
SUPPORT FROM YOUR DNO
DNOs have an important responsibility to support community energy projects across the UK – something that’s keenly felt at Northern Powergrid as we have more than 20 such projects within our region. This year, we published our Community Energy Engagement Strategy, which draws on months of engagement with community energy stakeholders that are working to harness the local benefits and tackle the climate emergency. It details how we plan to foster the growth of community energy, but the core principles remain the same across all DNOs.
As local anchor organisations, DNOs are perfectly placed to provide a number of resources that help enable community energy organisations to flourish. This might be information on where to find financial support, providing relevant data and tools – such as the examples listed below – or even facilitate networking. In 2015, we were the first DNO to launch a fund to support community energy and since then we’ve financed projects which have reached over 5,000 people. In 2018, we merged our fund with Northern Gas Networks to maximise the benefits available to the communities in our region. Recognising the extraordinary situation we are in, and while we await further government reforms that will empower the sector to fully deploy its creativity and ambition, we have now repurposed the fund to help vulnerable customers in our region[1]. As we continue supporting our communities, we want to be a proactive, trusted partner and build positive relationships with local energy organisations that can benefit us all.
Our proactive engagement has found that, most often, community energy organisations need advice on complex issues such as connections. Ensuring they have a key point of contact to pose these questions to is perhaps the simplest but most effective way to meet this challenge, so we have made sure our contact details are easier to find. Alongside our customer surgeries, we have also committed to have early conversations with communities to find solutions and facilitate constructive conversations with our network engineers, and keep community energy organisations informed by issuing quarterly newsletters.
These are just some of the actions we’ve taken to encourage community energy growth in our region. However, as a regulated business, we are now preparing our business plan for 2023-2028, known as the RIIO-ED2 price control period. Over the next three years, we intend to test, refine and perfect our ideas, and would welcome feedback from community energy stakeholders on our actions and some of the tools we’ve developed.
VALUABLE TOOLS
We are committed to having meaningful conversations with community energy stakeholders in our region. Still, digital tools and open data can often be a faster or a more convenient route to understand the local energy infrastructure:
- Our free AutoDesign tool enables anyone to access indicative costs and design for new connections to our low voltage network, within minutes instead of days. It uses a simple traffic light (red/amber/green) system to depict the capacity on the low voltage network, providing greater transparency to enable informed decisions about where to connect.
- Our generation availability and demand availability heat maps are updated monthly to provide a high level indication of the network capability to connect additional generation or demand.
- Our Distribution Future Energy Scenarios (DFES) takes an open data approach and uses a visualisation tool to explore what the decarbonisation pathways for our region might look like and expose the scale of change needed.
Further guides for community energy projects and relevant reports are also available from our community energy page.
Finally, we’d love to hear from you! We encourage community energy organisations to connect with us using any of the below resources.
- Join Northern Powergrid’s upcoming webinar on Net Zero Community Energy on 18 June.
- Sign up to a new quarterly newsletter, by emailing communityenergy@northernpowergrid.com.
- Email us with any questions or thoughts.
By working together, we can deliver better outcomes for all of our customers. Supporting the growth of community energy in our region will help us reach the most vulnerable in our society, as many community energy organisations are trusted intermediaries focussed on the environmental, social, and local economic impacts of our energy system. We look forward to hearing from you.
[1] https://www.northernpowergrid.com/news/-50-000-funding-to-support-vulnerable-communities-during-pandemic