Policy & advocacy news
Community Energy England’s response to DfE announcement
The Department for Education (DfE) has announced
- a pilot procurement programme on 150 schools and colleges to mobilise private finance to install rooftop solar – which community energy has been doing successfully for decades. The Department will contract a single commercial supplier who will finance, install, own and maintain the panels and charge the schools a single price for their electricity that is significantly cheaper than their normal tariff.
- a standardised power purchase agreement (PPA) and lease contract, which will be mandatory, including for community energy organisations operating outside the pilot scheme.
- a pause on permitting community energy school solar projects for several months until the standardised contracts are in place. (More details of the pilot scheme and standardised contracts)
- an extension of the Great British Energy Solar Partnership scheme, putting free solar panels on 100 schools, backed by £40 million of government capital.
Community energy long ago took on the challenge of decarbonising schools with solar installations. It is not easy. Community energy has the tenacity and long-term commitment to the local community to make partnerships with schools and colleges – key community anchor organisations – a very successful area of activity which delivers carbon and energy bill savings, benefits to school, community and the local economy, and community and energy resilience – all at no cost to the public purse. Decarbonising the education estate is a huge and costly challenge, which is more easily overcome when community energy is built in from the start.
Community Energy England welcomes the DfE’s commitment to decarbonising schools with solar. Community energy long ago took on the challenge of decarbonising schools with solar installations, using its tenacity and long-term commitment to the local community to make partnerships with schools and colleges a very successful area of activity, which delivers benefits to school, community and the local economy – all at no cost to the public purse.
We look forward to the DfE working with us to ensure current community energy projects in the pipeline are able to continue and that the community energy sector is enabled to participate in the new programmes. The Local Power Plan recognises that community ownership, control, benefit and wealth building matter. We will continue to work to persuade the DfE of the importance and benefit of putting community energy at the heart of their decarbonisation plans.
The sign-off by DfE of community energy projects on schools is being paused from the 16 July, until the new contracts are in place, which is a change to the most recent communication from DfE encouraging community organisations to continue to apply. We will continue to work with the DfE to advocate for current projects in the pipeline to be able to continue and with any organisations affected by the pause to mitigate any negative consequences as much as possible.
When sign-offs resume, community energy organisations will be required to use the standardised PPA and lease agreements produced by the DfE. In many cases this may speed up approval by DfE and reduce legal costs to schools and community energy organisations and we will work to ensure that wherever possible the standardised contract is built to take into account the diverse business models of community energy organisations and the diverse local conditions for projects.
At the same time, an extension to the Great British Energy (GBE) Solar Partnership scheme will see the government provide £40 million of capital funding to put solar panels on 100 schools for free.
This will be disruptive to the sector, as schools pull out of negotiations in the hope of getting free solar electricity. In previous rounds a number of projects community energy organisations had invested time and money in developing were taken over by the scheme.
If you are a community energy organisation, school or partner affected by these changes, we’d like to hear from you. Please get in touch to share your experience and help us ensure the sector’s voice is represented in future discussions (see also this Loomio thread).
Community Energy England will continue working on behalf of the sector to raise the profile of the strong track record of community energy delivering solar, and the need to align the work of decarbonisation with other government priorities around place-making, community resilience and citizen participation.