On 4 July the people elected a government with real plans to turbocharge community energy.
One of the new government’s flagship climate policies, their Local Power Plan, pledges up to £400m a year in low interest loans to communities to develop and build community-owned projects, alongside £600m a year in grants to local authorities. The Labour Manifesto promises: “We will invite communities to come forward with projects, and work with local leaders and devolved governments to ensure local people benefit directly from this energy production."
By 2030 this will deliver up to 8GW of new cheap, clean local power (the equivalent of 2 nuclear power stations, powering 4.35 million homes ), 20,000 new projects, 1 million new energy owners, and real economic, social and community benefits to local people.
This will be delivered as one of three key priorities of Great British Energy, the new publicly owned company that will invest to enable Labour’s ambitious target of the UK being powered by 100% clean energy by 2030. Great British Energy has been one of Labour’s most popular policy proposals
The government’s mission to Make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower also pledges to:
- insulate millions of new homes
- fix grid connections which are a major barrier to net zero and local projects
- open up onshore wind
- extend community shared ownership in commercial renewables projects
- enable local supply so that communities can sell the energy they generate to local people.
- put in place Local Area Energy Planning
- put in place net zero mandates in regulation and planning
Community Energy England will be working to help the sector grow with capacity building support through our Energy Learning Network. We will be looking at the long term financing solutions with expert NGOs and finance institutions. We will aim to encourage and support more community energy/local authority collaborations which will be key to making the most of this funding. We will be working to enable the other policies such as shared ownership and local supply to happen as soon as possible.