Connect with your MP(s) ~ Keep up the positive messaging ~ Plan for growth

See our News Piece on the election result and implications for community energy.

See our Post-election Call for Action below

See our 2024 State of the Sector Report here.

Our top priority over the first months and years of the new government is to ensure that measures pledged in the Local Power Plan are designed and implemented well and are up and running as soon as possible.

In order to do this we will need MPs who understand the value of community energy to push for it. Many MPs are newly in parliament and don’t know in detail about the Local Power Plan or about the work community energy does, even when organisations operate in their constituency. So, the most important thing you can do to help us make the Local Power Plan a reality is to connect with your MP and enthuse them with the work you do! We want to harness as many MPs as possible with community energy in their patch, to be champions in the House. We will then occasionally call on you to ask them to do something specific like write to a Minister or Secretary of State or back an amendment.

Ed Miliband MP, and prospective parliamentary candidates Joe Powell (now MP) and Ryan Jude on North Kensington Community Energy rooftop at Westway Leisure Centre

Post-election Call for Action

Please do these actions when you write to your MP.

1. Congratulate and welcome your MP(s). (15-30 mins)
   If you are active over several constituencies you can write to all those MPs. Their contact details are at members.parliament.uk/members/commons. Please connect with them on social media as well as by email. A suggested letter format is at bit.ly/Write-MP but please put it in your own words as much as possible in case someone else in the same constituency is also using it. 

   Please thank them for their party’s support for community energy, if they are Labour, Lib Dem or Green. (If Conservative thank them for the Community Energy Fund - but express disappointment it didn’t appear in the Manifesto. You can still talk about what Labour's plans will open up for your organisation). If Labour, please thank them for recognising the importance and potential of community energy in the Local Power Plan (and in Lord Hunt's recent amendment to including community energy in the Great British Energy Bill) and pledging hundreds of millions a year to communities and local councils to do community-owned energy projects, delivering cheaper, more secure energy, a real stake in the energy transformation, and huge community benefits.. (Describe, if you can, your vision of what you will be able to do with your share of £400m a year in low interest loans to identify, develop and construct community energy projects and the sort of benefits that will bring constituents.) A suggested letter is here but it’s best if you write your own.

   1. Invite them to visit your project to learn how community energy is win, win, win. They will be in the constituency Friday-Sunday and over the parliamentary recesses. See our guide to site visits.

   2. Ask them to mention your project, in speeches, in social media, press and in the House. Give them information to help them boast about your brilliance.

   3. Encourage them to support the Local Electricity Bill campaign

1. Keep up your positive messaging (ongoingly on all channels) telling the world and your new MP regularly about the great stuff you’re doing, the benefit community energy delivers and your plans for the future.

2. Please plan for growth! (ongoing but start now!) Make it a standing agenda item in meetings. Look to your pipeline, your succession and long term sustainability plans. Put in lots of applications to the Community Energy Fund for feasibility studies to build a pipeline. Look at WeWantWind.org if you are potentially interested in developing wind. The Transmission Impact Assessment threshold will be relaxed from 1MW to 5MW very soon meaning larger projects will be able to connect to the distribution grid without the extra costs and severe delays they previously incurred. So start scoping up to 5MWs!

And don’t forget to let us know about what you’re doing so that we can help to amplify your voice, as well as the biggest challenges you will face in growing your organisation and the support, training, resources you may need to support you to grow to inform our capacity building work.

Rachel Blake, Labour Coop Parliamentary Candidate (now MP)_for the Cities of London and Westminster, with Cllr Jason Pritchard and Syed Ahmed, Chair of Community Energy London at Aldgate Solar Power

Key Resources

• What the major parties in England say about community energy
• Guidance on writing to MPs and candidates
• Tips on organising a successful site visit
• Tips on multiplying your impact - via your supporters.
• Find your local councillor