We regularly respond to consultations, write briefings and send letters to decision makers in order to promote a positive policy environment that will enable community energy to thrive and grow. You can read these policy documents on this page.
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CEE argued that proactive outreach from RESP teams to local and regional energy networks, inviting genuine opportunities to feed into the processes would ensure RESPs better reflect local needs, priorities and opportunities.
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CEE recommended that the government do not change from RPI to CPI indexation for the Feed in Tariff to avoid loss of investor confidence, creating a precedent, and damaging valuable community energy organisations delivering significant benefit to communities.
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CEE recommended that the government do not change from RPI to CPI indexation for the RO scheme to avoid loss of investor confidence, creating a precedent, and damaging valuable community energy organisations delivering significant benefit to communities.
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CEE made the case that the P441 modification is an important step towards enabling local supply based business models for the community energy sector.
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CEE submitted a representation to the Treasury ahead of the Autumn Budget. We made the case for prioritising capital and development funding for community-led initiatives instead of directly funding local energy projects without community involvement.
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CEE argued that community energy should be supported to be at the heart of engaging citizens to participate in flexibility
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The CEF (now GBE CF) kickstarted community energy growth and, if properly supported, that growth can become exponential. The community energy sector has projects and business models that are ready to upscale at pace if the right conditions are put in place.
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CEE collaborated with Community Energy Scotland and Community Energy Wales. We believe shared ownership is the more important policy, necessary for community energy to reach the 8GW by 2030 target and essential for a successful energy transformation.
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At a site visit in July 2025 orgnised by CEE, with SE24 and SELCE we shared and discussed this policy briefing. This will be the catalogue for ongoing policy discussions.
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This briefing, written by Community Energy Scotland, Community Energy England and Community Energy Wales, makes the case for introducing a mandatory shared ownership model for commercially owned renewable energy assets.
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Energy Local has prepared this briefing on the “Elexon P441 modification”, a regulatory change that could put local energy trading on a more secure footing enabling organisations to sell cheaper local power and balance supply and demand locally to reduce the pressure on the grid.
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CEE submitted a representation to the Treasury ahead of the 2025 spending review, which included policy proposals for the Local Power Plan.
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Information gathered by CEE’s Ethical Sourcing Working Group was used for this submission.
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Information CEE’s Ethical Sourcing Working Group was used in this submission mainly focussing on ethical sourcing issues in the renewable energy, particularly solar, supply chains.
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Ofgem set out some key policy areas they plan to progress over the coming year and invited responses. This is CEE’s input covering reforms to the connections queue and incentives for the large-scale deployment of demand-side response.
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The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee put out a call for evidence on unlocking community energy at scale. In the past, committee reports based on these kinds of consultations have been very helpful to the community energy sector in arguing for policy changes.
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In our response to the ESNZ committee’s call for evidence on unlocking community energy, we made a series of policy proposals which you can read here.
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With input and support from the Low Carbon Heat working group, CEE responded to DESNZ and Ofgem’s consultation on Heat networks regulation: Implementing consumer protections.
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With input and support from the Low Carbon Heat working group, CEE responded to DESNZ and Ofgem’s consultation on Heat networks regulation: authorisation and regulatory oversight.
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The Law Commission’s proposals would endanger the continued existence of many community energy cooperatives and CBSs as many of the activities for which they were set up are prevented by one or the other set of rules. You can read CEE’s consultation response to their proposals here.
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The National Energy System Operator (NESO) has published its recommended Pathway to Clean Power 2030. We asked that the govenment designate community energy and shared ownership schemes as ‘needed for 2030’ for the government’s Local Power Plan to succeed, which would help them get priority access to the grid.
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The industrial strategy is the UK government’s proposed 10-year plan for the economy. CEE responded with proposals to unlock the potential of community energy ahead of the publication of the final industrial strategy in spring 2025, alongside the multi-year spending review.
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We signed this joint statement with a quotation from our Chair of Directors, Helen Seagrave, urging strong climate leadership at COP and enabling community leadership at home.
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This Briefing outlines the potential threat to sector growth from the Law Commission consultation. NB this is not CEE’s consultation response. A leading community energy co-op director has said, “These reforms pose a fundamental threat to community energy. Some of the sector’s most vibrant organisations will be extinguished.”
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The National Energy System Operator proposes a security fee’ of £20k per MW for transmission connections to deter speculative or zombie applications. This would add around 20% to at-risk development costs for large scale projects and would render many large projects unfundable, thus damaging prospects for growing the sector to meet its 8GW government targets.
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The Great British Energy Bill had no mention of community energy. We proposed an amendment to the Objectives of GB Energy in the bill and supported an amendment on ethical sourcing.
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A representation of our asks for government spending in the Budget on 30 October. We made proposals to ensure the success of the Local Power Plan.
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The government consulted on proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework and other changes to the planning system. We urged a net zero mandate for planning, community energy be allowed in the green belt, more rewewables in conservation/heritage areas, protected landscapes and more.
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“New government backs local people to tackle climate change with up to £1bn a year.” Yesterday, the people elected a government with real plans to turbocharge community energy
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CEE’s letter to the new Secretary of State for Energy following Labour’s election victory.
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The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) issued a call for evidence on the barriers to setting up, developing and scaling faced by community energy organisations.
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CEE press release following the launch of the 2024 Labour General Election Manifesto
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We responded asking REMA to place greater emphasis on the potential of policy interventions at distribution grid level, which are a crucial component of the net zero transition. Local generation, flexibility and demand side responses can deliver real benefits if they are empowered by policy.
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Following complaint from several members about new barriers to installing solar on schools CEE lobbied the DfE who have refreshed their informal advice on steps required to install solar on schools. Official guidance is linked in the briefing note.
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Possible has campaigned for opening up of onshore wind. We worked with them to survey members about failure of recent changes to open up planning.
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We repeated our arguments, made three times since 2020, for a Community CfD to create a fair playing field with big renewable developers and investor certainty to enable us to raise finance to grow the sector.
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CEE is asking for an extension and expansion to the Community Energy Fund, investment in retrofit, housing upgrades and clean heat and a greater focus on people and communities led initiatives.
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We strongly express our disappointment that the government did not propose to enable onshore wind and urge mandatory community benefit including shared ownership.
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CEE is asking for Tax Relief and other incentives to local energy action and increased funding for energy efficiency and retrofit.
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We wrote to the new Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho welcoming her to the role and making the case for more action to support the community energy sector.
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We encouraged the government to widen the remit of Ofgem and the FSO to include more explicit commitments to achieving net zero and positively engagements with the community energy sector.
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We responded encouraging community benefit to be invested in community energy projects rather than payments to individuals. We encouraged early and best practice engagement.
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Ofgem is exploring creating a Regional System Planner role to create and hold plans for the localisation of the energy system. We argue planning needs to start more locally, as in Wales, with Local Area Energy Plans, which are then combined to create regional then national system transformation plans.
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Ofgem are exploring how to proactively develop the market for distributed flexibility to include consumer energy resources. We explained some of the blocks CE organisation have experienced and urged the vital importance of CE in engaging people in active participation in the energy system including flexibility.
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The Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is consulting on opening up permitted development rights for solar on flat roofs, land surrounding heritage sites and solar canopies on car parks. We have urged them to remove barriers as far and fast as possible to the installation of solar.
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The government’s ‘Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: reforms to national planning policy consultation’ claimed to relax planning constraint that have effectively banned onshore wind in England since 2015. Our response was co-signed by Power to Change, Plymouth Energy Community, en10ergy, Communities for Renewables CIC, Atlantic Energy Ltd, Bishop’s Castle Climate Action Group and the Othona Community.
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We wrote to Grant Shapps on 8 March urging he take the advice in Chris Skidmore’s Net Zero Review and turbo-charge community energy in his revised Net Zero Strategy due at the end of March.
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We made policy proposals on a Community Energy CfD pot, a requirement for an offer of community ownership and community benefit for projects to be eligible for CfDs.
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We signed this letter coordinated by Possible, along with at least 15 community energy colleagues, urging the government to open up onshore wind.
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We made policy suggestions for the Budget, which included extending Social Investment Tax Relief beyond 2023, extending eligibility to community energy, funding a National Community Energy Fund and extending business rate reliefs and incentives to community energy.
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“The Spring Statement is a key moment for the Government to signal its intention to invest in and remove barriers to investment across the sector.” We are working with the trade associations to get a meeting with the Chancellor. We do not endorse all of the asks in the letter.
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We joined this Coop Group initiative requesting a more supportive environment for investment into renewables and community energy. The PM has responded offering a meeting with Grant Shapps, the SoS at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
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In the face of threatened de facto ban on solar farms and the reversal of the planned opening up of onshore wind by the previous government we joined with Possible to write to relevant Secretaries of State.
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BEIS is looking at how to reform the electricity wholesale markets to achieve net zero in the power system by 2035 and increase localisation.
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CEE wrote to Jacob Rees-Mogg to urge that community energy be exempted from the Cost-Plus Revenue Limit within the Energy Prices Bill.
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On 8 September 2022 Liz Truss commissioned Chris Skidmore MP to conduct a Review of its “approach to net zero to ensure it is pursuing the most economically efficient path to meeting its climate change commitments.” and that it is “delivering net zero in a way that is pro-business and pro-growth.”
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In Ofgem’s first response to DNOs’ business plans for the ED2 period 2023-28, they rejected many DNOs’ proposals to support community energy and reduced their ambition and ability to invest for Net Zero.
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Ofgem were seeking evidence around the development of sub-national energy planning, developing flexibility markets and real-time local energy system operation.
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The Treasury was looking into taxing excess profits from the wider energy industry including renewable energy generation. We wrote explaining why community energy should be excluded from this levy.
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This letter outlines the critical funding ‘gap’ for feasibility and development of projects that will result from the ending of the Rural Community Energy Fund in March 2022 – and urges the Energy Secretary to extend and expand the scheme.
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CEE responded to Ofgem’s Call for Evidence on Electricity Distribution Business Plans for RIIO-2, comparing each of the DNO business plans and urging all DNOs to be required to produce a community energy strategy.
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The proposals being put forward in this consultation will ensure that community energy groups cannot participate in the heat network procurement process
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CEE responded to Ofgem’s Consultation on Minded to Positions, supporting the overall objectives of this SCR as a step to ensuring that network charging and management can support the necessary transition towards net-zero.
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On 19 March 2021, CEE, CEW and CES jointly submitted this response alongside many other CE groups.
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We made the case for a Community CfD and additional forms of support for the community energy sector.
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On 11 February we asked Ofgem to extend the elibility to receive grants from this scheme from only charities to include community energy.
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In announcing the Spending Review, the Chancellor placed great emphasis on “Encouraging the individual and community brilliance on which a thriving society depends”. He omitted to extend to any enabling support for brilliant community energy groups which stand ready to mobilise thousands of passionate, knowledgeable local people and millions in investment in local solutions for the vital energy transition to zero-carbon.
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CEE’s recommendations for funding in the Spending Review and Budget on 27 October 2021.
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Climate ambition is futile if people and communities don’t buy into and participate in the action. CEE’s statement on COP26.
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The government is planning a wholesale shake-up of the planning system prioritising beauty, diluting democracy and introducing dubious zoning and design codes.
