Local Power Plan promises £1bn to community energy
We were asked last week to submit some videos and photographs to the North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub. Little did we know the teaser of a ‘major government announcement’ meant both showcasing our team and the work we’re undertaking at Our Cow Molly (thanks to the social media team who edited Ed Miliband’s video and used our footage!), but also the promise of the biggest UK government investment into community energy to date.
To put this into perspective, the £1bn in funding is the equivalent of 10,416 Our Cow Molly-size projects funded through the feasibility, procurement and legal framework stages. GBE, however, have said they intend to use the funding to support ~1000 projects, meaning ambitious clean energy projects could be looking at a tidy £1m each. This is brilliant news for those in hard-to-decarbonise sectors, and should open up the opportunity for some truly innovative projects.
Check out Great British Energy (GBE)’s website to find our more about their vision for working alongside communities and strategic authorities to empower this work. We’ll be keen to see how local and combined authorities support the works that’ll be necessary to implement these projects – and hope that community energy groups will be seen as valued partners in South Yorkshire’s decarbonisation.
Community first
We talk a lot about ‘community energy’, but what does that mean? For us it means working with local people to ensure we collaboratively co-design our projects to meet community priorities and build community wealth, whilst respecting and restoring the natural environment.
Image shows one of the community tours on our Open Farm Sunday, in which we invited the public to find more about how we’re decarbonising the Our Cow Molly dairy farm.
It’s exciting to consider the vast range and size of projects that will be made possible by this funding, from community-led grassroots organisations, to innovative decarbonisation models like our own. The funding also has potential to make community energy accessible to a much wider demographic, enabling climate action to become something available across socio-economic backgrounds. In an era when we expect energy prices from current supply to become increasingly volatile, owning and sourcing our energy hyper-locally could offer real protection to those most likely to experience fuel poverty.
With the range of clean energy technologies that are viable as alternatives to fossil fuels, we’ll expect to see everything from solar PVs and wind turbines, to mine water heat recovery projects. The key will be ensuring knowledge-sharing and visibility of these projects. To that end, we’ll be working closely with our peers in the sustainability sphere to ensure communication, collaboration and education remain at the forefront of what we do. And with our roots firmly in the community, we’ll be investigating how we can best access and utilise the funding that’s been announced to further develop our community energy projects right here in South Yorkshire.