Colin Nolden (Co-Director of Community Energy South; Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at University of
Bristol Law School; Researcher at the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions,
Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford)
On 30 April 2020, Community Energy South, together with Community Energy England and
sponsored by Coop-Energy (now part of Octopus Energy) and Ricardo, hosted its first ever online
conference. And what a conference it was! Over 175 participants joined stimulating presentations,
discussions and knowledge-exchange chats on Traversing Turbulent Times in an unprecedented yet
very democratic format.
Despite the downsides of online conferences, including the obvious lack of personal interaction, the
impossibility of recognising familiar faces as you queue for coffee, missing opportunities to ask a
quick question of clarification or to exchange business contacts, there were some positive elements
worth highlighting:
●Geographic spread: it seems unlikely that people would have travelled on a 1,000-mile
roundtrip from Scotland to attend this conference, so this format facilitated a greater
geographical spread of participants compared to face-to-face conferences
●Demographic spread: barrier free access beyond an internet connection has enabled
participants to dip in and out of the conference without the need for arduous travel and
without neglecting their caring responsibilities
●Democratic participation: asking questions through the chat function and the
organising/note taking team collating these for the session chair ensured that not only
typical voices were heard asking questions but it also facilitated the free flow of information
as ad-hoc answers were provided by chat users to individual questions
●Democratic timekeeping: Session timeouts ensured that everybody was on time with
nobody monopolising the airwaves beyond their allocated slot
In terms of content, the conference covered every aspect of sustainable energy, which is testament
to the scope and depth of community energy evolution in recent years. In 2010, it was rightly
deemed a success if a community energy group succeeded in putting solar panels on the roof of a
village hall. Now in 2020, concepts such as platform providers, local PPAs, DSO facilitated P2P,
end-to-end automated market participation, DSO procured flexibility services, CfD inclusion, and
post-FIT EV charging-based business model viability barely raised eyebrows and rarely needed their
acronyms spelt out (just in case: PPAs are Power Purchase Agreements; DSOs are District System
Operators; P2P stands for Peer-to-Peer energy trading; FIT stands for the Feed-in Tariff; CfD is a
Contract for Difference; and EV stands for Electric Vehicle).
Although total volumes of electricity generated through community energy are relatively low in
comparison to individual offshore wind farm projects (250MW vs 1400MW Doggerbank Sofia), the
importance lies in bridging the gap between individuals and communities on the one hand, and
socio-technical innovations systems and the Net-Zero carbon emission target on the other. As
Duncan Law from Community Energy England pointed out, 62% of zero-carbon measures to achieve
the Net-Zero carbon emission target require public engagement, irrespective of how many wind
turbines we manage to plonk into the North Sea.
The most impressive numbers to come out of this conference were the returns on investment that
some community energy groups deliver. South East London Community Energy (SELCE) surely tops
the list with a whopping 24-to-1 return on investment and a 6-to-1 return accruing directly to
householders. With government considering HS2’s expected return on investment of 2.3-to-1 worthy
of £100bn investment, while community energy is left picking up the scraps to help DSOs and energy
companies fulfil their fuel poverty obligations, one is left wondering what turns of political fortune
are necessary to adequately reward community value creation.
Always in the background, and sometimes at the fore, was the Covid-19 crisis. Despite the horrific
news of incessantly rising national and global death figures, there was evidence of community
energy once again revealing the true value of locally embedded sustainable economy approaches.
Jake Burnyeat from Communities for Renewables listed a total of over £100,000 of crisis funds
mobilised by community energy groups in the first weeks of lockdown. Well in advance of any
government support, these funds have supported community-organised aid networks and, most
importantly, local foodbanks to relieve the hardship of those left without jobs and falling through the
cracks of a system which only values contractual employment.
Despite projects being put on hold, and employees being furloughed, the resilience of community
energy in this time of crisis in impressive. Innovative business models, such as Dave Saunders’, had
us all gasping for air: Lockleaze Loves Solar seeks to install solar panels at ‘better than £600/kW’. The
figures in the chat suggested that in NW Wales, this figure stands at £1,100/kW and in sunny
Brighton at £750/kW (excluding VAT). Barbara Hammond’s 15 years of knocking on doors and
challenging preconceptions also finally appear to be paying off through Low Carbon Hub’s
gobsmacking vertically integrated project LEO, which covers all the acronyms mentioned above.
Don’t get me wrong! The way out of the Covid-19 crisis will be very tough. Tens of thousands of
people will die before we find a vaccine and many years will pass before what we call the economy
has ‘recovered’. If such recovery implies a return to unsustainable production and consumption
patterns, the future is bleak. If such recovery implies the willingness the leave such patterns behind,
we can start envisaging a plurality of outcomes. A lot needs to change to envisage a better future,
but this conference was not lacking in very sensible suggestions and applicable improvements (with
special thanks to Patrick Allcorn from BEIS):
●‘Sustainable development’ in planning needs to be replaced with ‘net-zero compliant’
●Community energy needs to provide evidence to be included in post-Covid-19 fiscal stimulus
considerations
●The £9.2 the government pledged for energy efficiency investments needs to be quintupled
to help address the ‘levelling up’ agenda and stimulate rapid investment in economic activity
●Community Energy needs to shift its business models into this area to benefit from this
investment
●Community energy needs to engage in more consortium building, which is supported
through RCEF2’s (Rural Community Energy Fund) need to include peer-mentoring and
regional structure to provide support and expertise to other groups
●Community energy needs to facilitate the embedding of Net-Zero in local authority
strategies to help them realise that this is not additional or separate to what they are doing
but something that needs to permeate everything they are doing
●Community energy needs to evidence shovel-ready projects to be included in LEP (Local
Enterprise Partnership) local energy plans to deliver regional industrial strategies
●Social impact requires better codification to be recognised as an additionality (Impact
Investment Institute is working on this but maybe the community energy sector as a whole
needs to find the means and methods to codify the scope and depth of sustainability
resilience it brings to local communities)
To sum up, the dynamism of the community energy sector, even in times of crisis, deserves greater
attention. It has obvious shortfalls, such as the lack of demographic, cultural, BAME and LGBTQ+
diversity. But this combination of community-embedded passion with socio-technical innovation to
achieve the Net-Zero target in the context of environmental sustainability has once more exceeded
expectations by nimbly navigating turbulent times.