The Community Energy People project has kicked into action, starting with a workshop in Lewes at the Community Energy South offices and Climate Hub. We are delighted that our first partner organisations are so full of ideas of how to evolve the project, manage their budgets and how their targets will work best for them. This collaboration will be key to the success of our project funded by the National Lottery Fund, which will lead to 11 groups being supported and 33 new jobs for the sector; the project has been designed to demonstrate the value of embedding best practice methods of working for the community energy sector, creating capacity and empowering our organisations.
The Community Energy Partner organisations are Energise South Downs, Sustainable Danbury, MaidEnergy, Rossendale Valley Energy and Xero Carbon Guildford all of whom have been involved with CES through our Community Energy Pathways programme. CAG Consultants are also supporting the project and ran a first Theory of Change session which will enable us to capture the impact that this project will achieve over the next 3 years and beyond.
We were also delighted to be joined by Ian Fitzpatrick, CEO of Lewes District Council, Fiona Booth from Ofgem, Head of Stakeholder Relations and Lana Dawe, a 16 year old student on her work experience. As observers to our kick off we also know that key stakeholders, local authority leaders and our future generation workforce are fundamental for the future of Net Zero success.
