A new book is being distributed for free to encourage people to launch carbon-cutting and renewable-energy projects in their local communities. The book covers everything from setting up a group to picking a renewable technology, as well as providing advice on finances and governance. It also features many case studies of real-world groups – two of which are extracted below
• Read the full version or request a printed copy
Duncan Clark and Malachi Chadwick
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 January 2012 14.22 GMT
MOZES in the meadows
The MOZES project, in the Meadows area of Nottingham, is a great example of the wider community benefits of local energy projects. Separated from the rest of the city by main roads, the Meadows has struggled with poverty and crime. In 2004, a group of residents decided to see if an energy project could help restore pride to the increasingly embattled community. The result was Ozone, a regeneration scheme designed to help the Meadows become the first inner-city community to actively reduce its carbon footprint.
After a year, with the project foundering due to lack of proper backing from the council, some of the people involved explored the idea of establishing a community-owned energy services company to help residents cut carbon and avoid debt and fuel poverty. With startup funding and practical support from National Energy Action, MOZES (the Meadows Ozone Energy Services Company) was born – an inspiring initiative that gives the lie to the idea of community energy as a worthy, middle-class preoccupation.
The group was given a boost when Nottingham Energy Partnership stepped in with funding for a part-time energy assessor and debt advisor based at the Meadows Partnership Trust (MPT) – a local regeneration organisation that was to become one of MOZES' primary allies in the area. A few years on, MOZES has a number of successful projects under its belt and shows no sign of slowing down. Key to its success has been the Green Streets programme, which helped the group provide dry-lining insulation, modern boilers and energy monitors to 32 Victorian homes on the estate.
The economic profile of the area has made MOZES wary of the community share issue model preferred by many energy service companies, but the group's zealous pursuit of grant funding paid off when they secured £650k as part of the government's Low Carbon Communities Challenge. This paid for solar panels on 55 local houses, three schools and two community buildings – in the process throwing up some technical challenges. MOZES director Julian Marsh, a local architect and lecturer, explains: "We realized we could only put PV on a few houses per street – any more and the local networks can't take it. Some people's household electrics weren't up to scratch either. For domestic PV to work the systems need to be up-to-date and properly earthed."
Those hosting the panels can use the electricity generated, but the revenue from the Feed-in Tariff is returned to the community. Marsh sees this as an ideal use of the FIT subsidy. "The idea is to create a community endowment. The panels should bring in about £20,000 a year, which can be reinvested in future projects. We're looking forward to doing something similar with solar thermal when the Renewable Heat Incentive comes in."
The team are already seeking to broaden the scope of the project. After working with English Nature to resolve "some bat issues", they have secured planning permission for a 300kW wind turbine on the banks of the River Trent, and are looking at their options for funding construction. The Green Streets relationship has also allowed MOZES to turn the Meadows into a test bed for future energy systems. An experimental carbon-negative house has been built, with 38 more ultra-efficient residences in the pipeline. Plans are also in place for a trial of residential CHP.
Marsh encourages those looking to emulate MOZES' success to "take advantage of what's already available" in the area. In the Meadows, that included MP Alan Simpson, who recently stood down to focus on full-time environment work. "Without the help of our MP, MOZES would be nowhere."
Settle Hydro
Small-scale hydropower was commonplace in the Yorkshire Dales until cheap fossil fuels and the decline of local industry consigned it to history. Now, the push for renewable energy is giving this venerable technology a new lease of life in schemes such as Settle Hydro – a 50kW reverse Archimedean screw that sits on a weir built for watermills and even uses the original mill race to draw power from the River Ribble. A small amount of the resulting electricity is fed to the building next to the old mill, with the rest (around 90%) being sold to the grid.
The project arose from a partnership between local environmentalists (Green Settle) and a community group (Settle Area Regeneration Team). Helped along by H₂OPE, an organisation that supports community hydro, the coalition formed a volunteer-run Industrial and Provident Society to manage the scheme. The volunteers' commitment was soon put to the test, however, after being denied planning permission twice. The team went to the final appeal armed with a summary of every carbon reduction pledge the council had ever made, which project co-founder Ann Harding read out to the committee. That seemed to do the trick.
The £410,000 upfront cost was raised in stages. September 2008 saw the first community share issue. The group put a great deal of work into the share prospectus and promotion and by December they had already raised £140,000 from 166 investors. That success gave the project access to grants from environmental and regeneration bodies, which brought them up to the two-thirds level they needed for a bank loan from Charity Bank, which provided £125,000 on "massively helpful" terms. Investors, Ann says, can expect a return in the sixth or seventh year of operation, though much of the income will flow directly to community projects.
As one of the first projects of its kind, Settle Hydro's dealings with the regulatory system were frustrating. It should, for example, be receiving income from the Feed-in Tariffs, but that has been held up because Ofgem had no procedure for community hydro schemes. The Environment Agency was also unhelpful, insisting on major design changes without explanation. (To its credit, the Agency appears to have learned from these mistakes, overhauling its procedures and hiring a full-time hydro support officer.)
By an unfortunate coincidence, the first turns of Settle's screw coincided with the start of the biggest drought since 1929, putting the first year's output at less than a third of the 165,000kWh originally projected. But the team expects to be able to make efficiency gains by lifting the screw's maximum speed (which is limited to reduce noise) and project co-founder Steve Amphlett sounds confident when he predicts 140,000kWh in year two.
Ann and Steve receive correspondence from groups all over the world seeking to reproduce their success. They consider this outreach work to be crucial but are wary of the potentially bottomless pit of work it presents. "It's our responsibility to lead by example and make sure the site always looks fantastic, but we're still just volunteers, and there's only so much we can do."
At least the project development work is out of the way, however. Juggling the legal, financial and bureaucratic elements required to get the scheme up and running took 20–30 hours of Ann and Steve's time each week, on top of already demanding full-time jobs. But the hard work was worth it, as their pride in the project is unmistakeable. "Lots of people talked about doing this but we can come back years from now and say we actually went ahead and did it … we fought the battles and cleared a lot of obstacles so others won't have to."
• These case studies are excerpted from The Rough Guide to Community Energy, by Duncan Clark and Malachi Chadwick. The book is published by Rough Guides, supported financially by M&S and is being distributed by 10:10.
Monday, 9 January 2012
The communities taking renewable energy into their own hands
Despite the economy, people are investing in solar, wind and hydro power for their local communities
• Free book: The Rough Guide to Community Energy
Ed Mayo for Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 January 2012 14.40 GMT
Late last year we - Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Group - published a new report which reveals the growing number of people who are choosing to start renewable energy co-operatives in their communities, against all the odds.
What is exciting about the report is that it is the first and most comprehensive guide to what amounts to a new movement of communities who are taking action for greener energy into their own hands.
In a time of doom – when all talk is of cuts, unemployment and rising prices – this report highlights a different story. Despite, or maybe even because, of the wider economic woes, people across the UK are creating a co-operative movement for green energy.
There are now 43 communities who are in the process of or already producing renewable energy through co-operative structures. They are set up and run by everyday people – local residents mostly – who are investing their time and money and together installing solar panels, large wind turbines or hydro-electric power for their local communities.
The report highlights a series of examples. Like Ouse Valley Energy Service Company, which is owned by 250 people who have installed solar panels on a local brewery. Or River Bain Hydro, which installed a hydro electric power generator in its local river with investment of £200,000 from around 200 people.
The report also shows that together across the UK local residents have invested over £16 million in these co-operatives. These range from over £4 million which has been invested by over 2,700 people in Westmill Wind Farm in Oxfordshire, right through to around £38,000 which has been invested by around 34 local residents to install solar panels on a local primary school in Nayland, Suffolk.
Overall, Co-operative renewable energy in the UK is a testimony to the fact that green economy co-operatives are the fastest growing part of the UK co-operative sector, having grown by an astonishing 24 per cent since 2008.
What amazes me about this growing movement is that it is emerging against all the odds. This government's rhetoric about supporting community owned renewable energy has not yet been backed up by an integrated plan to make it a reality. As many of the people in renewables co-operatives in the report say, there's a lot stacked against communities on this – changing legislation and red tape, not to mention hard economic times.
For a start, government legislation keeps shifting, and there's no better example of this than the government's recent slashing of the solar Feed in Tariff. Whilst we recognise that the solar tariff was generous, the early and dramatic nature of the cut means several energy co-operatives have been put on hold.
Like many, Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Group are campaigning on this in the hope that government will introduce the planned premium community tariff that encourages communities to create green energy together. But the fact that it was cut at such short notice has been a serious set back for many co-operatives.
Planning hurdles and bureaucracy are also a major problem for small community renewable schemes. With complex planning regulations and a wide range of organisations to deal with – the Environment Agency, Distribution Network Operators, local authorities, funders and so on – it is hard for small community renewable schemes, often set up and run by local volunteers, to get things set up.
River Bain Hydro, for example, has successfully set up a hydro electric scheme in North Yorkshire, despite spending a large proportion of its limited time negotiating with power companies because of a lack of co-ordination. As they explain: "Between the power house and the grid, a distance of a hundred yards, we ended up with five different organisations involved in delivery."
With a financial crisis, cuts and difficult environment, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that people across the UK are coming together to create green energy themselves. The co-operative sector, which has always been there to support people trying to make a difference, is doing all it can to help – whether through schemes to support community shares or through The Co-operative Bank's commitment to invest £1 billion in renewable energy by 2013, and its broader support for new co-operative enterprises.
As we all know now, we have built an economy based on a financial house of cards of banks, bonds and bail-outs. When you strip away the hype and hope, the only feasible alternative strategy is one that is based on bootstrap development of local enterprises such as these, making use of the three unlimited sources of wealth we have – people, ingenuity and renewable energy.
• Ed Mayo is Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, the trade association for co-operative enterprises.
• Free book: The Rough Guide to Community Energy
Ed Mayo for Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 January 2012 14.40 GMT
Late last year we - Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Group - published a new report which reveals the growing number of people who are choosing to start renewable energy co-operatives in their communities, against all the odds.
What is exciting about the report is that it is the first and most comprehensive guide to what amounts to a new movement of communities who are taking action for greener energy into their own hands.
In a time of doom – when all talk is of cuts, unemployment and rising prices – this report highlights a different story. Despite, or maybe even because, of the wider economic woes, people across the UK are creating a co-operative movement for green energy.
There are now 43 communities who are in the process of or already producing renewable energy through co-operative structures. They are set up and run by everyday people – local residents mostly – who are investing their time and money and together installing solar panels, large wind turbines or hydro-electric power for their local communities.
The report highlights a series of examples. Like Ouse Valley Energy Service Company, which is owned by 250 people who have installed solar panels on a local brewery. Or River Bain Hydro, which installed a hydro electric power generator in its local river with investment of £200,000 from around 200 people.
The report also shows that together across the UK local residents have invested over £16 million in these co-operatives. These range from over £4 million which has been invested by over 2,700 people in Westmill Wind Farm in Oxfordshire, right through to around £38,000 which has been invested by around 34 local residents to install solar panels on a local primary school in Nayland, Suffolk.
Overall, Co-operative renewable energy in the UK is a testimony to the fact that green economy co-operatives are the fastest growing part of the UK co-operative sector, having grown by an astonishing 24 per cent since 2008.
What amazes me about this growing movement is that it is emerging against all the odds. This government's rhetoric about supporting community owned renewable energy has not yet been backed up by an integrated plan to make it a reality. As many of the people in renewables co-operatives in the report say, there's a lot stacked against communities on this – changing legislation and red tape, not to mention hard economic times.
For a start, government legislation keeps shifting, and there's no better example of this than the government's recent slashing of the solar Feed in Tariff. Whilst we recognise that the solar tariff was generous, the early and dramatic nature of the cut means several energy co-operatives have been put on hold.
Like many, Co-operatives UK and The Co-operative Group are campaigning on this in the hope that government will introduce the planned premium community tariff that encourages communities to create green energy together. But the fact that it was cut at such short notice has been a serious set back for many co-operatives.
Planning hurdles and bureaucracy are also a major problem for small community renewable schemes. With complex planning regulations and a wide range of organisations to deal with – the Environment Agency, Distribution Network Operators, local authorities, funders and so on – it is hard for small community renewable schemes, often set up and run by local volunteers, to get things set up.
River Bain Hydro, for example, has successfully set up a hydro electric scheme in North Yorkshire, despite spending a large proportion of its limited time negotiating with power companies because of a lack of co-ordination. As they explain: "Between the power house and the grid, a distance of a hundred yards, we ended up with five different organisations involved in delivery."
With a financial crisis, cuts and difficult environment, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that people across the UK are coming together to create green energy themselves. The co-operative sector, which has always been there to support people trying to make a difference, is doing all it can to help – whether through schemes to support community shares or through The Co-operative Bank's commitment to invest £1 billion in renewable energy by 2013, and its broader support for new co-operative enterprises.
As we all know now, we have built an economy based on a financial house of cards of banks, bonds and bail-outs. When you strip away the hype and hope, the only feasible alternative strategy is one that is based on bootstrap development of local enterprises such as these, making use of the three unlimited sources of wealth we have – people, ingenuity and renewable energy.
• Ed Mayo is Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, the trade association for co-operative enterprises.