12: Community energy: power to the people
From turbines in the remote Western Isles to solar PV in Brixton, community energy projects represent a challenge to our mostly centralised energy system. They can also bring enormous local social and economic benefits. But the sector is at a crossroads due to policy changes - so what is the future of community energy? Joining the team are Emma Bridge from Community Energy England, and Professor Patrick Devine-Wright, an expert in community energy and public participation from the University of Exeter.
Episode Transcript
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: Hello, I’m Dr Rebecca Ford.
Matt: Hi, and I’m Dr Matt Hannon. Welcome to Local Zero.
[Music flourish]
Traditionally, big energy companies have dominated a very centralised energy system but today, we’ll be talking about one way that this monopoly is being challenged and that’s community energy.
Rebecca: Hundreds of communities have their own local energy systems, from community wind on the island of Barra to solar PV in Brixton. These community energy systems can bring enormous social, economic and environmental benefits to local areas.
Matt: Community energy saw a boom in the 2010s, largely at the hands of the lucrative Feed-In Tariff but is now at a crossroads due to big policy changes. So what does the future hold for community energy?
‘It’s not just about ownership now and generation; it’s about services, it’s about looking at retrofitting, flexibility and community-owned car clubs powered by community solar. The opportunities, there are just so many of them.’
Rebecca: Emma Bridge is the Chief Executive of Community Energy England and she’ll be joining us alongside Professor Patrick Devine-Wright, an expert in community energy and public participation from the University of Exeter.
‘Improving green space, biodiversity and reducing fuel poverty. What community energy allows us to do is connect up ideas around emissions reduction activities and renewable energy projects with all the other things that happen in local places.’
[Music flourish]
Matt: As always, we want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of the podcast and ask questions or suggest topics for future episodes.
Rebecca: Reviews and suggestions are always, always welcome and you can also tweet us. We’re @EnergyREV_UK and use the hashtag #LocalZero. But first, as always, let’s bring in our faithful wingman, Fraser Stewart. Hey Fraser, how are you?
Fraser: I am absolutely wonderful, guys. How is everybody else doing today?
Matt: Yeah, top. I’m sitting in the sunshine yet again. It seems to be that every time we record, the sun comes out. The other six days are, of course, torrential rain [laughter].
Fraser: Excited for the episode today. Community energy is something that obviously all three of us have worked around quite a lot and we have a lot of experience with. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve always been not just interested but actually probably quite excited by it.
Matt: Certainly, from my end, I’m very closely involved with it. I work with an organisation called South Seeds and I’m a trustee and currently chair for them but also in my day job, I do a lot of research on this like Becky. So it’s going to be really interesting to hear from Patrick and Emma today about their thoughts at the coalface really about how we get this going and why we should even bother.
Rebecca: Yeah, I’m absolutely fascinated by community energy as a topic and, more to the point, community energy in driving that sense of community. I don’t know about the two of you but I feel like I’ve been very nomadic throughout my life. I think that’s part and parcel of being an academic is you can tend to move around quite a lot. Through some of my travels, I’ve spent quite a lot of time living in New Zealand and for me, I was always really fascinated by the strong sense of place that a lot of the communities had there. That went hand-in-hand not just with community energy, although that started to become a very interesting and growing topic during my time in New Zealand, much in the same way and the same sort of era as it did in the UK, and actually, it’s woven in with stronger community engagement, social links and ties to the community. It’s something that really, really interests me and I think, in part, that’s because I’ve never really felt connected to that community. So aside from something that I’m really interested in from a research perspective, building my life in Glasgow and starting to feel more and more embedded into a community, thinking about the ways that community energy could support that social infrastructure that I think I’ve often felt is really missing in my own life.
Matt: Yeah, engagement. We hear this word all the time with regard to net zero and a just transition. It almost gets overused but we can’t lose sight of its importance. Why is it important? Well, if you’re going to achieve net zero and ensure that that transition is just, i.e. no section of society is left behind, then you’ve got to canvas opinion from everybody and then you’ve got to involve everybody. You can’t leave one, two, three or X number of sections of society behind. It won’t work and it will cause problems. So it’s the way to go and community energy is often framed as a very important way of doing that. Fraser, I know you’re involved with a community energy organisation. Is that something that you’re doing and trying to achieve in Glasgow?
Fraser: Yeah, definitely. Engagement is absolutely at the heart of the stuff that we’re doing but I think community energy means a lot of different things to different people, depending on who you ask. I think one of the important things at the heart of the Glasgow mission certainly, is that just transition element. It’s about finding ways not just where communities already have the financial and social capacity to pull what can be often quite big arduous, ambitious projects together but how we can make sure that the benefits of those projects are also flowing into communities that could really stand to benefit from measures to reduce fuel poverty and that could stand to benefit from the quite substantial amounts of money that community energy projects can generate. So I think there’s a justice question that underlies this but certainly, the potential of these projects is massive. I’ve got a little bit of trivia for you guys which we...
Rebecca: Which we always love [laughter].
Matt: Yeah, that’s normally my job, Fraser.
Fraser: It is. Sorry, Matthew. You’ve been sleeping at the wheel this time and I’ve taken over [laughter].
Matt: It won’t be the last.
Fraser: In fact, this is a good test as to whether or not Becky has actually read my research.
Matt: [Laughter] No pressure.
Fraser: I know. Just to put you on the spot, Becky. I know you don’t read numbers anyway, so it’s fine [laughter]. I’ve been doing work predominantly around the Feed-In Tariff and looking at where the benefits of the Feed-In Tariff went and the research that I’ve been doing suggests that community energy projects have actually been really good at bringing a lot of that benefit to low-income areas. They target areas that stand to benefit a lot from savings and from Community Benefit Funds. The question for you guys is under the Feed-In Tariff in Scotland, how much money do you think community energy has generated for community benefit in the last ten years?
Matt: It’s millions.
Rebecca: This shows that I clearly don’t read your papers [laughter].
Matt: Millions and millions.
Fraser: I’m not accepting that.
Rebecca: I think this is where it gets really interesting, Matt because, for me, the big question is what counts in all of that. Particularly, when you started to talk beyond just, say, income from a renewable energy scheme and you started to talk about retrofitting and addressing fuel poverty issues, this is where we see cascades of benefits, isn’t it? Because it’s not just about then bringing in financial income into the community but you start to see benefits in terms of health and impacts beyond...
Matt: This is a politician’s answer to Fraser because you haven’t read his paper, have you?
Fraser: Totally, totally [laughter].
Rebecca: I have no idea [laughter].
Matt: Okay, so that’s awkward [laughter].
Fraser: Actually, benefit is subjective [laughter].
Matt: Are you talking per annum, Fraser? Is it income per annum?
Fraser: No, in the last ten years, how much has community energy been worth in financial benefit as in payments from the Feed-In Tariff? How much do we think?
Matt: It’s going to be more than £10m. I thought you were talking per annum. Okay, I’m going to go higher then.
Rebecca: Oh, payments from the Feed-In Tariff, okay. I really want you to tell us the answer but I do want us to remember that the impacts are so much more than just the financial number.
Fraser: Absolutely, absolutely.
Matt: That’s fair, yeah.
Rebecca: That’s kind of why I was pushing back before. I wasn’t trying to avoid [laughter] the question.
Fraser: [Laughter] It is important.
Rebecca: I think if we focus on the numbers, we’re going to miss a much bigger part of the picture but come on then, tell us the number.
Matt: We need a drum roll now. Go on.
[Drum roll]
Fraser: The number is... yeah, Matt, you’re not far off. The answer is approximately £42m from community projects alone. So that’s substantial money and now where Becky is coming from there, I completely agree. A big part of what drives me is that wider benefit as well but bearing in mind that money has gone into Community Benefit Funds which then get used in social projects around the place. It’s a lot of money.
Matt: We’re going to hear a bit more from you in a moment, Fraser, I think about your work with Glasgow Community Energy. As a bit of a teaser, what are we going to cover off?
Fraser: Absolutely, yeah. Shameless self-promotion but we’re launching our share offer in a couple of weeks’ time. The community energy project we’ve got in Glasgow is we’re putting solar on the roofs of two schools, one in the Southside and one in Easterhouse in the East End. They’re up and running now and they’re already generating. We managed to sneak in under the line of the Feed-In Tariff and so we’re getting a decent rate on that. They’re expected to generate, per school... now this is quite a small solar installation but per school, £5,000 a year for community benefit in the local area. It’s a good project and it’s an interesting project but the time that it’s taken to get it off the ground and the barriers that we faced, politically, socially and economically, along the way means that it’s a massive, massive undertaking. The conversation that I’ll be having with Ellie, who is the Glasgow Community Energy Director, will be about unpacking the practical procedural elements of getting it off the ground. Hopefully, it’s something that people can take away.
Matt: I look forward to it.
Rebecca: I mean this is an absolutely critical part of the discussion, isn’t it? These groups, whilst so important in terms of the sorts of benefits that they can drive in their areas, whether that’s neighbourhoods or cities, rely on voluntary input. They rely on people doing this above and beyond their day jobs, or after they’ve put the kids to bed, or whatever it is. It’s passion that drives people but it’s those skills that people are bringing to the table and an absolutely critical component of this is that kind of entrepreneurial element but in a voluntary way.
Matt: It does but, to be honest, I think the secret to scaling this up is about bringing in organisations that professionalise community energy without losing the sense of what community energy is. There is the question of how professional or how corporate you go until you lose what is community action and, again, that’s a difficult tightrope these communities have to walk.
Rebecca: On that note, I think let’s bring in our guests.
[Music flourish]
Emma: Hi, I’m Emma Bridge. I’m Chief Executive of Community Energy England.
Patrick: Hi, I’m Patrick Devine-Wright and I’m a Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter. I’ve also sat on the board of Exeter Community Energy since 2015.
Emma: At its most simple, community energy is, essentially, any type of energy project or service that has local leadership, is locally owned or accountable and has wider local benefits. So generally, they are more renewable energy type projects because most of the sector is motivated by tackling climate change but also they can be done in partnership with local businesses and local authorities and in fact, some of the most effective projects are. There are loads of different ways to get involved, so that’s owning, generating, investing in, giving energy advice and so on. I would say that building a zero-carbon energy system isn’t just a technological issue. It’s most definitely a social issue as well and it requires a just transition. I think the challenges and opportunities are so great that not only do we need whole energy systems but we also need those to be part of whole place systems. Community energy organisations are already at the forefront of energy system innovation and they’re initiating behaviour change. They’re helping to accelerate that decentralisation and decarbonisation of the energy system as well as upskilling communities right across the UK. Now the key thing about community energy is that it does all of this by building the trust, consent and active participation that’s needed to ensure a rapid and just energy transition. So building upon that, community energy is an incredibly effective way to harness people’s passion, knowledge and capital to contribute to the UK’s energy system but also it’s contributing to those broader social, environmental and local economic benefits. The other challenges that are happening right now are around building community resilience, climate action, investment and linking to housing, food projects and transport. It’s really very much about bringing energy within that whole economic recovery and the green recovery.
Rebecca: So this is whole lifestyle, isn’t it? Patrick, are you seeing this reflected in your research? We’re hearing a lot of reasons why community energy could be important for lots of different people. Is this coming out of your research as well?
Patrick: It definitely is. If you narrowly frame community energy around the installation of this piece of kit or that piece of kit, you’re actually missing a trick and I think that’s been one of the challenges for policy over the last decade is seeing community energy in that more holistic framework. We are facing an unprecedented environment and climate emergency and crisis. There is simply no way that we can respond to this effectively without harnessing all of the different actors in society and everybody playing a meaningful role. What community energy allows us to do is to connect up ideas around emissions reduction activities and renewable energy projects with all the other things that happen in local places like improving green space, biodiversity, reducing fuel poverty and lots of non-energy issues which are still local challenges and ways of enhancing what places are like to live in for communities of people. I think what community energy can do is to ensure that we harness the grassroots energy of people who really ultimately care about local places and are not coming in for a short-term project that’s got a bit of funding and then heading off somewhere else without that kind of enduring local commitment which is what community groups can bring.
Matt: Excellent. So looking at this, and you’ve mentioned some of the policy challenges that we face, I think some would argue that actually, community energy had some fairly important and adequate policy support if we maybe go back to the Feed-In Tariff introduction in 2010 but it’s certainly been no bed of roses. There have been big policy changes along the way, including the scrapping of the Feed-In Tariff but there’s lots of other stuff here like investment tax breaks being removed and the cessation of the Renewable Heat Incentive. There are lots of things that have happened recently, even in just the last 18-24 months, that have really hurt the sector. So I just wanted to get your take on the very best and the worst of policy in recent years and how it’s supported or undermined community energy.
Emma: Probably, one of the best that kickstarted it all was the Community Energy Strategy. That didn’t last very long. It was very much a Coalition strategy and so I think it wasn’t really taken ownership of after the end of the Coalition. Unfortunately, that’s where that high-level support for community energy and people generally started to lose a national policy. So I would say one of the key weaknesses at the moment is that you read any of the strategies coming out and people just aren’t mentioned. It’s all very much focused on that big technological innovation. I think that’s really the biggest, overarching challenge and then, of course, the removal of the Feed-In Tariff. For us, it wasn’t the fact that it went; it was the way it went. Community energy is just starting to scale up and just starting to really make an impact and the surplus from those renewable energy projects was then going into tackling fuel poverty and energy efficiency. We were just getting to the scale and the business models to start to make that happen and then the rug was just pulled away. For me, it’s that ongoing lack of certainty and policy stability that, of course, impacts the energy sector as a whole but does impact more on community energy.
Patrick: Can I just add to what Emma has very well put there? It’s just a little nuance that things are different in Scotland and have been for quite a long time. Scotland has shown, for quite a long time, a much more insightful approach to policymaking with a local and community energy emphasis. For example, that was where we first had a policy target to achieve renewables from the community energy sector. We had things like a registrar of community benefits and quite a lot of innovative policy approaches which subsequently eventually got taken up elsewhere.
Matt: So has Scotland got it right then?
Patrick: Well, every context is different but they certainly have a much more deep appreciation I think of the necessity to bring communities with you in energy transition rather than having some kind of top-down imposition of technological change or an understanding that communities count and communities matter. I’m not sure I’d say that Scotland is perfect but there are certainly things that they’re doing better than we are in other parts of the country.
Fraser: What do mean Scotland isn’t perfect? How dare you! [Laughter].
Matt: But I think if you’re reading the local paper and national Scottish news, regularly you see about community land buy-outs. Is this maybe what you’re speaking to is this broader culture about giving the community control, ownership and the ability to govern their own spaces and that energy is just part of the piece there?
Patrick: Absolutely. One of the things that I wanted to say today is that you can’t really think about local energy, community energy or decentralised energy without thinking about the broader political structures in any given political context. The fact is, in the UK, local authorities, for a very long time, have not really had much power, much teeth or much of a strong funding base upon which to do action in the energy space in a completely different way to what you see in other European countries, noticeably Denmark, Austria and other places where, for example, city councils get large scale energy supply and district heating projects off the ground and no one seems to bat an eyelid. Yet it just doesn’t seem to happen here and that’s because we have a much more centralised political system and much less enabling powers at the local authority level. I was just going to mention today, for example, Woking. Way back in the early 2000s, Woking was trying to do what we would call smart energy now, private wire systems, CHP and district heating. They just couldn’t because the regulations weren’t there, the powers weren’t there and the funding wasn’t there. So the appetite has been there but in the system we have, it hasn’t really enabled councils to grasp the nettle and get on with it alongside community groups too.
Rebecca: I want you to unpick a few things that you’ve just said, Patrick. We started talking about community energy and about grassroots action and a lot of people getting involved through community groups. Now we’re starting to talk about local energy and local authorities. Are we seeing a changing landscape with local authorities taking a stronger role or a less strong role? How is community energy evolving, I guess, alongside local energy and what are some of the differences you’re seeing or similarities you’re seeing between community energy and local energy?
Emma: We shouldn’t be talking about either or as community energy is part of local energy. It just adds value. The ideal is everyone working together on this, so local authorities should be working with community groups. They’ve both got their own strengths and so by bringing that together, it just completely compounds that added impact by working together. I’m very keen not to say that it’s either/or or that we’re in competition with each other.
Patrick: Yeah, I would fully back that up but I would also add that I think community groups take action out of a sense of frustration that no one else is doing what they think is absolutely urgent and necessary. There has been a waxing and waning, unfortunately, of central government support for community energy and I think it would be interesting for us all to discuss what the recent shift towards the local energy approach means and whether it means what we’re talking about or something else. But I think one of the big difficulties, with a situation where councils, in particular, don’t have the capacity to act in this space, is that communities do take action but not every community has got the wherewithal to do that. So you get a very, very unequal playing field with community groups sprouting up in places where people happen to have the time, the energy and the capital to do so but that’s a fundamentally problematic way of delivering local energy change and energy transitions because you’re going to get innovation in some places and not others and it will probably not happen in the places where it happens most where people are really, really struggling with life generally and with poverty in particular.
Rebecca: So what needs to happen to change that?
Patrick: In some senses, we need a better blend of a top-down and bottom-up approach. Without a concerted acknowledgement and appreciation by national government that local actors do local energy best, nothing is really going to change. At the same time, what they cannot do is create a kind of a one size fits all template and push it on local places and local communities assuming that it’s going to work because it’s been dreamt up by some group behind closed doors and they’re looking for a standardised model to roll out. There has to be this attempt to bring people with us in a participatory manner and an appreciation of the fact that places differ, challenges differ, needs differ, capacities differ and, therefore, you need some kind of process which enables everybody to reach that end goal but recognises that the ingredients may subtly differ between places along the way.
Emma: I’d actually also like to ask Fraser, Matt and Becky what your thoughts are on this because you’ve all been involved in community energy in different ways. What’s your take on this?
Matt: How long have you got? [Laughter]
Rebecca: I think community energy has a massive role to play but not on its own. It’s not just about community energy and local government for me but it’s also about engaging all of those critical stakeholders, including incumbent players, new business entrants, national policymakers and so on in driving forward the change. I think we need a coherent vision that we’re all working towards and recognising that there are clear contextual differences but for me, it’s all about that collaboration because if we need to deliver net zero at the pace and scale that’s going to be in line with our national targets and, more to the point, what the world needs, no one stakeholder group is going to do that alone. Again, it’s not just about energy. For too long, we’ve used energy synonymously with electricity and now we’re starting to talk about energy in its multiple forms but it’s about more than just energy. It’s about lots of different elements of sustainability and lifestyle coming together to drive that better future.
Matt: As we’re all doing a confessional, then I’ll have ten seconds as well to get it off my chest [laughter]. My worry with community energy is we don’t have the sense of community that we maybe once did. I take what you said before, Patrick, about the grass wasn’t always greener some time ago and things weren’t rosier but I worry that there isn’t the social network to support this. Yet in the same frame, I think these projects can engender that sense of community. I think some won’t get off the ground because there isn’t that community but they can also create community and so that’s where I think government support is so critical to not give a community a reason not to do something.
Fraser: I think there’s a problem even in Scotland with this where we’ve got a lot of government support and a lot of romanticising of the Scottish local community energy sector which is very, very good, very bustling and very healthy but I think it still has a bit of an inequality issue not just in terms of where the benefits are going and how you pitch those benefits but I think we still have an image of community energy as being wind turbines on Barra. We still think of it as rural. We think of it as middle-income communities that are benefitting from it. I don’t think we’ve done enough to pitch to a broader coalition of people to get behind it. So I think we have an issue where on the front of every single community share offer ever in Scotland is a turbine on an island somewhere. I think we need to do better to shake that image and show that, actually, we do have the tech there, as everyone has said, but tech to work in cities. The work that we do with Glasgow Community Energy specifically targets lower-income areas to try and get some of the benefits in there for communities who maybe don’t have the time to navigate the huge bureaucratic processes that can often accompany community energy projects.
[Music flourish]
And actually, that’s a really good cue to introduce Glasgow Community Energy, the project that I’m a board member for and that’s installed community solar on the roofs of two schools in Glasgow. We’re really proud of how far we’ve come with the project and its potential to be a blueprint for urban community energy, both in Glasgow and further afield, but I wanted to give you, as part of this episode, an honest insight into the problems that the project has faced and how much tenacity was ultimately required to get it off the ground.
Ellie: I’m Ellie Harrison. I’m one of the board members of Glasgow Community Energy. We’re a new renewable energy co-op for Glasgow and just about to launch.
[Music flourish]
We’ve now got solar panels on the roofs of two schools in Glasgow. One is in Easterhouse and it’s Ashton Secondary School. One is in Pollokshields and it’s Glendale Primary School.
Fraser: Perfect. Thank you. I should declare at this point as well that I am also a board member at Glasgow Community Energy which is going to be the topic of the discussion, so just to get that conflict of interest out of the way nice and early. Ellie, you’ve been in this for longer than me. You effectively founded Glasgow Community Energy. What was the process of that? When did it start? Give us a little bit of background.
Ellie: Well, it’s going back about six years now, so back to 2015.
Fraser: Has it been as much as that?
Ellie: Yeah!
Fraser: Six years! [Laughter]
Ellie: I’m involved in quite a lot of public transport campaigning and all of it is based around the need to reduce carbon urgently and frustration at government action over that and the fact that it’s not happening fast enough. I was aware of other community energy projects and was inspired by those but at the same time, actually, [laughter] I was also interested in how funding systems work in general, especially in the Arts which is where I trained and worked before. There are a lot of fossil fuel companies that are sponsoring art things in the Arts and they’re just doing that to legitimise their business model which is causing climate catastrophe. So I was thinking about what alternatives exist and whether there were any such things as ethical and autonomous funding streams that you could put into Arts projects and community projects. That’s when I started looking more at community energy and what other community groups had done which is set up cooperatives so that they’re owned by the members, run by the members and that any profit they make, especially through a community benefit society which is the sort of cooperative that we are, can then be reinvested into the community and is very proudly going to be a project which is by Glasgow and for Glasgow. We want people to join who are local and when we launch our community share offer, we want it to be an opportunity for people to join the co-op and we really want to get as many local members on board as possible because we see that as how we’re going to grow. It’s definitely still small in comparison to other community energy projects. We’ve only got two sites but I think we need to start somewhere. It almost didn’t happen [laughter] and so what we’ve got now is something to be really proud of after all the struggle to get to this point.
Fraser: Yeah, completely. I think one of the things that’s stuck with me through the process when we were trying to get it off the ground and trying to get support was the idea that you need to have some kind of demonstrator, there needs to be some kind of precedent for it and there needs to be some example to point to and say, ‘No, honestly, this can actually work.’ I think even though it’s a small scale that we’re working at just now, that’s so important not just for the future of Glasgow Community Energy but any other community group that wants to start up something similar in Glasgow. The precedent is now there. For you, Ellie, what were the biggest barriers along the way? Bearing in mind we’re now generating and it’s been six years in the making, what were the big barriers to overcome in that time?
Ellie: Lots of little hurdles and then a few very large hurdles. We got funding to start off with and that was in 2018, so the idea had already been about for three years by then before we got funding from the Scottish government. That actually opened quite a lot of doors because we then got a development officer who worked for Local Energy Scotland working with us. Once they’d invested in us with a grant, then they were invested in us to try and make a success of the project. It meant we could bring in expertise and we could bring in renewable energy experts to do feasibility studies and stuff like that. That was the first little hurdle but then it just really intensified up until we got the sites installed. It was largely down to the Feed-In Tariff which I’m sure your listeners will know [laughter] is a UK government scheme which paid a set rate to renewable energy generators guaranteed for 20 years. It was a really good incentive for individuals and community organisations to set up renewable energy insulations but that got phased out. The actual deadline for community organisations registering for the Feed-In Tariff was March 2019. At that point, we had to identify quite a few sites where we were planning to install solar, get them pre-registered and once we were pre-registered with OFGEM, we had exactly one year to get them installed in order to get the Feed-In Tariff. The clock started ticking because it was really the Feed-In Tariff that made the project financially viable and if we didn’t get it over the line by that date, then we could almost tear up everything we’d been working on [laughter]. That put a huge amount of pressure on us.
We had one year, so we had until the end of March 2020 and as we were coming into March 2020, it was just looking increasingly like we weren’t going to get it over the line. Of course, Covid kicked off and that was it. It was like a nail in the coffin for the project but... [laughter] on 30th March 2020, I think it was, the UK government department BEIS (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy) that controlled the Feed-In Tariff announced the extension because of Covid. That was a lifeline for us really. We were given a second chance and we just immediately leapt back into action trying to make it happen again. It wasn’t plain sailing from then on either because of [laughter] the negotiations with the council which were really crucial because the council owned most of the buildings that we’d pre-registered for the Feed-In Tariff and obviously, we needed to get their permission to put solar panels on. We then really entered into negotiations with the council which was probably the biggest hurdle we’ve had to get over but we did it and we got them to sign an agreement which they’ve said is going to set a precedent for other community groups. They’ve said in their Climate Emergency Implementation Plan that they hope to use that as the start of a framework for encouraging more community energy across the city.
Fraser: This is it. It comes back to that, doesn’t it? The precedent is there now. God knows that we had to fight to set it [laughter].
Ellie: We had a lot more buildings pre-registered for the Feed-In Tariff. We had nine buildings in total between Glasgow Community Energy and the Pollokshields Trust. They were owned by various organisations. There was one church. There were two artists’ studios, WASPS, who own artists’ studios in the East End. There were other council-owned buildings but they were the PFI schools, so the ownership structure was just too complicated. We just didn’t have the resources, as a volunteer board, to be able to pursue such lengthy negotiations with all of those building owners. We lost a lot of those sites but I still feel incredibly proud about what we have managed to achieve given that had we not had that extension to the Feed-In Tariff, the whole thing would have basically been killed not just by Covid but just by running out of time in March last year. I think all of those contacts that have been made over the last few years, we’re really going to hope to reengage with now that we’re going to have the community share offer launching and that they can actually see a tangible project and that they can actually invest in it.
Fraser: Given the time that it’s taken to get here, the ups, the downs and the barriers, what’s next? Where are we going next with Glasgow Community Energy? Once the share offer goes out and we’ve raised the money, what’s next? What’s the big picture?
Ellie: Well, my hope would be that we would be able to have local projects all over the city and that part of what we’re doing is networking between those areas as well and bringing them into the Glasgow Community Energy family. Pollokshields and Easterhouse are quite far away but they’re now connected through this project and I hope that that will be a really great way of sharing ideas and building solidarity across the city as well. I think it is going to be quite exciting when we can start to spend some of the money in the Community Benefit Fund as well and start to be able to see that money, that is being made through selling the electricity, starting to do some really amazing stuff.
[Music flourish]
Fraser: Huge thanks to Ellie there. To find out more about Glasgow Community Energy, including when our share offer goes live in the next couple of weeks, you can check out GlasgowEnergy.coop. Back now though to the chat with Emma and Patrick. Emma is reflecting on the potential of community energy to really change the future.
[Music flourish]
Emma: For a start, we’re at a huge crossroad. What community energy is doing and able to achieve is changing massively, as is the whole energy system. It’s not just about ownership now and generation; it’s about services, looking at retrofitting, flexibility and community-owned car clubs powered by community solar. I think there are just so many opportunities, so I think one of the challenges is knowing where to focus and also the additional challenge and strength of community energy is the breadth of benefits that we have and the way that we do it. Traditionally, we’ve always had the strongest relationship with BEIS but actually, the challenges and the opportunities come right across government; so the Cabinet Office in terms of that engagement, community investment and community resilience and MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government) and very much around that local authority partnership but planning blocks. The onshore planning blocks affect all of the renewable energy sector but also really that additional barrier on community-led approaches to that, so engaging the community. Well, what does that mean? What is meaningful engagement? Actually, it should be more than engagement. We’ve seen a report out recently from IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) saying a third of all onshore renewable energy projects should be offered community ownership. We’re seeing that voice coming from a lot more different areas but that also adds a complication. There is no one silver bullet for us to ask for. I think the one key thing is to get people and communities across net zero and across all government policy essentially as part of the green recovery. Matt, I think it was you who mentioned before about tax relief. That’s just nonsensical. I don’t understand why tax relief was taken away from us.
Matt: I wonder whether one fruitful strategy would be to position community energy as an important part of the answer to a just transition. I’ll maybe defer to Becky for a deeper line of questioning on this but there is a question in my mind about whether a just transition can happen without this grassroots action. There are probably arguments for and against because community engagement and the grassroots activism that is at the heart of a just transition talk to what these communities need and want but then there’s also the time and scale pressure of a net zero transition. We’ve got to deliver this in less than 30 years. It’s this tightrope between giving power to the people but delivering change at a scale and pace required. How do you balance that?
Emma: I mean it’s essential and so I think we just have to do it. I think you can balance it. It goes back to exactly what you were saying about that just transition. Climate change, everything we’re seeing through Black Lives Matter and Covid all come back to the fact of things not being done in a just way. How do we engage people? Not everyone wants to be engaged with the energy system and I totally understand that. It’s about how we make sure that it’s fair for those that can’t or don’t want to get engaged with it. Community energy is at least 25% more effective, according to research, in engaging people and getting behaviour change and that public acceptance. It should just be putting that community-led civil society approach at the heart of everything that needs to be done and not just expecting communities to pick up where government don’t bother or they can’t afford to do it.
Fraser: I’d say there’s also probably a massive misconception that justice, necessarily, slows things down. I don’t think that absolutely has to be the case with the right vision and with the right ambition to get things done but when we talk about the just transition and these elements that Patrick picked up on earlier that not all communities have the capacity, resource or the wherewithal to bring about a community energy project, how do you make sure that the benefits are still flowing into those communities in a way that is just, equitable and fair?
Patrick: I think one of the other fault lines maybe we’ve just opened up is about the scale and pace of change. Rightly or wrongly, for a long time, it’s been assumed that community energy means diddly, tiny, little projects that don’t really add up to much. Do we really have time for all that stuff? God, I don’t think we do really. Let’s just have a great, big, enormous offshore wind farm and some huge CCS facility and get hydrogen off the ground and that’s very exciting. I think that’s a fundamental problem. I think the shared ownership issue began to open that up and question whether community energy has to be small and relatively inconsequential. I also think that an energy system transition that works and works fast has space for large-scale projects and small-scale projects but I think community energy can cut across those very effectively with vision, capacity and enabling and that hasn’t really been there.
Rebecca: I love that perspective and I want to come back to where we almost started our conversation which is around that community energy is so much more than community energy. It’s not about a community-sized generation asset. It’s about changing the very fabric of our lives in places. In our last episode, we were talking about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, a very controversial topic I believe, but we actually started talking about the fact they’re causing these trophic cascades almost or social cascades. By making this change to how travel is enabled within an area or rather not enabled in this case, it created entire social changes in how people interacted with one another. I kind of think back to my grandparents’ generation and when I was growing up. I grew up in quite a small street where the kids could play outside on the road. There was very much that sort of share of bag of sugar with your neighbour perspective and there was a real strong community element to where we lived. When we think about community energy, it’s not just about those technological assets; it’s about shaping the very fabric of your neighbourhood and your community and that energy is the catalyst to do that. Do we need to change fundamentally how we think about this?
Patrick: I’m just going to nip in briefly but only to namecheck Emma here because she hit the nail on the head when she used the word ‘place’ right at the beginning of this. If you take a place-based approach to net zero and energy transitions, then you’re not just thinking about kit and you’re not just thinking about numerical indicators of capacity installed or emissions saved. You’re thinking about something else which is a complex combination of community ties, local economic flows, infrastructure deployment and a whole range of environmental, social and economic indicators which can up to sustainability. I think one of the problems we have with energy policy is that it is really too much driven by economic and engineering mindsets, and I’m going to be controversial here, that tend to have a decontextualised perspective on the world. The quantifications that you get from engineering perspectives on tech and economic perspectives on pay-backs and costs, etcetera, they lose that sensitivity to place and that nuance of the distinctiveness of localities. I think that’s something which social science and humanities can add but they have been less important parts of that policy in forming conversation. I think we have to be careful not to be nostalgic as well about the way things used to be and how wonderful it was. I’m not wishing to disagree with you at all about the fun you had in your childhood, Becky [laughter], but I think we have to look at communities in a clear-sighted way today and places. We’re living in a world that, up until very recently at least, has valued mobility maybe more than sticking in places and the people who have been left behind are the people who cannot move. I think the pandemic has usefully challenged some of that accepted wisdom.
Emma: Yeah, absolutely. I think, yes, we do need a radical new approach but I’m always loathed to use that word because specifically focusing on community energy, there’s something there for everyone. So whatever your political persuasion, background or area of interest, like Patrick was saying, whether you’re an engineer or a social scientist, there’s something there for everyone and by all those different perspectives coming together, that’s where we will have the most impact. I think, sometimes, we just try and make things more complicated than they are. The solution is there; we just need to crack on with it. We’ve seen before what happens if you do big projects, whether it’s energy or anywhere else, and just forging ahead without thinking about how people will understand that or how it impacts their lives. We’ve done all the easy things and now it is the harder things. We are not going to get anywhere, whether it’s with economic recovery, green recovery or climate change if we don’t really, really think about how it impacts different people and how different people are brought into it.
Matt: Do we think that community energy just hasn’t quite had the right PR people or right marketing yet? Are we pinpointing here the true value that it can offer? It may not be, and I stress may, around the least cost but it could be the same cost but provide a whole range of added benefits. I always use the example of an organisation called Green Energy Mull on the island of Mull in the Hebrides. They have a Community Benefit Fund which is commonplace for these types of schemes. I looked at the long list of where this funding went and what it was invested in and one of the things that really stuck in my mind was a new football kit for the under-11s local team. I could go through 20 or 30 things but the point here is I could use that for a wide range of other things that this money was invested in, alongside the other benefits of cohesion, sense of place and autonomy. What do you think we should be pushing at and selling community energy as in terms of what it does? I wonder whether that’s the next step in terms of promoting it and that we need to really pinpoint to your average Joe out there what it can do for them.
Emma: I think it comes down to that we need to look at how we can measure that additional social benefit or that additional social value in a way that is simple to understand and it isn’t too burdensome in terms of the bureaucracy or gathering that data. There are different reports out there but nothing that really looks at it across the piece. I think we’ve got reports that are about to come out or have just come out which show that social return on investment from community energy at the least being 3:1 but we found ones up to 25:1 depending on the project. So it’s kind of really how we demonstrate the additional value that community energy brings but, again, it depends on who’s interested in what. Some people are just interested in the big tech, the megawatt, so it’s about how we really bring that whole piece of the whole benefits together into something that really grabs people no matter what their background is.
Matt: I guess it depends who you’re selling it to, whether it’s the policymakers or the customers.
Emma: Yes, absolutely.
Matt: So, Patrick, what’s your big pitch?
Patrick: I’m really uneasy about the whole language that you’re framing this in because I think one of the fundamental problems we’ve had for ages is that cost-benefit analysis rules and if we can’t show it’s cheaper to do X rather than Y, then it doesn’t flow. So I think Emma’s absolutely right that until we’re able to allocate importance to non-monetary costs and other kinds of ways of recognising benefit outside of a financial way, then I think it’s very difficult to capture some of these nuances. I also think that community groups have been about delivery. Emma has been talking about the need for action and getting on with it and not just theorising. That’s what community groups have been doing for a long time. We then say, ‘Hold on a second. Haven’t you got detailed numerical indicators of the quantified impacts of your work over years?’
Emma: Yeah.
Patrick: Of course, they don’t because they want to get on with it. So I think it’s been a bit unfair and it is a nut that can be cracked but I have to come back as an academic maybe to the conceptual thing which is that if we see tackling net zero as a society as not just a technical fix, it should be about societal transformation in local places and it’s about how we make places better places to live but also places that are effective in responding to the environment and climate emergency. That has to be about more than just what the cheapest way is to do renewables deployment or net zero, etcetera. We have to take those other things into account and if we can do that, then I think we’re on to a winner.
Rebecca: So before we finish our interview, I’d like to turn us to something very kind of practically focused because this podcast is solution-based and very practical. I’d like both of your thoughts. For someone listening to the pod that’s interested in this idea and interested in community energy but perhaps isn’t engaged in it already, what can they do to get engaged? What can they do to start to make a difference?
Emma: I’d say, first off, look at our website or if you’re in Scotland, Community Energy Scotland or for Wales, Community Energy Wales. We’ve got a raft of information on there to explain things. Have a look at our vision for 2030 and our State of the Sector Report in particular. It’s as simple as there are lots of shares offers out at the moment, so you can invest from as little as £50 as well as get involved through volunteering your skills. There are so many different ways but just start by having a look at the website first and get in touch if you are interested.
Patrick: Complementing what Emma has just said, I’d say check out your local noticeboards in neighbourhoods and work with the community groups that are already there. Find out what their needs are. Think about community facilities and shared facilities like village halls, places where people can gather and come together. Often, you’ve got rickety buildings which need to be spruced up. Can you do something around PV around that or better quality insulation? There are lots of things in local neighbourhoods and communities where people have reasons to come together and you connect that up with the energy transition agenda where we’re talking about net zero emissions. You don’t necessarily need to start there and as Matt said, you don’t need to finish there. There’s the under-11s football team strip need as well.
Rebecca: Brilliant. Thank you, Patrick, and thank you, Emma. That was absolutely fantastic. Lots of great discussions and practical tips. I’m hoping that you can both stay on and join us for Future or Fiction? Fraser’s absolute wonderful creation that he loves to share with us each episode.
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So Fraser, over to you.
Fraser: Yeah, so for the uninitiated, Future or Fiction? is a game that we play with all our guests where I pitch a new innovation to the panel and they have to decide whether they think it’s brand new and it’s actually happening, in which case it’s the future, or if they think I have just pulled it out of my backside. So today’s innovation is... a Space for Community. So reflecting the wonderful panellists we’ve got on today, this is about community ownership. As billionaires and tech agencies around the world ramp up their space exploration efforts and set about effectively colonising our nearest planetary neighbours, community groups in the US have banded together to launch a legal claim to ensure that any use of natural resources, in places like Mars, can lead to public good rather than becoming exclusively a new means of private profit. Do we think this is actually happening or do we think it’s fiction?
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We’ll come to Emma first.
Emma: [Laughter] Every time you do this, I always think, ‘Oh, I know it’s totally true,’ but I’m not sure with this one [laughter]. I hope so. I hope someone is thinking about that. I mean I think there are probably more urgent things people need to be thinking about but I’m going to go with the future.
Patrick: I’m pretty sure it’s happening too and if it isn’t, I think it should be [laughter]. Yeah, the idea that we’ve run out of exploitation of minerals and ways to get rich quick on planet A and we can just move off to find asteroids, meteors and planets elsewhere that we can exploit, I’m quite uncomfortable with that.
Matt: And you’re saying, Fraser, that actually now people are just pointing at a dot in the far distance and saying that the resources and minerals from that, as and when we can harvest them, will be equitably distributed.
Fraser: This is the theory and the broad idea. You have all these mad websites for birthdays and Christmas and you can say, ‘I’ve bought you a square mile on Mars,’ or stuff like that.
Matt: Oh, that’s very kind of you, Fraser. Thank you.
Fraser: You’re very, very welcome and we’ll turn it into a community garden [laughter].
Matt: Some raised beds and a pond.
Fraser: The example just now is that people like Elon Musk, just to namecheck, are going off to Mars and they’re talking about populating it and harvesting whatever they can from it. The idea here to counteract that, community groups are banding together to bring the fruits of that into some kind of community public ownership.
Rebecca: But you see now you said community groups in the States are banding together. That’s where you’ve thrown me off. I feel like if you’d told me community groups in Sweden were doing that, I might be more bought into this. Anywhere in particular? Can you narrow it down to more than just America?
Fraser: Not especially, no [laughter]. America in the US [laughter]. That’s where the main conversation is happening.
Matt: I think this is definitely happening. I have got this image [laughter] of sandal-wearing folk on the Star Trek Enterprise. I’m trying to kind of bring the two worlds together of cutting-edge space travel and community cooperative thinking but, yeah, I think it’s real.
Rebecca: I’m going to challenge your thought of community and cooperatives having to be sandal-wearing groups [laughter].
Matt: Listen, I’m a trustee and I wear a pair of lovely sandals when the weather is right.
Fraser: Community energy does have an image problem [laughter].
Patrick: Well, only amongst academics [laughter]. Hold on a sec [laughter].
Matt: Yeah, I could have swapped that out for academic easily, Patrick. Quite right [laughter].
Rebecca: Oh, dear. So I would love for this to be true but maybe I’m not as positive today as I was a couple of weeks ago but I feel like this is probably fiction, despite the fact that I wish it was happening.
Fraser: Okay, so that’s your final answer?
Rebecca: Yeah.
Fraser: Reluctantly or disappointedly fiction.
Rebecca: Disappointedly fiction.
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Fraser: Patrick, can I pin you down for an answer?
Patrick: Future.
Fraser: Future. Emma?
Emma: Future.
Fraser: And Matthew?
Matt: Yeah, future.
Fraser: The answer is... fiction...I think.
Matt: I haven’t got one right in 2021 yet [laughter].
Fraser: This is something that I invented with our guests in mind. There are legal challenges in space exploration but none, as we understand it, are a result of communities banding together to try and seize Mars into public or community ownership. So there are grounds for it but it is fiction.
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Rebecca: This is the first one where I’m actually sad to be correct [laughter].
Emma: Or maybe we’ve started something now.
Patrick: Exactly.
Emma: Maybe this is the seed.
Patrick: Yeah.
Fraser: This is it. Earlier in the season, we had space-based solar panels and then before you knew it, they’re everywhere... in space mostly.
Matt: I think you’ve been watching a bit too much Babylon 5, Fraser.
Fraser: You say this a lot. I don’t watch any of this kind of stuff [laughter]. That’s for the nerds, man.
Matt: We’ve got to be careful who we’re offending here now [laughter].
Patrick: Oh, dear.
Emma: You’re just trying to offend everyone with this episode [laughter].
Matt: Yeah, I think we should just end transmission now before we lose listeners.
Fraser: Yeah, that’s for the ponytails and the sandal wearers, isn’t it? [Laughter]
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Rebecca: Well, I think all that’s left to say is to thank Emma and thank Patrick again for such wonderful contributions to today’s show. We’ve really enjoyed having you on board, particularly for Future or Fiction? Please do follow us on social media @EnergyREV_UK. Use our hashtag #LocalZero and ask us any questions, drop us a comment, give us some feedback and we’ll try and get to that and address it all in future episodes but for now, thanks for listening and bye.
Patrick: Bye-bye.
Emma: Bye.
Matt: See you soon, bye.
Fraser: Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
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