64: Live - Energy smart places and a just transition

What is the role of energy-smart places and smart local energy approaches in securing a just transition? In this Local Zero Live, recorded at EnergyREV's final summit in central London, Becky and Fraser welcome a panel of guests to explore how tech innovations and energy policy can work fairly, and for citizens and communities.

Guests in this episode:

Karen Barrass of Climate Insights

Dr Donal Brown, University of Sussex Research Fellow

Joanne Wade OBE from the Association for Decentralised Energy and the UK Energy Research Centre

Syed Ahmed from Community Energy London

Becky: Hello everyone, and welcome to Local Zero, live in London at the EnergyREV Summit.

And uh, what a happy, smiling group of people we have in the room. And uh, the more astute among you may have noticed that we are missing a certain someone on stage.

Fraser: Yeah, I think, um, Matt was busy getting his elbow patches re-sewn on, but he sends his apologies and best wishes. So the session today is something that if you've listened to the podcast, if you've been working in EnergyREV, as most of you have for the last while, you will know it's a, it's a very important, very critical topic to, to, to the energy system in general.

We're gonna be talking about the, the role of smarter, more local energy systems and approaches to delivering a fairer and more just transition to a net zero energy system.

Becky: And it is – it's a very important topic, and particularly so in today's energy climate as we're seeing the prices of energy rising and continue to rise and the cost of living crisis is a very real thing. And um, I think what this has done and what we've really noticed is how it's highlighted some of the inequalities inherent in our energy system today. 

Fraser: They have been written larger than they ever have before. But there's an upshot to this, we're not just here to depress you at the end of a, at the end of a long Tuesday.

Um, and that, that upshot is that we are genuinely at a, a formative moment in the history of, of energy in the UK and around the world as well, where just about everything is up for grabs, because it has to be up for grabs for delivering that cleaner energy system. We can absolutely make the changes that need to be made to make that system fairer and work actively for citizens, communities, people and places as well. 

And local approaches, those smarter local approaches, are one way – and I would argue quite a unique way or uniquely placed – to, to deliver that fairer energy system. At that local level, you can tailor those systems to local needs. You can leverage community organisations, local knowledge, local connections to better reach people who have been typically disadvantaged or excluded in the old dirty ways of fossil fuels, as we're seeing just now with the energy crisis.

However, energy is not simply fairer by virtue of being local. Who gets to participate? Who gets to benefit from that energy system? Who gets to shape the design? Who owns it? Who governs it? All of these different questions are ones that are absolutely critical to answer if we really do want to fully unlock the value that we know could be on offer if we make those right decisions for people and places across the country.

Becky: And we are so lucky that we have a fabulous lineup of guests to explore this topic with us. But before we bring them on, this is just a quick reminder that if you haven't already, please do subscribe to the pod, search “Local Zero” wherever you get your podcasts, check out our website, localzeropod.com. Follow us on Twitter at localzeropod. And Matt has signed us up to Mastodon. I don't even know what that is. Hashtag localzeropod. And if all of that befuddles you, as it does me, just email us localzeropod@gmail.com 

Fraser: We are nothing if not consistent with our branding. 

Becky: Before we get into today, what I realised that I did not tell everyone at the start, is that we do want your questions to put to the panel. So please, at any point, pop your questions in there and we'll try and bring them up. 

Fraser: So, without further ado, I think we will bring our esteemed panel into the conversation. What I'd like you to do, starting with Karen here, uh, left to right, as the audience sees it, is to introduce yourself, generally what it is that you do, and give us the one big thing, whether an opportunity or a barrier, that you see for, for local and more citizen and community-led approaches to realising, uh, a fairer net zero transition.

Karen: Thank you. I'm Karen Barrass, I am the founder of Climate Insights. Uh, Climate Insights is a relatively new organisation and really focusing on some of the seemingly intractable problems we're facing in delivering net zero and really understanding how the constituent parts of the puzzle fit together.

Obviously, energy is a huge part of that. Local is a huge part of that. Um, so I'm really excited to get into the nuts and bolts of that today with you. Um, to answer your question, I think this is a time of unprecedented momentum. Uh, I think there are a lot of opportunities that we have the chance to grasp, uh, in terms of local energy.

I think people have a better appreciation of the need for transformation than they've ever had before. Uh, I think that we've reached a point now with recent policy developments, uh, some of which have been brought about by this fantastic project and, and the PFER project at large. And I think that we're starting to have more knowledge and experience that can be shared.

So I think we're in a vital time of dissemination and understanding, uh, what's working well, what needs to change. But I do think that there still needs to be more of a recognition about the role that communities can play, about the role that local areas can play, um, and in fixing and transforming our energy system, there's, there's a little bit more work to do there.

Donal: Hi everyone. I'm, uh, Donal Brown. I'm a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. Uh, I work in areas around sort of energy policy, business, finance, political economy. I also, um, run a small, I hate the word “boutique”, but boutique consultancy and architecture practice who, uh, work on low-carbon housing and increasingly kind of, uh, small-scale energy issues.

Um, I also chair the board of the retrofit cooperative, CIC, RetrofitWorks. Um, so yeah, that's, that's sort of my, my, my broad role. So I think, um, I didn't want to be too negative, but I do think there is a word of caution. And I think Fraser was touching on it in his opening, his opening sort of preamble.

That I think there is, there is, we do need to be mindful about who benefits from this change and actually who is going to capture the value, which is almost certainly coming forward in the intersection between smart energy systems, demand-side flexibility, internet of things-enabled devices. And how we ensure that those benefits actually reach the people who need them most, rather than being captured by big multinational corporations which, to be honest, has been what the smart and digital transition thus far has tended to produce.

So I think there is a word of caution and we need to make sure that we design policies and governance systems that make sure that that value is spread to everyone and those who need it most.

Joanne: Hi, I'm Joanne Wade. Um, I've got a number of roles, I'm Chief Strategic Advisor at the Association for Decentralised Energy. I'm an Non-Exec at the Energy Saving Trust, and I'm Chair of the Advisory Board for the UK Energy Research Centre. Um, I've probably spent the last 30 years working on energy use in buildings mainly, so I'm very much on the user side of things. And I think I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? The last 12, 18 months have shown us just how much the energy system has failed to provide what energy users need.

And collectively, as a bunch of professionals, you know, I include myself here, who've spent their working lives working in the energy sector, we should be quite ashamed of ourselves that we've actually failed to deliver what people need. So I think that is a real opportunity for doing things very differently.

But I think to be truly transformational, energy smart places need to much better understand what is the best that they can deliver for energy consumers, and how to do that? And also to recognise that it's not one-size-fits-all. So, you know, an energy consumer is not an amorphous thing. Everybody needs different things.

And as long as we've got that as the fundamental principle of what we're trying to do, then hopefully there will be an offer from a smart local energy system, for every citizen in that area, that is appropriate for them, affordable for them, and actually makes life better for them, because that's what we should be aiming for. So, to me, that's the big opportunity. 

Syed: My name's Syed Ahmed. I’m, like a number of people here, I've, uh, several hats on. But, um, I'm, uh, broadly here today with my role as Chair of Community Energy London. That's a network of around about 30 groups around the capital, working to deliver community energy projects.

But my main area of interest is in cities and energy, particularly London, because I can't be bothered going out of Zone 6. And, uh, what I principally look to do is, look to see what government policies around energy and climate are, and try to map them down onto London. Because one of the things that many policymakers forget is that there's a very different regional basis to how the policies, uh, interact in certain regions across the country.

Um, just two things that come to mind in terms of answering that question, both are recently. One, I presented at a local climate assembly. So I've been working in my North London borough, called Barnet. And to their credit, um, they've been doing absolutely terrific work recently, uh, since the change of administration in May 2022.

And they committed to a climate assembly and they've got that rolling. And I was asked to present about energy in people's homes and present it four times over a period of about two hours. And, uh, just to say that, um, I did an absolutely blinding set of slides. It was fantastic. I encapsulated some of the big things that have been happening in the UK on energy for about 30 years in about eight minutes. And really simply.

And the answer I got back from, and I've never met so many disinterested people in my entire life. So just one thing to mention is, is that they did a bloody great job there of doing a random sample of residents in my borough. And out of the 40-odd people I spoke to that afternoon, one-and-a-half knew anything about what we're talking about.

So, you know, we tend to occupy, the criticisms we make of those echo chambers of people from the left and the right. I'm afraid we're very much within that ourselves. And if you go to speak to normal people out there, throwing jargon like “just transition”, “social capital”, lots of the other thing, they'll just look at you.

And just the override, the one comment I got back time and time again is, “How do I get home with two bags of shopping in the rain?” So that was their priority when they got kids and it's a commuter time. So just want to emphasise, all the decisions around local energy are really important. But if we put it through the prism of kind of energy, we're going about the wrong way of doing it.

Becky: What a set of opening statements I don't know where to begin. Um, I'm from Barnet, not anymore I used to be there, so we'll have to, we'll have to talk. 

Syed: Do the secret handshake after. 

Becky: Um, but I think, I mean, Joanne, I might, I might turn to you because you mentioned a number of your hats. One of the ones that you left off has been your involvement and engagement in the EnergyREV project, as well.

So, you know, you've seen a lot of the, the sort of innovation that's been going on over the last four or five years around the energy smart places, you know, to your AD work, the EnergyREV work and the countless other sort of positions you mentioned, and sort of thinking about that energy smart places as delivering the best, making life better.

I mean, are you starting to see some of that innovation address this? Address it fairly, address it inclusively? You know, where are we making strides forwards? And where do you think we need to be doing better or more? 

Joanne: It's a good question. And I think I my impression is that what we've done is create some really innovative and good local energy systems that meet the needs of some of the community in areas where, and I'm going to use jargon, sorry, where there is a lot of social capital and there's a lot of energy expertise.

And that's great because that's where innovation starts. That's right. That's the right thing to do first, but once you've got that innovation in those areas, you need to then understand what it has done for the local community and what it's not done for the local community. And then also actually put quite a lot of resources into thinking about how you then get out of that niche, into the wider world where you've got an awful lot of communities that don't have massive amounts of social capital and certainly are not stuffed with energy experts like Oxford is, you know? Sorry, I don't want to pick on Oxford as an example, but it is, isn't it? It's full of energy experts, and that's fantastic because that is the innovation generator.

Brilliant. The real challenge is how do you learn enough from those privileged communities that you can then spread it beyond the niche. And I'm not sure I know the answer, but I think that's the key question. 

Donal: Just to second that point, and sorry to, again, to pick on Oxford. I was born there, so, you know, some, some loyalty. But, uh, RetrofitWorks has one of our, um, able-to-pay retrofit schemes running, one that's the most successful, actually, uh, in Oxford called Cozy Homes Oxfordshire, um, working really well with the Low Carbon Hub, and we're doing this great work with different community organisers, or community energy organisations in Oxfordshire, and kind of, generating the demand for a kind of whole-house retrofit and renovation service.

But we are still, sadly I believe, only really getting at those middle class, green, older people with a bit more time, you know, they've got the house, the kids have left, “Maybe I should make my home more energy efficient”. And the real question, because this is so core to the problem of, of bills and, you know, the whole, the whole piece around comfort and health: how do we get at that other, you know, that broader group of people who are trying to just get home with their shopping in the rain, don't have the time to engage with this, you know, even a really great model like, like the one that, uh, we're pushing out in Oxfordshire is only tapping into that narrow group. So it's a really big, big problem. 

Becky: And it's a really good point, especially as, you know, as we go beyond retrofit and start to think about some of the other assets that we see in SLES like electric vehicles, battery, PV, etc, etc, etc. I mean, yeah. 

Syed: So, uh, just, uh, that, that reminded me about, uh, I'm doing some work at the moment for Westminster City Council, another council that changes administration in May 2022, another set of very ambitious goals as part of the climate and energy agenda is undergoing at the moment.

Uh, one thing, I don't know, I know the bits of Westminster that we all probably do know, you know, central London, but at the north of the borough, around North Paddington, there are some really high areas of deprivation around Westbourne Grove, uh, Honor Oak and so on. And so we had, uh, one of our first sets of meetings there.

High levels of diversity, lots of young people, low-income neighbourhoods. And so, one of the first things I've asked is, what is the net zero transition for them like? And it's been really interesting trying to get officers to understand what I meant, because I'm not necessarily saying about, how do you put in heat pumps or heat networks or storage, but what does it mean for the households when they have to decant themselves, for area-wide retrofit?

So anyway we're, we're making some moves. But just my point was, is actually is there was some funding, there's significant government funding from a whole list of acronyms that nobody quite knows what they all stand for. But the officers were speaking to people, sending letters, and those households, low-income, were not taking up the offer.

So even though they were being offered free insulation and free retrofit measures, they weren't. They didn't understand what they were, didn't necessarily trust, there was a hassle factor associated with it, and it was just too different, and they live busy lives. It's one other thing that you couldn't add to an already long set of priorities in their life.

So again, when we're thinking about area-wide retrofit on a place basis as we're doing here, and we're stacking up the range of things that we're thinking of, actually, even people who are going beyond the middle class, uh, kind of like, you know, model that we're thinking about as a kind of first take up, even when we're offering it free, they're not taking it up.

So we have to think differently about putting ourselves in their frame of mind to see how can we make sure that we deliver the services that we think that they need in the most, in the way that they want. 

Karen: I think that's a really, really complicated issue to try and get to the bottom of because I think there's, there's two sides of the coin. There's the people are fed up of things happening to them and not being engaged from the appropriate, uh, period of time when these projects are being developed. It, there, there's the agency side of things, you know, “We want to be involved in, you know, helping to determine what our future looks like”.

But I completely agree – on the other side, there is that this lack of understanding, capacity, messaging that really works for people finding out that, the key terminology, framing, that will actually, as you say, when people care about getting their shopping home in the rain, how do you, how do you make those changes? And we've seen a lot of the government funding has been focused on those, um, in energy poverty and those, um, who have the, the leakiest homes.

But essentially, unless you get that intractable problem right, um, it's, it's going to continue to be, uh, very complicated to achieve any transition at all. 

Fraser: So is the problem fundamentally that we've tried for too long to do this on our terms or on policymaker terms, on, is that the…? 

Donal: I was just going to cut in. And I mean, there's a question is kind of, is it the message? But also, is it the messenger? You know, is it who is this coming from? I mean, some some research we've done with colleagues at the University of Leeds suggests that like, most people, when they make decisions about renovating their, doing anything to their home, whether it's finding a builder or, or whatever, will use their social network to ask for advice, whether it's on Facebook or literally people over the back of the garden wall or their friends.

And we've, you know, in energy policy, we've created this kind of artificial landscape where we intervene in people's lives in a very top-down way with very technocratic language. And, you know, we don't even really think about who actually ends up delivering that message and how it's bedding in in a place or in communities.

So, you know, my view is kind of no wonder a lot of this hasn't landed. And, I mean, it'd be interesting to know your views, you know, because community energy is much better at this. But even community energy itself tends to be represented by a certain group of people.

Syed: Quite right, yeah.

Donal: You know, and it's how do you broaden that, that church, sorry to use that expression sat in a, are we in a church? How do you broaden that, that, that, that inclusion of who's in the conversation? It's very difficult and it, it's very, it's a very bottom scale issue, you know, you can't do it from high up, high above, I think. 

Joanne: But don't you think it's because we start from talking about energy or home renovation or whatever, not what do you need your life to be like? You know, there's some really interesting work that goes on, people like C40 cities who do thriving cities and you actually start from the point of view of, what do you want your city to look like in 2050? And it's nothing to do with the energy system or buildings, actually. It's to do with people's lives. And you get people to talk about that. And then us, as the experts in delivering that stuff, translate that into what the energy system needs to be. Rather than trying to engage people in the energy system.

Because it's just, just do the job. You know, they, they want start, they want their lives. They don't want the energy system. Um, I think it's interesting, isn't it, that when, God, how many years ago was it, the industrial strategy started off with energy as a part of it. But ended up, energy wasn't one of the pillars, it was underneath the whole lot. 

And that was right. It isn't one of the outcomes, and we tend to forget that it's not an outcome. It's a facilitator of everything else, and maybe if we had the conversation that way with people, we'd get a lot further into – we'd then have to interpret it, but that's fine. That's our job. Their job is to tell us what they need.

Becky: So is this, is this how we get people excited about it? Is this how we translate our excitement and our, our, our geekiness? I don’t…

Fraser: Speak for yourself.

Syed: But just to say, I mean, we, uh, I mean, the government can't be blameless in here. Just to say, the offer from local authorities down to citizens is often dictated by the programmes that have been set by government.

And at the moment, we've got five or six big funding programs, the reporting requirements are all different for all of them. They don't seamlessly work together. You have to go to every house, it's dependent on the EPC, which might be wrong, whether or not you qualify for the funding. So, I mean, really what needs to happen is, again, that issue of agency.

The local authorities need agency with a clear pathway to set the vision and then engage meaningfully with their residents. They can't do that because they have to sit within a tight series of constraints around each funding programme. So they can't meaningfully engage. They can't really set out what the pathway will be for residents.

So that’s, you know, a real failure of government to understand about how to set that net zero agenda locally. And we've seen it time and time again. It doesn't feature in their thinking whatsoever. I mean, if you want to, the latest press release I saw from Grant Shapps, he's been very quiet. Does anybody, has anybody seen him?

But Mr Schapps has been, you know, uh, he's just not been anywhere, but he did issue an interesting press release. If you want to get money to work with the Saudi Arabian government to put solar panels in space and bring the power down by microwave, you can. But if you… So that was a January press release. But if you actually wanna do things about, into a home or a community – I mean, I cannot emphasise this enough.

There are no policies from government to help community energy at all. Nothing. There's a complete absence of anything on community energy. But small modular nuclear, or fusion, or hydrogen, you know, anything upstream is still very much there. Anything downstream is just absent from thinking. 

Becky: Why do you think that is?

Syed: Um, funny enough, there was a, an event, uh, in Manchester as part of, I think, uh, Innovate UK, three or four days ago. And he'll remain nameless, but he's a good guy now, but he, um, works for one the Catapults, was a SpAd at BEIS, and he basically said…

Becky: I think we all know who you're talking about! 

Syed: He said, uh, kind of mea culpa, he's doing loads of local energy now, but he said basically, when I was in BEIS, we were looking at terawatt hours. And also I worked in DEC, as was, for a year-and-a-half, and a kilowatt hour saved is not the same as a kilowatt hour generated, in policy makers’ minds. They just don't believe it. So everything's on generation and if it's generation, it's big-scale stuff. And that's what we see time and time again. We've got Sizewell, Hinkley, SMR, SMRs are not small, they're bloody big, so on and so forth.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, if we're building new generation, new transmission lines, new distribution wires, and it gets to my house, I've still got really shoddy windows. 

Becky: Yes. Yeah. 

Syed: So, you know, my electric, my heat pump generating with a COP of three-and-a-half or whatever, is going to be useless because it'll still be going out the window.

Becky: Karen, I don't even know what COP means. Karen, do you think we're starting to see a shift at the local government level? Do you think that we're starting to see more engagement around that, kind of the people, that demand, the vision for cities, and how do we need then to to kind of push that upwards?

Karen: Yeah. I think so. And this comes back to the point I made earlier about understanding how the constituent parts fit together. So I completely agree with you, Joanne, in terms of the need for a 50-year vision. Um, and it would be wonderful if that came from the, the, the bottom up. But essentially when we work with, at maximum five-year political cycles, and we don't have that cross-party consensus.

It's very difficult to do anything with that information. I think there are a raft of local authorities in the UK who are really, really committed and ambitious, and have been for the past four or five years now. And I think that Westminster is a fantastic example of how quickly you can build that momentum and start to shift things in the right direction.

But I think one of the challenges is capacity at local level to be able to enact these things. We've talked about the short term, various different pots of money that are all trying to do different things and perhaps tinker around the edges more than kind of diving into, to the problem, um, or the problems.

But I also think that, you know, elected local leaders, uh, are on a very significant spectrum as well in terms of engagement on the issue, but also knowledge of the issue and capacity to do anything about it. So I think where, yes, to answer your question, Becky, I think things are starting to move. I also think that there have been, trying to be optimistic about things, some recent developments, like the announcement of the Energy Efficiency Task Force, like the outcome of the REMA consultation, which says that “We will start talking to end users".

You know, these are things that should have already been happening. But I do think that in this new energy security narrative that we have, we, we need to get some assurances that energy security doesn't mean re-upping on, on licenses. It actually means engaging with people on the ground. 

Donal: Yeah. Sort of just to follow on from what you're saying, I think, you know, having, yeah, you see these lead, these leading authorities, you know, they tend to be the bigger, uh, more well-resourced, you know, cities, unitary authorities, and then you, you know, go into some of the rural and less resourced places and, you know, they're struggling to take out the bins.

They're not even taking out the, you know, and I do think there's an issue there about how much expectation we are placing on local government in its current funding climate. I don't want to make too many party political points in this talk, but, you know…

Fraser: Go for it.

Donal: We've had 10 years of severe austerity in local government and we’re, we’re loading on new expectations on them that 15 years ago we didn't have. I do think that is a conversation we need to need to have properly. You know, they are the natural actor for much of this – particularly fuel poverty, I think, and energy, energy efficiency. And I think the other point to make, you know to kind of more link to the theme of this event is, you know, I think we should stop thinking about energy issues in silos as well.

I think most people think about their home and the energy use in their home, whether that's insulation, maybe the appropriate solution for them is a solar panel or a heat pump or even a thermostat or something that enables them to use energy. You know, they view that as one, one set of issues and it's how that impacts them in terms of the installation and the use of it.

So yeah, I think, you know, I just do think we need to, you know, we need to think more about who, you know, who is going to deliver this? Are they properly resourced? Who's having those conversations? Um, and, and, and, you know, and, and, yeah, because I think there's too, too much top-down thinking in terms of how this is actually going to be delivered on the ground, basically.

Joanne: Yeah, and I think, I think that that is a really interesting point and an important point about too much top-down thinking. ‘Cause if you look back to the, it was DEC at the time, it was about 2012. There was a local authority competition for delivering energy switching, fuel poverty schemes, and Green Deal, I think it was at the time.

And what was really interesting in that programme was it was actually quite flexible as to who delivered. So you've got certain local authorities going, we have not a bloody clue what we're doing here, but we've got a group in our local community who does. So we're going to apply, but they're going to do it.

And they were very, the local authorities who were successful in that scheme were very open to going, “Well, these are our capabilities. And if we haven't got the right ones, but we've got them in our community, we're going to use them”. And we have a slight tendency to go, “Oh, we need to, we need to resource every local authority to do everything”.

Donal: Yeah. One size fits all.

Joanne: It’s like, well, no, actually – let the local community work out where it's best to up the skills and capacity because you've already got something happening. Um, you know.

Karen: I think Cambridgeshire is a fantastic example of just that. So in that decade of austerity, predating the time of DEC, I think that energy, uh, sorry, that the Cambridgeshire local authority acknowledged that they would actually save money if they retained their energy staff in-house and not disperse, you know, of the teams where they needed to cut budgets. And you fast-forward to now, they have one of the most sophisticated and forward-thinking and innovative and brilliant teams, so I'm giving a shout out to Cambridgeshire as well as Oxford to balance things out a bit. Um, but I think it's it that acknowledgement that keeping, retaining that key staff will enable things to happen.

We see it with Energy Capital now in West Midlands, and some of the fantastic local area energy planning that, that Greater Manchester are doing. Having that acknowledgement that if you, if you build it, it will come. And Swaffham Prior, which is in Cambridgeshire, is a fantastic example of a community saying, “We want this”. Um, “Who's in?”

And largely everybody in the village is now involved in a scheme that will take them away from off-grid energy to heat pumps and solar power, and as a collective village that's very much been built up from the ground, but because that team has been in place in the local authority for such a long time, they're established and able to help with such ambition. Um, so that's a, yeah, a great example of making things work. 

Fraser: I think it, it, it worth recognising as well, just on the back of the points about austerity, which are entirely legitimate, is that people have also been through 10 or more years of austerity themselves as well, right? Especially in those more sort of disadvantaged communities that we're talking about, and then a pandemic, and then an energy crisis on top of everything as well.

And we're at a stage now where we're also asking, or potentially about to ask, people to do more in this space than they have before. So I guess, Syed, this speaks a bit to your point before, as well – I come from the, the kind of community where understanding of these issues isn't the level that it's at in this room. That's also fine. Um, but how do you overcome that? And does local or community-led approaches provide a better opportunity to do it? Or is there something more, more fundamental we need to think about? 

So a couple of things there. Uh, one, it will be a lot better if, uh, the channels of authority could help communities in a better way. So, uh, community, community energy is arising in spite of everything. You know, it's not being helped. It, it clearly sees that there's a desire for communities to shape the areas in which they live. And it often starts from looking at an, a beloved asset – a community centre, GP, a place of worship – something that they see that they want to, they utilise on a regular basis. 

And they want to help improve because it's an asset that they, they, they value. And that's often where some of the community energy groups have started from. One of my favourites is SE24 Energy around Camberwell. There were a bunch of cyclists associated with the church.

They looked at the feed-in tariffs because the church roof was being, um, was really poor, and they wanted to see how it could be improved. And then, uh, from the cyclists, they got to looking at feed-in tariffs. They then looked to do surveys. They built solar panels on the roof. Some of the income from the FIT, not only went to investors, but also went to a community fund, which helped for a peace garden, which was bringing together some kids in the area who were having some trouble.

So they kind of got those kids together to kind of have a conversation about what was going on. So, you know, that's a great story and there are many examples in London, and I'm sure elsewhere as well. Um, but it is a hard slog for them. And, uh, part of what Community Energy London is doing is bringing more resources.

But the thing that keeps me up at night is that we're doing – we’re being quite successful. We're launching a vision document for a six-fold increase in the number of projects by 2030. We're doing that on Thursday in the House of Commons. But the brilliant people we have, we have to replace them. And we have to get new people in.

And, uh, also the other thing is that, um, you know, they can be at a time in life when they're really interested in it, but in a couple of years time they get busy with something else. We don't have the structures there, but we're building them with local authorities, because one of the things about Westminster is, Westminster's got a very good new climate change team, a climate change action plan, but the first thing they say, the emissions that we look after that are responsible for our assets are 2% of the total borough's climate change emissions.

We need to build these links with business, with communities, to chance, to get any chance of achieving net zero. So we, we haven't got the structures being built there. They are coming about. Uh, and there are lots of good news stories. That's one of the things that we, we really recognise and we need to shout out about them. I mean, one of the things that really drives me bonkers is the groups do a brilliant project, they move on to the next one without necessarily shouting out how brilliant the one they've just delivered is. 

Becky: Yeah. Absolutely. And, um, I want to tap into some of the things that you've raised. And I think it, you know, it goes to show – and Fraser, you're often talking about this – how a lot of the time where we're seeing stuff coming from the grassroots, from the community, that often springs up in places that might not be the most well-resourced, but they're driven by people who are passionate about something, maybe not energy – in that case, you know, the church roof – um, but you know, really passionate people.

When we look at these kind of bigger, innovation-funded projects where we do see substantial amounts of money being channelled into areas. It, it tends to be in those places that are, you know, better-served by experts, by resources and so on. And Joanne, you mentioned that notion of, of starting there but translating out.

So, um, you know, long-time friend of the pod, Jeff Hardy, raised the question around, you know, you know, like, why do we start there rather than necessarily some of the places that might, um, benefit the most but that will probably end up going last? Do we need to be flipping that on its head, or how do we do the translation better?

Joanne: Is it about starting energy projects in other places or is it starting, about starting community capacity in whatever people care about, projects? You know, I think that's the thing that we often get wrong. It's like, we think we've got an energy project and we need to move it to somewhere else where people are not interested at all.

But, you know, Syed, like you said, you know, it's the church roof, or it's a garden, or it's a… You know, Low Carbon West Oxford actually does a heck of a lot of stuff that's nothing about energy. You know, the people who run it are very interested in putting solar panels on schools, but actually an awful lot of the community getting together is about swapping things, or gardening, or whatever it is. And I think we need to…

Donal: Or just hanging out with each other.

Joanne: Yeah, yeah. We need to think about community and where communities already come together, or how we can encourage communities to come together, and then introduce energy into the conversation. 

Donal: Just the, just a small, just the sort of thing that frustrates me about so much of this now is, you know, we had a situation with the feed-in tariff back in, you know, the early 2010s. Solar was quite expensive then, right, and you needed a big chunky subsidy to make it work. Solar is dirt cheap now. Dirt cheap. And we still can't crack a good business model to make that work, to roll that out across most of the country and save loads of people you know, loads of money and, and, and create jobs for install.

Like, surely we are a hair's breadth from doing that. What, where is the policy, you know, where is the policy, the support, the delivery to make that happen? ‘Cause it, it's not going to require a huge push, but it does clearly require, you know, I'm not giving an answer here, but it feels, you know, battery, solar, smart charging, like we, you know, right on the cusp of something, we need to make sure people benefit from that. Not just people with ten grand to invest.

Karen: It feels like we've spent a lot of time thinking about technology, technical innovation, and I think what's missing is innovation across the board, how we do things differently, how we experiment with things, how we iterate. And that's probably because I'm a governance nerd and I like talking about processes and how things change.

But I think essentially, there is a real, uh, reticence to not fail. Um, sorry, that's double negative. Real reticence.

Becky: Yeah.

Donal: Yeah.

Karen: That’s right. Um, and I, I think in, in doing that, in, in taking available funding and experimenting with things. If they don't go right, we forget about them. We don't, we don't learn from them and then iterate to the next thing.

Um, and I, I think more investment, more time, more consideration of what that looks like. As, as Joanne said, I think, all starting points will be different. All places will have different stories, different contexts. So, in essence, it doesn't really matter what the driver is, or, um, how we, how we grow those sorts of projects that you were talking about, Syed. The fact is we just need to get on.

Syed: Yeah, the trigger points are quite interesting. I mean, uh, one of the big projects in Hackney - when I met, um, one of the ladies who lived on the estate, she got really involved in it because she thought her two kids could get a job in this wonderful new sector. And so, on the project there, the community synergy group did some solar panel training, what is a solar panel, just with some kids to kind of understand it.

Uh, the kids then put it down on their CV that they'd done this workshop. Now, they didn't get a job with the solar panel provider, but they got a job. And part of the reason was, I think any employee could see that they had an interest in actually learning new skills and that was something transferable to whatever they went on to do.

So the trigger point was from their mum about trying to get their kids into a job. And what we do know about one of the things about local energy is the investment locally is going to be absolutely huge. And what we really need to do is make sure that that investment stays as much as it can in the community and it helps benefits the families who are going to be part of the solution to try and make us get, achieve net zero.

They are part and parcel of it, and they are far too often not involved in the conversation. And just to say, one of the things they say is, you know, they do want to be involved in the conversation, but they don't want it hammered at them all the time. So another challenge is, it’s that, you know, I mean, we're coming, spending time talking about these things.

They've got better things to do with their lives. And so what we need to do is, what we need to do is make sure we offer them when they need it. But then have a seamless kind of series of, uh, and execute things properly. And just remember one other thing is, as we've seen with every kind of technology, things will go wrong.

And what we need is we need those intermediaries at the local level to help smooth over issues when things go wrong. And we've got, you know, 2.2 million heat pumps, uh, you know, to, uh, be installed in London by 2030 to achieve anything like the net zero target. I mean, you know, there's going to be lots of bad heat pump installs and some very good ones as well, but when they're bad, we need to make sure we have the right solutions to help those families sort it out.

Fraser: I want to pick up, Syed, on your point around, so for instance, that, that learning about solar panels, but we talked across the panel earlier as well, about the, the wider, having a social space to go to, but also happens to be decarbonized because a community energy group took it on. Um, having a place to, to learn from each other, to interact, to deal with issues, you know, it might be around inclusion or whatever it might, whatever it might be.

Is this something that we need to – this is a very loaded question – but is this something that we need to figure out how to value more in terms of energy regulation, energy policy? Because this, this kind of stuff, maybe we can't quantify it as easily, but it's, it can be enormously, enormously important in communities.

Donal: I'll give you a boring answer.

Fraser: Please.

Donal: I mean, basically the way that government makes decisions right now is a top level, cost-benefit analysis. What is included in that cost-benefit analysis does not factor in community cohesion, all of this soft stuff that we know works and matters. It's a very, it's a, you know, it's a high-level spreadsheet exercise.

What's the policy gonna do? What's it gonna deliver? Um, along quite narrow parameters, and that is riven through every civil service department in every decision making thing that we do in this country. So until you change that, you’re not going to get policy outcomes that deliver this stuff. 

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. I think the thinking in silos as well is a huge issue. So if you can't, it's very difficult to put a quantification on this. But there is a value to be had in considering, you know, what the health benefits are, what the, uh, community benefits at large are in terms of promoting social cohesion and things like that.

And it's not happening at all at the moment, as you say, it's completely a cost based, cost-benefit analysis derivative. But I think that what's had more traction across the, the broad UK populace in the past few months is visions of black mould in rented properties. I think that's probably done more for energy efficiency awareness than very targeted and coordinated campaigns have done. And that's because it's a significant health impact that, that needs more close attention exactly. 

Donal: It’s visceral, isn’t it? You can see it, you can, there are stories attached to it.

Joanne: But I do think there's a limit to what we can do within the energy space. You know, it's about what we value overall, you know, so, so we've, we've learned that actually we need to value energy efficiency because it's people's health.

But if you look at local energy schemes in Africa and Foreign Office funding or whatever it's called, funding for that sort of stuff, things like community development, economic development, all sorts of stuff like that are factored in to what's important because it's considered important in countries in Africa. But why is it not considered important in communities in the UK? Maybe we need to learn. 

Karen: Yeah. I think a decade ago, we had some very, very, very clearly thought through sustainable development indicators that we had to track progress against and report against. And I think they’ve, they've diminished somewhat over over the past few years.

But I think really determining what progress looks like, how well we're doing and not just at the national level, but regionally and locally would really help. Um, and it comes back to the idea of, you know, mapping out a vision of where we want to be. We need to know how well we're doing at getting there.

Joanne: Yeah. 

Syed: One of the key things I've been trying to do with Community Energy London is, when we’re engaging people is, I know this sounds absolutely shocking, but if you want them to be engaged properly, pay them.

Fraser: Can we get a round of applause for that as well? 

Syed: We want, you know, we kind of think that they'll all come along because they can see nice, you know, adaptation, you know, green walls. But no, if you want them to be really involved in shaping the journey to net zero locally, yes, they will get benefits out of it, but they still deserve to be paid as part of the process.

The consultants coming in are being paid, okay? On that night, on that evening. And so pay the communities, have budgets to make sure they can engage properly. And then you'll get the best of both worlds. You'll get a better outcome in terms of their input and a longer engagement, because they're being better educated throughout the whole process.

So when you're doing these projects with communities, add a line in about paying those people in the evening, because it's hard work. And we're really asking them to think really deep things for net zero, and we expect them to do them free. And it doesn't work out that way.

Becky: And I feel the same about the community sector as well. You know, we rely and we've, we've talked about the importance of community groups, but ultimately they're very reliant on volunteerism. 

Syed: Yeah. I mean, literally, we were mapping out some work. I mean, some of the consultations, uh, I'm afraid, my colleague Afsheen Rashid, uh, Chief Exec of Repowering London. They've done three solar, um, uh, projects on tower blocks in Brixton, uh, in Lambeth. And they've had to go in, and the amount of volun, uh, volunteers – it was before I, I joined as their chair – but, uh, the amount of consultation there to do with communities, knocking on doors. Now, we all like working in the energy sector.

We all like talking about energy. How many of you wanna go out on a winter night and knock on doors and talk about insulation on an estate in South London? And not for one day, but day in, day out. And keep that conversation going. Because you're not going to be leaving that community behind. You want to be part of that net zero journey. It's the less glam bit of all the work that, you know, in terms of why we're having problems with it – because it's hard work. 

Becky: So I want to pick up on something that we've, I mean, I feel like the notion of learning and translating, um, insights has been really powerful. When I've talked with people that are deeply involved in community projects, often the big things that they talk about in terms of their barriers have absolutely nothing to do with energy and all about the legal structures of setting up a cooperative or, you know, things that you wouldn't think about and without the funding, it's hard to get support and so on.

Becky: I mean, so, you know, when we think about this notion of, of learning and so on. Do we need to see more joined-up action? Is there an opportunity? Are we missing a beat here or is there something inherently important through going through the cycle from the beginning? 

Syed: One very quick point about that is to say I hate all that. It's so hard. So the best answer to that is one, get somebody who knows what they're doing. And two, it's quite amazing, actually, and we've talked about some of the, it's been a slightly bleak kind of discussion about some of the challenges, but actually lots of people in the community energy sector, they actually enjoy doing these things.

Some of them have been doing it for 20, 30 years in their day job and they're actively like, you know, we were talking about entrepreneurs, I think, earlier on downstairs, and lots of people are involved in kind of entrepreneurs. I mean, they want to get involved in community energy groups as well, because they wanna see and create these organisations.

So you do need a good team. We're really lucky in Community Energy, like, London. We've got some really fantastic skilled people, but saying that, you know, they're spread quite thin. But yeah, get that team together. They'll want to do it locally. They'll want to engage, and there's lots of positive stuff going on, but don't make it as hard as it is now. I actually think if we got some of the funding from government, you'll be able to unlock so many conversations really quickly. Sorry, Donal. 

Donal: Yeah, yeah, sorry, just, yeah, I mean, I completely agree. And I think, I keep being Mr Doom and Gloom, I'll try again. You look at how government energy efficiency policy right now is delivered.

It's delivered in these cycles, right? So you get a funding cycle, the money comes through, for example, the GLA Warmer Homes schemes. It's a pot of money. We've got to spend it. Rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. Employ people, employ people, set up little businesses, and then nothing for three or four months. How on earth do you expect people to build businesses, build a supply chain, build trust, build continuity with a community that you're engaging with, if you do this with the money and the resource and people have to leave and get a different job, and it's not the same person knocking on your door next time because they've had to go and do something else?

It's like, it feels really basic. You look at how, particularly BEIS, not, you know, but how they've run these schemes recently. It's just, what, what, what are you trying to achieve? Are you just trying to screw some insulation to walls or whatever it is you're installing, or are you trying to build a market?

Are you trying to build an industry? And I don't think they've understood that it's the latter that we need. Because eventually, we want to stop having so much subsidy and grant funding stuff. We want things to happen of their own accord. But until you start thinking in that way, you're never going to, you know, you're never going to do that.

Joanne: And it's not just the supply chains, it's the customers as well. Because, you know, there's an offer there. Whether it's a grant if you're on a low income, or whether it's some kind of other incentive if you're not. And it's there, and then it's gone, and you apply, and you go through hideous amounts of paperwork, and then actually, no, there's no money left, and that kind of thing.

I was looking at a scheme recently for some work I was doing, um, in the US, which was solar panels. Was it in the US? It was in America, the Americas, somewhere. Solar panels on people's roofs. And it was an annual scheme, and there was an annual budget, but if you applied, and the money had run out, you were first in the queue for next year.

And we never do that kind of thing. It's like, there's a pot, and you go through the entire process. Then it disappears. And from a consumer's perspective, that's horrendous. It puts everybody off. Whereas, why, if you've shown an interest, are you not just in the queue when next time money's there, you just, you're next, you know?

Syed: So I was at a conference, I think actually possibly in here a few years ago, and the government had announced another scheme in December. December the 12th or something like that, uh, with money coming forward and the money had to be allocated and spent by March the 31st, the next year. We've seen it time and time again.

Uh, you might remember there was a 500 million pound energy efficiency fund that was launched on December the 6th by BEIS and everything had to be installed by March the 31st, you know, only that only happened two, three months ago. So anyway, uh, one of the local authority people went up to a very senior BEIS civil servant and said, “You always do this to us.

You always, we have to come in as a cavalry, and at late in the day, because you've got budget under spend. You announce in December with a deadline for March”. And the chap looked at the local authority person in a very Sir Humphrey way and he said, “Well, you know, uh, if we always do it, you should be expecting it”. So you have, there you are: it's our fault of not forward thinking what it is they're going to spend their underspend on at the last moment. 

Karen: I think it's the short-term time frames for getting those things around, which granted are ridiculous, but there's also the competitive element to it, it's like not all local authorities or community groups are the same.

Half of them probably don't have capacity or experience of putting in these grants. They're not gonna get the money. Therefore, you just keep perpetuating and even playing fields that exist. And it comes back to the point you made earlier about rural communities versus ,you know, urban areas. A lot, a lot of the time the context is set from an urban perspective, therefore it makes it very difficult to understand what the rural proposition looks like.

Um, but to come back to your, your question, I think that institutional learning, institutional capacity are really, really important and significantly lacking. So as you said, Syed, people work tirelessly on projects for two years, they move on to something else. Pots of money of three, four years long. That project ends, and that institutional learning isn't carried forward in any way. And I think that that's a real gap that needs addressing. 

Becky: I feel like we could keep talking for hours, but I think you'll all get a bit bored if we keep going all night. Probably need to get home on the trains. 

Fraser: I'd actually like to ask another question, I think, just before we wrap up, because we're remiss not to talk about it, and it's something that when we, we spoke a little, it's slightly indirect, but when we spoke about, um, big innovation projects, how they're financed, where the revenues go, where, where revenue’s captured or value is captured, do we see an increased role for thinking more about not just engagement, not just participation, but ownership, governance at the local level, community level?

Is this something we need to see more of? I'd like to throw that out to the full panel. 

Joanne: Yes. Yes. 

Fraser: There you go. That’s been Local Zero. 

Donal: Yes, um, but I think, you know, community energy has been this great thing and it has many facets, but, you know, one of the main ones, particularly in the feed-in tariff boom was, “I've got some spare cash, I'm going to invest it in something”.

That is a small part of the population who can do that, right? And, and I do think, you know, That pluralising ownership, socialising ownership, if you want to use that word, is a really important part of this. We all need to have a stake in this change and ideally own some, some of the infrastructure. Um, but how can we design governance and models that allow somebody with 20 quid in their bank account to be part of that?

And I think some of these models, the smart local energy models do, you know, do hint at that. You know, you don't have to own solar panels to get the cheap tariff, but we need to be thinking much more in those terms, rather than just investor, investment, you know, because that is only ever going to be a small group of people. So I think that's, yeah. 

Karen: Definitely. I think as well as having new finance models, blended models of finance, we need different models of ownership. We need to try new things, because we need to throw everything we've got this, this issue. And I think that something we haven't talked about tonight because we're focusing on the community is that not all local projects will necessarily be small-scale.

And I think that those bigger projects will also have an impact, and what I'd really love, my, my kind of pet wish for, for taking this forward is that what nationally significant looks like in terms of infrastructure project isn't determined by the, the, the output, the scale, the size, but actually if you can, if you combine all of these local projects together, when we have a more flexible energy system, that nationally significant is actually the impact that it will have in, in moving us towards a cleaner and transformed energy system, as opposed to how long it takes to come online and what the output will be when it gets there. Um, but I can dream. 

Syed: On the ownership, um, question, I know lots of my community groups are really doing it for that reason. The bit that I'm really motivated by is, the journey doesn't stop there. It's actually something we've not mentioned so far before, and neither has the government, which is behaviour change.

It's broader behaviour change. Having that asset nearby, knowing you've invested in it, knowing it's there, it's in your, again, your church, your GP or everything, will hopefully support individuals and communities for wider behaviour change. Because net zero needs you, as CCC have highlighted, it needs a fundamental change for lots of aspects of our life.

And when you have a nuclear power station or a coal power station or anything very at the end of a transmission line, transmission line, that doesn't have that much impact on you as when you go and pick up your kids from school and you see an indicator on the wall saying it's generated a couple of hundred kilowatts of power that day.

So that's the bit that you take that back home again. You think actually do I need a car? Can I take public transport? Should we not be having meat on Mondays? And so on and so forth. So the bit about the ownership is absolutely, yes, I can see a real reason for that, but it's the trigger for behaviour change, which I think is really fundamentally important.

Becky: So, uh, any more questions, Fraser? So before we close, I think I'd like to just, you know, come to each of you to wrap up, and we've talked a lot about, well, about a lot of different things, but one of the sort of common themes has been the policy and regulatory side of it. So if you had one ask for our government, what would that be? And we'll go, we'll go the opposite direction I think this time. So Syed, we'll start with you. 

Syed: Uh, there's no one magic bullet. I think though on the basis of the work that I've been doing the last couple of years, in 2012 we did have a community energy strategy, we did have a community energy team, we had a set of funds for feasibility and capital for community energy. We have none of that now.

So the last PQ I saw was three weeks ago. You can get some money from the redress scheme. That's about it really, for community groups. So we need to bring that back in thinking. We need to have a community energy strategy. We need to have a series of tools and policies around that, and we need a much more active discussion. Nerdy community groups can do that, but the things that they do will filter out the wider community. That's what we want to try and achieve. 

Becky: Brilliant. Joanne, your clear, your one ask. 

Joanne: Patience and longevity. The source of stuff we're trying to do takes time, takes time to develop, it takes time to bed in, it takes time to prove itself. And, you know, the number of times tonight we said, “Oh, things stop and then they go, we don't have time and it's too fast”. I want to see policy that has a long-term outlook and long-term support for something so that it can grow organically and then be successful. 

Donal: What they said. Yeah, I think we, I think, and this really touches on your point about, you know, our obsession with energy, the energy system.

I think we need to think what the energy system is for. It's about serving people in a way that doesn't destroy the environment. And I think we too often get caught in technocratic discussions about certain parts of it and how we tweak those, whereas really we need to look at the situation we're in: record fuel poverty, record profits for oil and gas majors, et cetera. Very little progress in certain parts of the transition. We're doing great in power, at the big scale, we're doing almost nothing at the domestic scale in terms of heating. You know, so, like, what is it we're trying to achieve? Let's design a policy and governance system that gets us there, rather than this tinkering, this short termism. Because it's not working. 

Becky: Love that. The energy system is for people. Let's think about them, because all too frequently I see, “How can people help the energy system?” Karen. 

Karen: Uh, so we have a new, sparkly, Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, and I would really like it to do a good job. Uh, so we've got, uh, the net zero review. We know that we have a net zero strategy with more detail coming imminently. Um, and I would really like to see DESNZ, whatever we're going to call it, take the helm, break down some of those silos and understand what we need to get to by 2050, and work backwards from there. 

Becky: Fantastic. Well, please join me in thanking our fabulous panel of guests tonight.

You have been listening to Local Zero. If you enjoyed this episode, I mean, let's be honest, how could you not Fraser, right? Um, please do subscribe to the pod. Just search for Local Zero wherever you get your pods. 

Fraser: You could also leave us a review if you want to, you know, mention how, um, good looking the Scottish guy's green suit was. That's entirely fine. Um, but it really does help us with the, the ratings and get out to more people and stuff as well. So if you're interested, leave a review and, uh, we take it all on board. 

Becky: But for now, thank you everyone and goodbye. Wooo!