Empowerment is key to community input

Megan Darby’s investigation into the life and death of David Green, an energy entrepreneur who aimed to turn the Isle of Wight into an “eco-island”, is a tale of a very personal tragedy (p12). It also raises wider questions about the government’s ambitions for community energy, and the role of non-experts in utilities policy.

At the end of January, energy secretary Ed Davey outlined plans to increase community energy’s output six-fold to up to 3GW by 2020. While this would remain a relatively measly 1.4 per cent of overall electricity, it is nevertheless a laudable aim that would turn talk of decentralising the energy market from rhetoric to reality.
As energy becomes an ever more precious and scarce resource, communities will have to manage and generate it. And there’s the rub. Communities by their very nature are not experts at energy generation, distribution, or management. Nor are they often top-ranking business people, marketers or strategists. If communities are going to play a real role in the future of utilities, they need to be empowered to do so – and that means handing over more than just a cheque. Community leaders of energy projects should be given training in the management skills required and proper oversight, particularly when they have been handed public funds. The responsibility for Green was too much to bear.
Though the situations and individuals involved are very different, there are parallels to be drawn with how customers are being brought into the regulatory process in the utilities sector. Customer input is at the heart of the RIIO and PR14 frameworks. As the participants in the water industry customer challenge groups can testify, the learning process and commitment required for a non-expert to make serious and significant contributions to the often technical debate is huge. And it doesn’t stop there. When they are up to speed, they are working sometimes more than 60 hours a week to get business plans across the line – and often unpaid. If regulators and government want to maintain this level of customer input, they need to develop a framework which includes support, training and remuneration.
A “big society” is all very well, but the state must fulfil its obligations to those upon whose contributions it relies.