How to convince consumers about community energy

Energy companies should be “leading the charge” on gaining public buy-in for community energy schemes, by developing easy-to-understand, integrated solutions that deliver clear benefits.

Despite the government’s attempts to promote heat pumps as the silver bullet to decarbonising homes, the public is not convinced. Nearly two thirds (64%) aren’t sure what a heat pump is or how it works, less than one in five (18%) consumers felt that a heat pump would be an affordable option for them and nearly two in five (37%) would replace a broken gas boiler with a like-for-like.

Public understanding of community energy is even worse: less than one in four (24%) felt they had a good understanding of what community energy is. And even after being given a definition of community energy the majority of consumers remained on the fence: just 35% would consider opting into a community energy projects, 41% were neither likely or unlikely and the remaining 24% were unlikely to sign up to a scheme.

We need buy in from consumers, supply chain, housebuilders and local authorities in order to reach the government’s net zero 2050 targets. But with lacklustre enthusiasm from the public, and multiple barriers in place complicating adoption of community energy for housebuilders and housing associations, developers are less likely to adopt them and are less likely to have the knowledge in order to ‘sell’ them to the public either.

So, winning the hearts and minds of consumers within communities needs to start higher up the process in order to facilitate community led low carbon heating solutions.

Energy providers should be leading the charge, working with government, local authorities, funders, regulators, energy service companies (e.g. energy asset managers and aggregators), digital companies, and distribution network companies to deliver an easy-to-understand, integrated ‘community energy in a box’ packaged solution to housebuilders and social housing providers that can, in turn, sell green homes on to consumers – but government will need to encourage and facilitate this.

Fundamental change

As well as greater education across the housing sector and public, planning reforms that enable housebuilders to utilise existing infrastructure in the adoption of community energy are needed urgently. Some of the existing regulations are no longer fit for purpose; for example, some retrofitting ‘behind the meter’ projects require access to cables underground. Common sense would say to use the existing wire framework. However, current practice is that these cannot be transferred, despite the fact that existing cable and ducting has been paid for by public regulated money. As a result, new wires must be put in – causing unnecessary disruption, duplication, cost and carbon creation. One approach to avoid this, could be to impose new regulations on distribution network operators (DNOs) to be more flexible and share the existing cable where possible, which would allow community energy projects to make use of the existing infrastructure.

The relationship between the planning and building regulations process has never been an easy one for net zero ambitions. Solar applications are currently provided for by Part J and energy systems by Part L of the building regulations. These set out the government position on schemes and are often behind the ambitions of climate commentators who encourage local planning authorities to do more through development plan policy.

We also need a complete overhaul of the current electricity licensing regime, which was set up years before heat pumps and electric vehicles. The Class Exemptions thresholds that allow onsite energy generation to be supplied to a site avoiding the complexities and costs of obtaining electricity licences, should be raised in order to facilitate the development of community energy projects, which utilise among other things, heat pumps and electric vehicles at scale – making it easy to sell and trade energy within a set location.

What’s more is that raising Class Exemptions thresholds is a surefire way to improve flexibility in the grid – a vital move if we are going to support hundreds of thousands of electric heat pumps and electric vehicle charging points in the near future.

Another benefit of local community energy schemes utilising nearby generators and solar power is that they have the option of distributing the excess energy to nearby homes and businesses, not only creating additional revenue streams, but also helping improve efficiencies and reducing the amount of energy lost in transit.

Scaling up community energy

“Lack of knowledge” is cited as stopping 28% of homeowners from retrofitting, so energy providers should also be working closer with communities, filling the knowledge gap left by the government.

If households saw a direct link between retrofitting their homes and both efficient, affordable electricity and benefits to their local community, there might be more take up.

Rather than a piecemeal approach to low carbon adoption through individual grants like the government’s £5,000 offering through the Heat and Buildings Strategy, more focus should be on adoption at scale through community energy projects. But this can only occur through cross-industry collaboration and government refocussing its approach to heating homes. Actions of individuals will not cause the same ripple effect as an entire community acting together, but these organisations need support and links to housing projects, which needs to come from experts up the chain.

The benefits of community energy are clear – they reduce carbon, save money medium and long-term, and they enable communities and housebuilders to sell excess carbon back to the grid for profit or to support local community projects.

Change will come more quickly when we increase demand and once at scale we can reduce costs too – it’s up to industry to make that happen.

Sushma Maharaj is energy partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau. All research conducted as part of the firm’s Community Energy ‘in a box’ white paper.