Renewables developers hail community energy strategy

Renewables developers have welcomed government moves to help communities get involved in energy projects.

Under the tagline “power to the people”, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) on Monday set out plans to encourage community involvement in generation, demand management and collective switching schemes.

Under the strategy, by 2015 it should be routine for developers to offer communities “some level of ownership” of renewables projects in their area. By 2020, Decc expects between 0.5GW and 3GW of power to come from community schemes.

Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said: “We are delighted that the government is really serious about helping ordinary people become active participants in the energy economy. People are beginning to rethink energy, seeing that it doesn’t have to be expensive and polluting, and that they can even supply clean energy themselves. This is why we are seeing such excellent growth in the number of community energy companies.”

Following energy minister Greg Barker’s call for a “decentralised energy revolution”, the Solar Trade Association hailed a “tremendous” scope for community ownership.

Leonie Greene, STA head of external affairs, said: “The public are very concerned by the lack of competition in our energy markets and poll after poll shows they back renewable energy. So it’s great to see the UK government recognise the vast potential for everyday communities to directly own renewable energy and by doing so, to break open our consolidated electricity sector.”

It is not yet clear how developers will be expected to offer communities ownership and Decc has set up an industry taskforce to assess the options.

A survey of REA members published in November 2013 showed six out of 10 agreed that local ownership could boost support for energy infrastructure. However, only 11 per cent thought it was a good idea to make a community offer mandatory. Some 53 per cent said mandatory rules would create too much bureaucracy and 33 per cent argued community engagement conferred a competitive advantage and should be left to the market.

Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of Renewable UK, said it was a good time to look at community investment, but “we have questions about quite how to do it”.

He suggested a standardised vehicle for community investment would help. “If you look at where investment from the community has worked well, in places like Germany and Scandinavia, there has been a common model, so you don’t have to start from scratch every time,” he said.