| Negotiations with MP supporters of the Local Electricity Bill amendments, deleted by government from the Energy Bill, have resulted in the government creating the Community Energy Fund of £10m over 2 years to help identify and develop projects in England. Once admin and running costs are deducted the fund will be £9m. At the conference last week, Olivia Blunn, Head of Local Energy Policy and Finance, gave some key updates, supported by staff from 3 of the Net Zero Hubs. The fund will open soon, probably mid-October, so watch out for emails and social media announcements and start getting your fundable projects together. It will provide grant funding of £40,000 per project for feasibility work to test ideas and grants of up to £130,000 for developing the project up to investment readiness. Crucially, unlike the late RCEF, community organisation will be able to undertake the feasibility studies themselves, at market rate, rather than having to bring in consultants. This enables the organisation to build and retain capacity and skills – though there is still the challenge of the first stage of acquiring the necessary skills, which Community Energy England(CEE) is looking at how we can support. CEE is planning to organise a webinar with the Hubs in October – details to be announced soon. The Tory government has promised an annual report to parliament on progress on community energy and to consult on the barriers to community energy delivering projects. Meanwhile the Labour party are ramping up their support for community energy. Their Local Energy plan is ambitiously predicting that they can scale up our abysmally low level of generation capacity from community energy to 8 Giga Watts of capacity! Watch Ed Miliband speak about it at the Cooperative Party Conference a few week ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ULte0yxFTI&t=5294s He argues that there is a massive appetite for community energy -people asking -what can I do? Community energy is a compelling way to address this repetitive and anxious question. It offers everyone a part to play in this energy revolution. |