Generate Energy Locally

 Izzy: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy podcast with me, Isabelle Sparrow and today’s special guest host Sonya Bedford, MBE. 

In this series, Do Something Bigger, we’re exploring one of 25 Big Local Actions for climate and nature in each episode. The action span across themes including food, transport, buildings, and energy; and they’re supported by Carbon Copy’s national collection of a thousand climate action stories from across the UK. So there really is something for everyone. Today’s episode is called Generate Energy Locally.  

Sonya, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you’re interested in this topic specifically?  

Sonya:  So my name is Sonya. I’m a renewable energy solicitor. I’ve been a solicitor for 25 years now, and about, 18 or so years ago, I decided that I wanted to focus solely on renewable energy and doing something meaningful with my career; jumped into my first wind project then, and at the time, decided that it was really important to also get involved with community energy as well. 

So I was working down in Devon at the time, so I joined my local community energy organisation there, which was Exeter Community Energy, and I also joined one locally to where I live, which is, Avalon Community Energy as well. So I split my life. It’s 100% working on renewable energy, but between my legal work, working for energy organisations and being on the board of five community energy groups as well, so quite busy. It’s eat, sleep and breathe, community renewables really!  

Izzy: There are huge benefits to local community energy projects. And it’s not just about being greener. So obviously there are financial benefits, but there are also social and wellbeing reasons to get involved. Sonya, did you know that if we installed a four-kilowatt solar panel system on one third of all UK households, we could collectively save 3 billion pounds?  

Sonya: Isn’t that brilliant? It’s just such an amazing figure. And I think particularly at the moment, having both renewable energy and being able to save money, which is very key to most people. In the cost-of living-crisis, it’s just, a fantastic statistic. And with community energy, we are trying to make that or assist that transition to everybody being able to access renewable energy.  

Izzy: So we spoke to John Taylor, who works for Community Energy England, about why he thinks more places should start generating their own energy. 

John: I think there’s two angles to it, really. One is the speed of delivery. I think we can decarbonise the country much faster if every parish and community and neighbourhood is empowered to contribute to that mission. We can just sit back and let some big companies do something over the horizon, and we just buy the power from them. But if everybody steps up, gets involved, works out what they’re capable of generating where they live, and then develops that in a way that benefits the people where they live, we think that’s… can help build out solar and wind power faster, and it can also bring communities along that journey with us so they can actually feel real benefits from this kind of infrastructure appearing in the landscape around them, which I think will sustain that kind of long-term transition better. Yeah, so that’s probably the main reason I get involved in community energy.  

And just, there’s that ownership angle, as well as that kind of energy, that justice angle, and we’ve seen over the last few years through the energy crisis, a lot of the prices that have been heaped on people has been due to imported fossil fuel. We’re losing money out of our communities by buying in imported energy, whether it’s gas, power, petrol, diesel, the more energy we can generate locally, the more money we can keep in our local economies as well, rather than being siphoned away and extracted. 

So through community ownership of onshore renewables, the money we’re spending on energy comes back in and a lot of our community energy members then reinvest that money in local projects and energy advice services, fuel poverty, nature projects. So yeah, it’s big overlap with community wealth building as well. 

Izzy: One thing I think people listening might feel is that energy generation isn’t for them because like a lot of people don’t have a technical background, they don’t have an engineering background. And I know that I certainly have felt that way myself. But there are lots of different roles and responsibilities involved. And John, who is from an engineering background, told me about some of the other kinds of people who have got involved. 

John: I think that’s the really good thing about community is it really does represent where you’re from. So there’s a role for everyone to play. You do need some people with that kind of engineering and energy knowledge to kind of understand that side of it, but there’s a lot of creativity in it as well. And you do need to be, yeah, confident in engaging people. Lots of overlap working with schools and families and making it fun. There was a hydro project in Oxford where they ran a little competition to choose the colour of the turbine blades, and it’s just little touches like that that adds a bit more kind of personality and humanity to some of these projects, which you might not necessarily get with another way of delivering them. 

I’m interested in the numbers. You need… they’re businesses: you need to be able to make a profit and raise investment. There’s that kind of financial legal side of it. But ultimately, it’s about getting people excited about the future and playing a part in it,so there’s lots of creativity and storytelling that goes alongside it as well.  

Sonya: Community energy really is for everyone. I think it’s important to have some key skill sets in a group: accountants or people that understand spreadsheets, which is something that I’ve been rubbish at my entire life! Having a solicitor helps, but also people that are just passionate, about the place they live or being able to generate a benefit for the local community or, passionate about creating, renewable electricity and decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels. So one of my local groups that I’m involved with: Green Wedmore, it was different to a lot of community groups in the sense that it doesn’t have a, a structure, in the same way, it’s not a community company, and it operates in a really interesting way to bring in everybody from the community. So there is no board. There’s a, you know, there’s a secretary and a chair, but it’s very democratic and it brings in across skills from to bring in everybody who has a passion about something sustainable. 

So there’s something for everybody. The renewable generation is just a part of that. There’s nature activities, there’s wellbeing activities. And I think in order to encourage as many people as possible into the movement and into doing something, for, for the benefit of the community. If people have got a passion, then they’ll work really hard at helping everyone else deliver that. And so if people are bored by the technology side of renewable energy, let’s not make them focus on that. Let’s actually just say, right, well, we have a few skilled people or we’ll be able to get a grant to buy in that help that we need. And let’s just if it’s the community engagement part and the talking to people part about it excites you, you do that bit. 

If it’s the, marketing or design bits of things, or if it’s just making cakes to bring people into meetings and that’s what excites you, then let’s do that. And I think that organisation, which has been going 17 years now, and has lots of renewable energy projects to its name, is successful for that reason. But yeah, so I think, I do think it’s for everybody, even if it’s a bit daunting at the start to start one up. 

Izzy: Does the idea of generating your own electricity make you feel energised? Maybe you know someone else who could help you power up a project. If so, share this pod with them and point them in the direction of Carbon Copy’s Generate Energy Locally web page where there’s lots of useful links and information. Check out the show notes, but first listen to the rest of the episode. 

Maybe we should talk about what a community energy project actually is, or what it can be. So can you give us a basic overview of the different kinds of projects that exist, and maybe which are the most common ones, and why? 

Sonya: Yeah of course. Yeah. So community energy really started in in the wind sector. Because that was the first type of renewable energy really to make headway in the UK. Wind was around 20, 30 years ago, wind energy and, communities saw the opportunity to own a turbine or to own part of that wind farm site, and that’s where it started.  

But since, the very early days of, a couple of community energy projects owning wind turbines, it’s really blossomed into across all, areas of both electricity and heat generation. So the community groups, own everything from hydro projects, wind projects, rooftop solar, grand mount solar, battery storage now to communities or even owning large scale battery projects, all the way through to tiny little bits of generation, to huge sites. It really has, blossomed into, into, across all the technologies. 

There’s a number of different ways to start a community energy project and sometimes that will come from, the resources, the energy resources that you’ve got locally. So you may have, a river running through the city that you could do a hydro project on… I think, for a start-up community organisation, a lot of times rooftop solar is the first, easiest technology to start with on the basis, that the technology is understood. It’s fairly easy to install, easy to get hold of, and it’s popular with people that don’t understand renewable energy. People don’t see having solar panels on a roof as ugly or as noisy. So it’s a good place to start, and often the way community energy organisations will start will be looking at the local rooftops and seeing who has energy use within those buildings, because, of course, it’s great to have the double benefits of reducing the energy, intake for the building, for the businesses there. They can save money as well as adding renewable energy back to the grid.  

With Avalon Community Energy at the moment, we are looking at rooftops on schools. That’s one way of, of, really saving energy and a really lovely example also of saving money for the school. For some of the larger, rooftops with the schools, the amount of savings can actually equate to a teaching assistant salary for a year. So that is a huge, benefit from just doing a solar project. 

Also, you can talk to local businesses, to churches, to village halls. And I think they’re always started by setting out as a community group what the terms, what you’re going to offer as a community group, because you’re going to take a lease over that roof as a community organisation, and that can be quite a big step for, a business to let a third party community organisation, take a lease over the building. So they want to know, you know, what the benefits are for them, as well as just generating renewable energy and looking good, on their website. 

Izzy: It sounds like there’s a lot of potential opportunities for people looking to start renewable energy projects in the near future. So we talked to Beth McAllister, who is from Oxfordshire’s Low Carbon Hub, about how that organisation got started and the changes they’ve seen in the years since they’ve worked in the sector. 

Beth: We have been around since about 2011. We grew out of an organisation called West Oxford Community Renewables who were piloting community owned renewable energy projects on buildings. That was back in 2011. And then we got the support of the local city council, who wanted to kind of scale up that work. So we kind of were born through a funded project from the Oxford City Council. 

So then it was quite simple. We wanted to replace the local Didcot Power Station with renewables. So now we’re in a very different situation where most of that is closed down now in Oxfordshire, you know, the last coal fired power station closed last year. What we’re looking at now is how we can accelerate that transition to a zero-carbon energy system. 

So in particular for us, what we’re really trying to do is look at what we call the “grid edge”. So where we all live and work, and how we can make sure that that transition to the zero-carbon energy system is community led and kind of doesn’t leave anybody behind. 

What we what we kind of do is we’re a community energy organisation. So we raise money mostly from individuals. We install renewable energy projects. And we’ve got 55 renewable energy projects across Oxfordshire. 

I think if you’re starting out now, it’s a very different landscape to when we started and got the majority of our projects up and running. So when we were doing our first share raises, we still had things like the Feed-in Tariff and kind of a more supportive regulatory environment. And so it was much easier to make the model work. And so we had a flurry in 2016 of installing a huge number of these rooftop solar projects on schools. Now the situation is much harder to make that work. So it’s quite it can be quite difficult to unlock some, especially smaller scale projects, because you can’t make the the model kind of work. 

But, you know, we might see changes in that. You know, where we’ve got coming up, you know, GB Energy and the Local Power Plan and looking to really unlock some of the the funding that is needed for community energy projects. So that could be a that could be a huge game changer for community energy that hopefully we’ll hear more about in 2025. 

I would definitely say that everything we’ve done, we do, we do almost everything in partnership. So I would say if you’re looking to kind of like start community and organisation in your area, then really, really find good people to work with locally. So I kind of mentioned that we’ve been really lucky to work with the, we’ve got really supportive councils in Oxfordshire. Both the city and the district councils have been really supportive of our work over the years. We’ve worked with the City Council right from the beginning and we’ve worked together on big innovation projects as well. So I’d say that find good people to work with locally is really, really important, but also can find people and get to know what the community wants and needs, I would say, is also really important. 

We work with kind of 46 low carbon groups, and we wouldn’t be the same kind of organisation without them. We’ve got the community engagement manager who talks with them really regularly. So we’re finding out kind of what their what their challenges are, what they want to focus on. They apply to us for grant funding as well to to take projects further. We run a helpdesk service at the Low Carbon Hub. It’s part of our community benefit model. So if people email in, we can help provide what we did, how we saw it, you know, what we what we did as the Low Carbon Hub and how that might be replicable where you are as well. And we link to a whole bunch of resources that’s available for people to kind of like to go ahead and start this in that in their area.  

It’s worth noting that we kind of we have a lot of projects now, and we have kind of almost 10 million pounds invested in us from people who’ve invested in the renewable energy projects. You know, we’ve got almost 2000 investors, but we didn’t start off with that. You know, we’ve been around since 2011. So you can start small. You can start with a small share raise. You can start kind of like canvasing your local community and finding out if it’s something they’re interested in. So I’ve started talking about the options for community owned renewables. If you’ve got a rooftop that you’ve got in mind and you can start off with that kind of like volunteer base, and there’s lots of support out there on how to run a community share raise. For example, I definitely recommend getting in touch with the community share’s unit as like the experts on how to do that. 

Sonya: Like Beth says that there’s a number of ways of, of financing community energy projects. And, traditionally one of those has been a share raise, by going out to, the community or, and that community could be your local people, could be national and asking them, to invest in the community organisation for the project. The great thing about community organisations is it doesn’t matter how much you invest, every member investor only has one vote. If somebody invest loads of money, they don’t have more say in what the community organisation does.  

In the same way that if someone they only invest 10 pounds, they have the same, say. So it’s definitely one good way of getting people involved and getting investment in. There are other ways of, of raising finance for community energy projects, including bond raises or grant funding, or borrowing, in the same way that other companies will borrow and take that into a project.  

Izzy: It’s also worth saying that whilst obviously finance and fundraising is hugely important to getting local energy generation projects off the ground, and those investments are absolutely vital. It’s not the only component that matters. So we spoke to Beth about other ways that people can get involved if becoming an investor is not a viable option for them. 

Beth: A lot of community energy organisations are still very much volunteer run, and I would suggest that if you want to volunteer your time in that way, local community organisations would, you know, take you up on that. If you had a time to kind of do some volunteering, but also spreading the word is also really useful. What we find is if you’ve got time to sort of like, share this and get the word out about community energy as a, as a concept and, you know, advocate for it with local MPs if you’re that way inclined. That’s all really beneficial. 

Izzy: What would you recommend, Sonya, if someone is interested in community energy but really doesn’t have the finance, doesn’t have the, the money to invest in a project right now, how else could someone get involved? 

Sonya: There’s lots of ways, that you could get involved. Like Beth said, there’s the there’s so much call for volunteers and people, to come along and do things. And I think, it’s it starts with that passion and wanting to to make a change and to help. And in your local community. So often community energy will start out of existing community projects. Maybe it’s your local green group that get together, and you spin off that into an energy project. 

And if it’s a preexisting group, there’ll always be a job to do. You can, look for sites. You can be a person who assists in negotiating terms for land or site, or you can, simply be, a person who organises the meetings and there’s, there’s a role for everybody to play, as long as there’s there’s an interest in that. 

If you want to take it one step further, you could get on, a board of your local community energy organisation. And I think one of the things that community energy groups are crying out for is more young people to get involved on their boards. It can be a bit intimidating if you’re young to, to be a director of an organisation, but actually it’s a great way to gain experience, both of, of, renewable energy, but also of being on a board of a, of an organisation that is handling quite complex projects sometimes. And people are always welcomed into that. No skills are necessary because you can always learn those skills on the job. So so we always really encourage more young people. It tends to be, a lot of retired people, which is brilliant because there’s so many skills. But also getting, getting, a cross-section of age ranges, onto a board is is really good as well. Loads of ways of getting involved.  

Izzy: That’s really interesting. I suppose I hadn’t really thought about, the kinds of people that would, would be on the board of a community energy company. And I think, that makes a lot of sense that, yeah, it’s it’s really important to have that representation across different ages and also across different kinds of backgrounds as well. 

And, I know that there are different organisations out there that are trying to help helping with that. And in fact, that’s something that we spoke to, to John about from Community Energy England. They, and their sister organisations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are trying to make getting involved in local energy generation projects more accessible to people, regardless of their background or their skills. So we spoke to John a bit more about that. 

John: I think giving people that space to imagine where they live, but better, trying to sell it on those kind of “this is a way to improve where you live, have more control over things”. You know, whether it’s warmer homes, whether it’s improved nature around you, yeah, your community. And this can be a way, a means of achieving that. There’s a kind of cool technology angle to it as well. If you want to go down that route. But yeah, I think oftentimes we kind of pitch climate change and climate action as something regressive, whereas I see it as actually kind of quite optimistic and hopeful. So if you can, the way we live now isn’t as good as it gets, I think. So if you give people the chance to say how would your life be living it if you didn’t have to rely on fossil fuels, if you could come up with other ways? Yeah, kind of moving and heating and, yeah, living in this place. What would it look like or feel like, what would you do if you had this income coming in? So it’s, you know, kind of giving people a say in that design, in the change that’s going to come and be in control of it, I think. 

Part of the project we’re doing with the Energy Learning Network, which is this UK wide collaboration. We’re trying to grow a peer mentoring schemes so our more experienced members can work with newer members, kind of give them this guidance on how to get things going, maybe even share some of the kind of legal structures and documents to get established so you don’t have to replicate that whole process. 

We’ve already recruited our first cohort for this year, but hopefully from April onwards, we’ll have a second wave where people can register their interest with us to do our best to get some funding in to match people up. So that’s idea through our, or you can visit the Energy Learning Network website, which is hosted with Ashden, the climate education charity. 

Izzy: I love this peer-to-peer learning idea. Something like energy generation can feel really huge and a bit impenetrable. So, obviously people can listen to podcasts like this and feel a little bit more informed and a little bit more like they want to get involved. But it’s also wonderful to hear that the Energy Learning Network is opening it up to more people. John ended our chat with a really beautiful analogy, which I really wanted to share as it’s just so uplifting and I hope that other people will feel inspired by it as well. 

John: Politicians quite like this cheesy analogy that climate change. Or this energy transition; it’s like trying to turn around an oil tanker. It’s kind of a very big, slow-moving thing. They’re in control on the bridge, and then give us give them some time and it’ll start to turn around, which is fine for them. But there’s a bit of a disconnect for the rest of us that how does our local action help turn the ship around? How does me changing my light bulbs or generating power at home kind of make the ship turn? 

So I’m sort of thinking of it like that I prefer to think of it not as an oil tanker, but actually as a murmuration of starlings. It’s actually appears to be big, but it’s actually that cumulative effect of all our individual choices and actions all swirling around in the mix. Suddenly my heating system, it’s your car. It’s that business down the road. All of cumulative emissions have this appearance of being this big, thing. And actually, compared to a ship, a murmuration is actually really agile. It can turn really swiftly and the change in a murmuration begins with one bird turning then that influences the birds around, and soon that movement can ripple through the whole flock. 

So rather than being way up there on the bridge trying to turn the ship, change can begin with any of us. And I think that’s what community energy has the power to do for me, it gives that murmuration effect of all our combined actions coming together to create that change. So be the bird that turns. 

Izzy: It’s so lovely. I really I really love that analogy. 

Sonya:  It is beautiful. And coming from Somerset, there are a lot of murmurations, I think. Yeah, the analogy is a fantastic one. And one which actually for me, it does, as well as as be the bird that turns, also means that we are, you know, a lot of the reasons we do what we do in the community energy or renewable energy organisations is bringing it back to nature, and actually why we’re we’re doing this is to stop our dependance on fossil fuels and to be able to reach lots of people, but also to try and stop the effects of climate change and to do something good for the planet as well. So I think the, murmuration analogy is beautiful. 

Izzy: We are going to finish this episode in the usual way by summarising what we’ve learned, although I think it’s probably more about what I’ve learned and what you’ve taught me. 

Sonya: Maybe I should do a quiz for you. Izzy, would you would you, like some questions on what we’ve learned today? 

Izzy: Oh, I love quizzes. Yes, please. 

Sonya: Thinking about everything that everyone said, the first question I would ask is, how would you get involved in a community energy project if you felt inspired by listening to the podcast today? 

Izzy: I think I would go and look at the Community Energy England website and see if there are any community energy projects near to where I lived, and also maybe explore other kind of local green groups to see if they are thinking about starting anything, as you mentioned that quite a lot of the community energy projects you’re aware of have kind of sprung off from an existing green group. 

Sonya: Definitely. No. I think that’s a really good idea. And also, there’s lots of stories on the Carbon Copy website about community renewables. And also you can there’s a search function for your area as well to see existing groups, which gives some real inspiration to all the different types of community renewable energy action that’s that’s being taken there. So lots of ways are getting involved, definitely.  

I think another question for you Izzy might be, following the discussions and things you’ve heard about community energy. What do you think is the most popular form of community renewable energy? 

Izzy: I think at the moment it’s solar, rooftop solar. 

Sonya: Yep. You’ve nailed it in one. But it it’d be really good to see, community energy organisations taking on more wind projects in the future because I think that’s one thing which which we really need to accelerate now. 

Izzy: Have you learned anything Sonya? 

Sonya: I think yes, of course, there’s always that’s the thing with community energy. You’re learning something every day. And I’ve learned, from the other speakers about their organisations, what they’re doing. I think hearing about from John, about, some of the ways to get involved through the Energy Learning Network was really useful and something that I’ll be signposting definitely to, to community energy organisations that I work with. 

Izzy: Excellent. Well, I’m glad that it’s also been informative for you, and I hope it’s been informative for everyone listening as well. 

You’ve been listening to Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy Podcast. It was written and presented by me, Isabelle Sparrow and special guest co-host Sonya Bedford, MBE. Thank you so much, Sonya. 

Sonya: Thanks, Izzy. It’s been great fun! 

Thank you also to John Taylor from Community Energy England and to Beth McAllister from the Low Carbon Hub. To find out about any of the initiatives or organisations mentioned in this episode, or to discover the other topics in our 25 Big Local Actions campaign, do check out the show notes. The next episode in our series is Reduce Food Waste, which should be absolute delicious listening! 

The Carbon Copy Podcast is produced and edited by Bradley Ingham. If you’d like to let us know what you think, please do leave a review or rating. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening. 

Until next time, goodbye!