Community Led Energy Demands

A coalition of  civil society leaders from UK organisations
with over twelve million members have called for community
energy to play a substantial role in meeting the country's climate change
targets. Leading figures from The Co-operative; the
National Trust; The National Federation of Women's Institutes; the Church of
England and Campaign to Protect Rural England will today meet Chris Huhne,
Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, to launch their joint "˜vision
for community energy', which supports dramatically scaling up the number of
community owned renewable energy projects across the country, and to discuss
how the Government can best assist.

At the same time, local energy schemes will
receive another boost today as The Co-operative launches its Community Energy
Challenge, a competition which will result in six communities across the UK
receiving support to set up their own energy projects. The Co-operative is
setting aside £1 million in 2012 to support community energy. This will involve
everything from mentoring for start-ups through to the underwriting of
co-operative share offers in local co-operatives.

Paul Monaghan, Head of Social Goals at The
Co-operative, says: "We want nothing less than a clean energy revolution, with
communities controlling and benefiting from their own renewable energy. Talk of
a new dash for gas shales, which could see up to 3,000 wells installed across
the UK, highlights the choices we face "“ more and dirtier sources of fossil
fuels or clean energy owned and controlled by communities."

Patrick Begg, Director of Rural Enterprise
at The National Trust, comments: "Many other European countries are way ahead
of the UK, as we found out when visiting German communities last year. Germany
produces over 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, with
communities generating about a quarter of this. In the UK, less than 1 per cent
is generated by our communities, a figure this coalition wants to dramatically
increase by 2020. Today we are asking the Government to support us in this."

Ruth Bond, Chair of the National Federation
of Women's Institutes, comments: "The WI has been active on renewable energy
since the 1970s. We see community energy as people working together, not having
schemes imposed on them. This is a great opportunity for our 7,000 WIs across
the UK to tackle climate change and leave a legacy for the next generation."

David Shreeve, the Church of England's
national environment adviser says, "The Church of England has a presence
in every community with 16,000 churches nationwide. We fully support community
energy projects as a way of working together to provide a clean, secure energy
supply and to help heat and electricity become more sustainable for all."

In the coming months and years, the
coalition, who were brought together by The Co-operative and its partners,
sustainable development organisations Forum for the Future and Carbon Leapfrog,
collectively plan to meet at regular intervals to make practical steps to drive
the shared vision forwards and champion community energy among their members.
Late last year coalition representatives visited Germany to see examples of
other successful community schemes.