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Community energy lobby presses government for huge scaling up

Governance | Tania Mason | 1 Feb 2012

The National Trust and the Women’s Institute are among a coalition of civil society groups that are meeting Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne today to press for massive expansion of community energy projects across the UK.

Leaders from the Church of England, Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Co-operative will join those from the National Trust and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) to launch their joint ‘vision for community energy’.

Sixteen organisations in total, who between them represent over 12 million members, are signatories to the vision.

Their strategy envisages a huge scaling up of community-owned renewable energy projects across the country, and calls on the government to examine how it might assist.

Currently, less than 1 per cent of the UK’s electricity is generated by communities.

The National Trust’s director of rural enterprise, Patrick Begg, said that the UK is way behind many other European countries in this area. For example, Germany produces more than 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, and local communities generate around a quarter of this.

Representatives from the coalition visited Germany last year to see first-hand how successful community schemes could be.

Ruth Bond, chair of the NFWI, said it was a “great opportunity” for the UK’s 7,000 Women’s Institutes to tackle climate change and leave a legacy for the next generation.

At the same time, the Co-operative has launched its £1m Community Energy Challenge, a competition that will see six communities receiving funding and assistance to set up their own energy projects. The support on offer will range from mentoring for start-ups to the underwriting of co-operative share offers in local co-operatives.

Paul Monaghan, head of social goals at the Co-operative, said: “We want nothing less than a clean energy revolution, with communities controlling and benefiting from their own renewable energy.”

Over the next months and years, the coalition partners will meet regularly to plan the next steps in the campaign. The coalition was gathered together by the Co-operative, Forum for the Future and environmental charity Carbon Leapfrog.

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