Supporting community energy

Community energy projects have several advantages:

• Boosting the local economy, creating jobs and attracting investment.
• Providing income to fund more local projects, mobilising the community.
• Reducing energy bills and saving money for those involved, from households to businesses.

Successful community energy projects are often created with specific goals in mind. But they can also come from opportunities created by external partners or developers. The benefits can be managed in a way that maximises the ambitions of the group.

Community energy groups can get support from one of the programmes we run, including:

• advice on setting up groups and the associated legal structure
• feasibility studies
• financing
• project construction

Advice is often available for the ongoing management of a project, from technical support to managing the financial benefits so they support a wide range of non-energy related goals.

We run separate programmes across Great Britain that can help you with your community energy project:

• Great Britain: Ofgem Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme
• Scotland: Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES)
• Wales: Welsh Government Energy Service

The Ofgem Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme is playing a significant role in supporting community energy projects across the UK through its Just Transition Fund.

£3.5m from the fund has been granted to nineteen organisations across England, Scotland and Wales, to support the development of community renewable energy. These projects will benefit vulnerable residents by using profits to create new funds that:

• support local action on affordable warmth
• sometimes reduces energy bills directly

The fund aims to build the capacity of the community energy sector and demonstrate how moving to net zero can benefit everyone.

Find out more about the types of projects Energy Redress has helped fund and how your community project can apply for support.

New funds are issued every three months.

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Scotland has the ambitious goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2045. There are also more specific interim targets: 2GW of renewable energy capacity, for example, should be in local ownership by 2030.

To help achieve that target, we run the Scottish Government’s Community and Renewable Energy Scheme alongside:

• Changeworks
• The Energy Agency
• Scarf

The programme gives support to communities all over Scotland, in all aspects of renewable energy.

After a community gets in touch with an idea, CARES is there to provide support every step of the way:

• Appointing a development officer and conducting a feasibility study, to assess the potential barriers and set out the next steps.
• If the project is viable, raising awareness in the community and bringing together all the stakeholders to make it achievable.
• Providing all the necessary legal and technical help, with securing access to land and gaining planning consents.
• Getting funding, including Scottish Governments grants.

CARES has supported many different communities with getting their renewable energy projects up and running.

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The Welsh Government has made its intentions very clear about driving the transition to renewable energy:

• The Welsh public sector should be completely carbon neutral.
• 70% of Wales’s electricity consumption should come from renewable sources.
• One gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy capacity in Wales should be in local ownership.

We run the Welsh Government Energy Service alongside Carbon Trust and support from Local Partnerships. The programme provides financial and technical support to help public sector and community enterprises to develop their own renewable energy projects. When a community comes forward with an idea – like putting up a wind turbine, or building a solar farm – support is there from the start:

• Appointing a Development Manager, with all the right expertise and experience, to support the whole project.
• Conducting feasibility studies into the location and finances, then guiding the groups through the design and planning process.
• Providing non-repayable grants, funded directly by the Welsh Government, to cover any costs in development.
• Securing access to further Welsh Government grant and loan funding for the costs of building and installing the project.

From start to finish, the Welsh Government Energy Service is there to support the community and make their energy project happen. 

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Since 2013, across England, Scotland and Wales, we have: 

• Supported and advised more than 1,400 organisations with their community energy projects.
• Distributed over £115.4 million in government funding and investment.
• Enabled 213 megawatts (MW) of existing and potential new renewable energy capacity. 

Our energy experts advocate to local and national governments across the UK to increase and improve support for community energy. 

Some of our recent reports and consultation responses related to community energy include:

• Unlocking communty energy at scale: response
• Barriers to community energy projects
• Community benefits and shared ownership for low carbon energy infrastructure: our response

See our latest consultation responses and policy work.

You can also follow us on LinkedIn, or speak to our policy experts Abigail Ward or Emma McKelvie.

Want to know more about how we can support your community energy project, or how to get funding?

Get in touch