CEE welcomes the Great British Energy Act which is scheduled to receive Royal Assent today. Following various cross-party amendments supportive of community energy, the government tabled their own amendment. So community energy is effectively ‘on the face of the Act’ and a stated part of what Great British Energy (GBE) is established to do.
The Objectives of GBE are: “facilitating, encouraging and participating in—
(a) the production, distribution, storage and supply of clean energy,
(b) the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from energy produced from fossil fuels,
(c) improvements in energy efficiency, and
(d) measures for ensuring the security of the supply of energy.
[Lords Amendment: (e) measures for ensuring that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in its business or supply chains.]
Government amendment: (including through projects involving or benefiting local communities)
Energy Minister with responsibility for GB Energy, Michael Shanks, addresses Parliament
This is important because the Secretary of State has promised that “Great British Energy will deliver our local power plan, working with local authorities, combined authorities and communities to deliver the biggest expansion of support for community-owned energy in history.” It is now up to the government to back their amendment with practical support and support commensurate with the targets of 8GW of community and locally owned energy, 20,000 projects with 1 million new community owners and thousands of new jobs in the cooperative economy.
We thank all MPs and Lords who supported and spoke to these amendments, all CEE members who wrote to their MPs and Power for People for campaigning tirelessly. CEE supported all these campaigns and submitted a response to the official Bill Committee consultation.
Following a last debate in the House of Commons last night a Lords amendment was adopted without opposition, that added to GBE Objectives: “(e) measures for ensuring that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in its business or supply chains.” CEE’s Ethical Sourcing Working Group has been campaigning for this for 2 years and was thanked by Sarah Champion MP’s office for our support. We submitted responses to 2 Select Committees (here and here) and Jon Halle presented to DESNZ on this issue. See CEE’s statement and Jon’s blogs here.
Great British Energy is now a separate entity (although wholly owned by the Secretary of State). It can start spending money (which we hope will be allocated in the Spending Review in June, including for community energy). The government is sticking to its pledge to support GBE with £8.3billion over the life of the parliament. It has already received £25m to set up (headquartered in Aberdeen) and £100m of capital which has been passed through the National Wealth Fund (previously the National Infrastructure Bank).
We have wonderful, knowledgeable advocates already in GBE in Kate Gilmartin, who is one of 6 non-executive directors working with the Chair Juergen Maier and interim CEO Dan McGrail to set up the organisation, and in Helen Seagrave who has been appointed Director of GBE Local. (See CEE news piece.)
The next important step is that the Secretary of State will produce a Statement of Strategic Priorities within 6 months. We will be working with him and the department to make sure they support community energy in the best way possible.
FUNDING FOR COMMUNITY ENERGY
The announcement also references the £200m announced in March which included £100m of capital funding for rooftop solar on 200 NHS sites, £80m for solar on schools but only £5m to extend the Community Energy Fund (now the GBE Community Fund - still for England only).
We highlighted then that this was a missed opportunity and have done so repeatedly since, including directly to ministers. Had a few million of the capital funding been reallocated to develop CE projects with the public sector, many more MWs would have been installed in many more places, delivering better value for money and much more community benefit.
Also today the government has announced how the £630m uplift in the current phase of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) will be allocated. There is no requirement or incentive to collaborate with community energy - which would have helped leverage more public investment, delivering more bang per buck of public money as well as vital public engagement and understanding of what the government is doing to enhance people’s neighbourhoods whilst pursuing net zero. Another missed opportunity.
We will be asking for an allocation of PSDS funding to community collaboration in any future rounds. The ideal example of PSDS/CE working together being CEE's award winning projects at Tollesbury School.
The list of awarded PSDS sites is here. If there is one near you it may be worth making contact to see if you can help enhance the project.
A list of the 200 NHS sites awarded a share of the £100m funding for solar is downloadable here. Schools are yet to be named. There is additional funding for the Net Zero Hubs including £150,000 each to enable collaboration between Local Authorities and community organisations. (Apply to your Hub). There is funding for Combined Authorities and Metro Mayors. And Scotland and Wales have received separate funding for community energy.