Community pathways to clean, cheap energy

This project aims to move three community heat plus energy projects towards being investment and shovel ready.

The project will investigate ways to match community energy generation with heat demand, to cut the costs of decarbonising both heat and energy at household, community and systemic levels. The work will develop three site-specific community projects, exploring different ways of delivering clean, affordable heat and energy for different communities, urban and rural, and using different combinations of clean technologies; and will also explore ways to remove key barriers to the successful delivery of these three projects by exploring local supply and matching mechanisms. By doing so, the project will create learnings and develop replicable models which will also be useful to other community energy projects.

The project will help three communities either facing or at risk of energy poverty and unaffordable energy bills, or which may be left behind in the transition to clean energy due to a lack of the resources, time and expertise required to seize opportunities offered by community energy projects.