Funded Energy Redress Projects

This project will deliver a portfolio of 2 MWp of investment-ready community-owned rooftop solar sites across the organisation's family of co-operatives, focusing on four boroughs with established community groups or growing co-operatives in Southwark, Hammersmith & Fulham, Newham, and Barnet.

The project will assess the technical and financial viability of a pipeline of sites that have already been identified for community-owned solar, whilst building social infrastructure and viability through the organisation's award-winning programme of inclusive community engagement.

By developing approximately 500 kWp of rooftop solar capacity that is ready for investment across each of the four boroughs listed above, this project will establish the foundations for the long-term sustainability of inclusive community energy co-operatives in each of these boroughs, enabling them to develop into more holistic community energy service providers led by and for local people. This project will benefit local communities through financial returns, training and development for those underrepresented in the sector, energy efficiency support, and community fund distribution.  

This project will appraise and develop the best option for the communities of the Cowal Peninsula to develop their own community wind farm opportunities in order to address social need and tackle previous opportunity imbalance. Community ownership will create a significant sustainable income from their own natural resources, which will be used fairly and inclusively to tackle fuel poverty. 

New opportunities for community ownership are known and this project will enable the organisation to progress them; Cruach Mhor, a 30MW windfarm, is likely to repower in the coming years, opening up the opportunity to negotiate a novel shared ownership repowering deal – and/or it may be that a new, wholly-owned/community-consortium arrangement would have greatest benefit. This stage of the project will map out and appraise the routes and wider feasibility of the different options.

The project aims to deliver energy focused advice and support to 2,000 vulnerable households across Bradford, including those in or at risk of fuel poverty.

They will assist households with sorting out billing issues, helping clients deal with fuel debts, apply for capital energy saving programmes, alongside proving advice on energy efficiency, switching tariffs and smart meters.

The project will also focus on developing external stakeholder relationships with Landlords and the Local Authority Housing Standards Department, to help them meet their legal obligations and provide direct referral paths into the service, offering holistic support to vulnerable clients.  

They will also work together with partners in the community, to promote the service and provide practical support such as applications for grants for insulation. 

This project will build on a previous project to support another 3,000 vulnerable households to keep warm and healthy, while reducing fuel costs and carbon emissions. 

The project includes in-depth home energy advice visits, plus advice by phone or online and at events. Alongside the installation of low-cost energy saving measures, such as low energy light bulbs, draught-excluders and radiator reflectors. In the second year of the project, they will also be distributing small energy-saving appliances including heated throws, dehumidifiers and air-fryers/ microwaves via the Crisis Fund, continuing their current offer funded via the government’s Household Support Fund.

They will grow and train their network of Energy Champions to promote the service and generate referrals, and will work closely with their extensive network of volunteer community groups to engage local people around home energy, retrofit and renewables. Whilst also developing their strategic referral partnerships with organisations across Cumbria who support vulnerable people, thus providing access to a fuller range of services for beneficiaries.

The aim of the project is to support community energy in England to grow and scale effectively. It will ensure that more vulnerable and future energy consumers are able to lead and benefit from locally-based initiatives that help communities to better understand own, manage, generate and save energy in their area. 

They'll do this by prototyping a support model for novice community energy actors, helping them to understand their options, build their capabilities and access feasibility funding though a dedicate project specific 1:1 support service, sign-posting to existing resources and group learning activities. 

The project responds to the unpresented scale of ambition set-out in the government’s local power plan. Helping to ensure there is a pipeline of well thought-through projects ready for feasibility funding, that precious volunteer time is optimised, and that experienced community support actors are able to improve and scale their services. 

This project aims to bring forward local energy for local people, where the benefits are felt by all in the community but specifically the most vulnerable. The project will work closely with communities where energy generation potential has been identified and will accelerate at least 3 of 5 sites from stage 1 to 4 (investment and build ready). All developments will be at least 50% community owned, and income from energy generation will be targeted on those most vulnerable in the community.     

Community capacity will be harnessed and developed, enabling greater community ownership, empowering them to have influence over energy generation and share in the economic benefits from it. They'll provide training and mentoring to give people the confidence and skills they need to engage in meetings and action groups and manage projects and events.

The project will scope for a selection of potential sites, taking forward the most viable sites, leaving a pipeline of potential projects communities could take forward after the project ends.  

Home energy advice will be delivered to at least 4500 households, focusing particularly on rural off-gas households, across this large and remote area, where fuel poverty levels are some of the highest in the UK. 

This thorough and comprehensive service will offer a range of energy advice topics to raise awareness, increase resilience and reduce the risk of fuel poverty. Including advice on switching suppliers and tariffs, support dealing with energy companies, and referrals for insulation and heating replacement schemes.

They will offer a mix of home visits, face-to-face advice at events and telephone sessions. 

The project will also deliver free training events to at least 250 frontline workers who support vulnerable or disadvantaged people, to help them to recognise and refer fuel-poor households.

Nook CRM is an open source case notes management system for UK community energy groups, with currently 6 groups joining its pilot.

Working in partnership with Plymouth Energy Community and Community Energy South, the project will launch innovations that bring efficiencies to groups’ operations and free advisors to undertake more frontline delivery.

Based on their research these include:

1. Streamlined funder reporting: resource-heavy effort is required of groups to submit regular and accurate reporting data to funders, and manage changing reporting requirements. They will work with funders and partner coordinating networks to determine required data and reporting, and then build a centrally-managed (and updated) reporting logic/templates in Nook for groups that have that funder. With a few clicks, groups would be able to generate reports for the funder, slashing the time they spend on reporting. 

2. Standardised metrics to calculate impact: Groups use a range of effort-intensive approaches for calculating impact (energy bill and CO₂ savings). They will provide groups with automated calculations of a range of metrics, or use their own formulae. 

3. Mapping: Managers have requested tools to visualise the geographical impact of their operations (e.g. the types of interventions in their locality), helping teams strategise more effectively. 

4. Continued support and hosting for pilot groups. They also plan to continue making their research and learnings available to the sector.

The project aims to enable urban communities to be part of a community-owned ‘Virtual Power Plant’, (VPP), to generate, store and control their own renewable power, directly reducing energy costs and carbon emissions for all participating households. 

The project, led by Ynni Teg in partnership with the Bengal Dragons Foundation (BDF), will support minority Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities in South Wales conurbations with the transition to Net Zero. It builds on existing project work developing the Community Centres and mosques at the heart of these communities as local energy hubs and greatly expands its scope to include the largely low-income (fuel poor) households in their locales. 

The VPP will include 1MWp of rooftop solar PV and 3MWh of battery storage, distributed over approximately 300 properties including vulnerable households, located in Cardiff and Newport. The assets will be aggregated and controlled through a specialist software platform to optimise their use and enable energy to be supplied to households at a reduced cost. 

The VPP will operate as a large-scale single entity, with ownership of the assets retained in a community energy company, thus making it more attractive to prospective funders and imposing no/minimal cost barriers on participating households.

The project outcomes will be a new community-owned energy entity, delivering reduced energy costs to participants and reduced carbon emissions. It will provide learning and capacity building for the partner organisations and will provide a model that can be scaled up and replicated to support other communities in their transition to Net Zero.

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.