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Community Energy Cooperatives & Decentralised Generation

Any IET members who have specific knowledge on either of these 2 topics, I would love to hear from you.



I am looking to help create a new community owned energy cooperative in my local area, could be an exciting and interesting project to be involved with, its in the very early stages, but every journey starts with a single step...



I thought that the IET would have helpful information for those looking into this area, but perhaps I was wrong or I am looking in the wrong place. If anyone knows of useful website links, please reply below.



www.facebook.com/SpelthorneEnergy

www.twitter.com/SpelthorneE



Regards, Ian Coggan CEng MIET
  • Ian,



    While based in Canada I also have connections in Wales and am aware of a couple of groups and Welsh government support.  I am also in the process of designing a small (one house) off-grid system (wind/solar) in Snowdonia.



    I may be contacted at john.williams2@gmail.com



    John Williams FIET
  • We did it :-) We managed to raise over £125k of investment in a bit of a last minute rush (George Osborne changed the rules relating to tax relief on Community Energy Projects!) and over Christmas the installation was installed on a Community Arts Building and is now producing power, what an effort from all the team involved, I played only a very small role helping promote our Coop's fundraising activites on Facebook to try and help bring in investors. 


    Our Coop will have another share issue soon, sadly without the SEIS 50% tax rebate which made the last investment so attractive, but the next installation is on a School very near to Staines Town Centre.  Investing £1,000 into an ethical investment with returns for the next 20 years is a great gift to hounour a new addition to the family, a nice yearly present up until their 20th birthday.


    www.maidenergy.coop/.../
  • I take it you are also unhappy about the huge tax relief for the oil and gas Industry to explore the North Sea deep water sector? That's £1.3billion of tax relief, think that places any government subsidies regarding solar into insignificance by comparison.
    next.ft.com/.../4ce567e8-4f0b-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14

    You must also be equally outraged by the government agreeing a price / MWh far about that expected to be a fair market rate for new UK nuclear power stations, what is that if not a state subsidy / hand out (to a Chinese state owner company - you thought the Torys liked the free market) which is going to add many £s to all our bills, which we know will hit the poorest hardest.

    The UK energy market is being driven by forces encouraged by it's disasterous privatisation and ownership by the UK arms of state owned energy giants from other countries, sure the money is going from the poor to the rich, but the rich are the shareholders in those companies involved in ripping off the UK consumer....Which has done much to highlight the failure of this market and the many and varied ways consumers get a terrible deal.

    The sums involved in sudsidising the UK Community Owned solar industry are a pittance in comparison to the £300billion implicit yearly subsidy of the UK financial sector (whose reckless acts help bring about a global financial meltdown once and we are likely to see the situation repeated in my lifetime), I know which sector I would rather support :-)

  • Eliminating or at least lowering subsidies allows the market to operate.  Significant subsidies for renewables provide the wrong signals to investors and as noted earlier increases the cost of electricity to the poorest consumers.  Subsidies for fossil fuels also create problems.


    With respect to climate change and the policy of reducing carbon emissions, which happens to be government policy, it would be resonable to provide the correct market signals.  To do this we need to stop "choosing winners" and apply the same effective carbon price to any source that reduces carbon emission - wind, solar, biogas, nuclear should all be treated the same way with respect to any subsidy or feed-in tariff.


    Set the carbon price, if the government objective is to reduce CO2 emissions, and let he market operate.
  • The transfer of wealth argument more generally is highly pertinent.


    1. Those struggling most with their fuel bills pay the highest rates, especially if they get into debt and are put on a pre-payment meter.

    2. Temporary 'energy welfare payments' to energy intensive businesses (a social policy after all) are being funded by a regressive levy to utility bills rather than through general taxation which is raised more progressively.

    3. Several of the big six have been fined for not rolling out insulation to vulnerable fuel poor households quickly enough. Many companies have just sat on money provided for this purpose. This money was supposed to tackle the wealth transfer argument.

    4. The subsides are not determined competitively since all technologies are treated differently with their own fixed subsidy price set centrally by DECC and the Treasury. The capacity market can be seen to have a competitive bidding system, but overall the costs have gone up without significant new assets being brought on stream as was hoped.

    5. In this regime Community Energy initiatives are now being strongly discouraged even though they are perhaps more morally defensible for subsidy than other government market interventions.

     

    James
  • Funny how people forget that power generation and distribution in the UK was a nationalisialed industry and as such the notion of profit and loss and being able to balance the books was not of concern for many decades and all the captial costs were on the backs of taxes paid at the time (only fractionally repaid when that industry was sold off on the cheap); yet expect an industry in its infancy to compete against an industry privatised in its maturity from the start; seems a bit unbalanced really!  Why should newer technologies not recieve the same level of historic support those mature industries had when they began?  If you want to send the privatised power generation industry a bill for their historic unpaid debts then I can see how that alligns with no subsidy for renewables, otherwise renewables deserve a subsidy just to keep it fair do they not? 


    As for discussions about the reality or not of anthropogenic climate change, please move that onto another thread, I work in the oil and gas industry and fully support the concept of humans causing the disastarous situation we will face via our inability to work together towards saving ourselves, the planets ability to support us all is at stake. Sometimes when faced with a challenge so daunting it can seem impossible, but I think we can rise up to face it and overcome it and stimulate the economy at the same time, we gave several £billions in support of failed banks (engaged in criminality and wreckless behaviour) and have nothing to show for it now, whats a £billion to the wind / solar power industry; at least we would have some wind farms roodtop generation in return!
  • An interesting report on the problems of global temperature measurement and the related uncertainties.

    I certainly think that we should reduce our consumption of finite resourses, but trying to base the reduction on dubious science will only create more problems in the longer term.


    Best regards


    Roger