Climate change minister Greg Barker has highlighted the need to boost community ownership of renewable energy projects

Climate change minister Greg Barker has said the UK needs a "game change" in its culture and approach to community ownership of renewable energy projects, and indicated support for recognising this in the planning system.

Speaking in the House of Commons earlier this week (July 14) during a debate on renewable energy projects, Mr Barker claimed that the coalition government's programme was clear on empowering communities to become more self-sufficient in the way they use heat and power.

He said that, in order to see an increase in the number of renewable energy installations, there needed to be a ‘more equitable settlement' and a greater sense of community participation in deciding where to site projects and allowing them to benefit from the returns that come from them.

While he said that the coalition was already working on measures to ensure that communities can benefit from renewable energy, through the Feed-in Tariffs, he said it would go further and encourage more community ownership.

Suggesting that he is in support of introducing community ownership into the planning system, in response to opening comments on the issue made by Labour/Co-operative MP for Barrow and Furness, John Woodcock, Mr Barker said: "The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness made excellent points about the fact that where there is community ownership of energy installations, many of the objections in the planning system will simply fall away.

"I cannot comment directly, but I do hear the points that he makes about the need for that to be recognised in the planning system itself. There is a virtuous circle here. Part of the reason why there are so many delays to many local projects is that there are so many local objections. If there are fewer local objections, there will be fewer delays."

He added that, in an ideal world, the government would not have to "tinker greatly" with the planning system because it would be self-fulfilling, but claimed that it is examining ways in which it can work with the planning system to give communities more power to ‘shape the places that they inhabit'.

Resistance

Mr Barker then claimed that, historically, there has been resistance to renewable energy projects which was often based on misconceptions. However, he said that it is difficult to blame local communities for resisting renewable energy because "often they are asked to have something imposed on them that spoils their view or the amenity of the local land, and brings them no benefit whatsoever".
"If we are to see an increase in the number of such installations, we need a more equitable settlement. We need a greater sense of community participation both in decisions about where the installations are to be sited, and in the returns that flow from them", he said. "There are potentially remunerative streams of profit to be gained under those arrangements, and it is right for the communities that host renewable energy sources to benefit in that way."

The climate change minister then said that his officials will shortly be meeting with Energy4All - a not-for-profit organisation aiming to expand the number of renewable energy co-operatives in the UK - to discuss some ideas for community ownership, incorporating five different models, including:

• The community co-operative model, which enables 100% ownership of an entire project;
• Shared ownership model, where a co-operative owns one or more of the turbines on a wind farm, with the remainder being owned by a landowner, private developer or a community trust;
• The royalty instrument model, which is where a developer builds a wind farm in a region and the community purchases a stake in the future revenue of the project through a co-operative;
• The regional co-operative model, where finance is raised through a national or regional energy co-operative covering a wide geographic area and a range of different projects;
• The loan model, where the community project may approach an existing energy co-operative and get a simple loan to get a new project off the ground.

"Those are some of the innovative ideas that are springing up, and we need more of them," Mr Barker said.

Technologies

Mr Barker also spoke of the need to do more to advance "exciting" renewable technologies other than just wind, such as micro-hydropower, biomass, solar and combines heat and power (CHP).
"Ultimately, I would like to see the notion of local energy economies widely accepted.
"People have got used to the notion of a local food economy. We have seen local farmers markets spring up, and links between local schools and community projects, and local food producers, farmers and retailers. We must do more to encourage the notion of local energy economies, here people see a closer link between the energy that local communities consume, and the way it is produced."

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