Harnessing Community Energies

About the project

Links

UK projects database

Publications

Researchers and contact info.

Home

COMMUNITY ENERGY INITIATIVES:EMBEDDING SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY AT A LOCAL LEVEL

A focus on local, community scale energy generation is not a new feature of the sustainable energy literature but extends back to arguments for ‘soft energy paths’ (Lovins 1977) small-scale development (Schumacker 1974) and appropriate technology (Dunn 1978). Such literatures and idealistic ‘manifestos’ for change have provided influential guiding principles for grassroots alternative technology activists for over 30 years (Smith 2006a). However, until only recently such ideas and approaches were alien to UK energy policy and, where they did continue to be pursued this was within a ‘grassroots niche’ outside of the mainstream energy supply system and without the support of public resources.

A new emphasis on the potential benefits of a more localised and distributed pattern of energy generation and on the involvement of local people and communities in renewable energy development first emerged in the discourse of government and related official and advisory bodies in the late 1990s. This policy rhetoric was matched by new initiatives that had already begun to be implemented by government departments and agencies in order to actively support, promote and provide funding for community renewable energy projects. The table in Annex 2 first lists a series of government-led initiatives which emerged over the period 2000-2003, alongside others set up by organisations in the ‘not for profit’ and private sectors.

At the point where our research began we had seen a new theme of ‘community based localism’ in policy supporting a surge of new activity on the ground. Very little research had been undertaken to explore the motives and rationales of those involved, to examine the ways in which policy and action at a local level were interconnecting or to understand the profile and pattern of outcomes that were being achieved.

RESEARCH AIMS

The research objectives were to :

Examine the recent emergence of community-orientated programmes within national policy and the private sector.
Examine the conditions under which different forms of community energy project have developed, both within and outside of national programmes.
Examine the construction and interpretation of 'community' within sustainable energy initiatives and the different forms that community involvement can take (including more dispersed 'communities of interest').
Examine how the aims and objectives of community energy projects are being conceived and operationalised and the extent to which expected outcomes are being realised.
Identify the range of factors that are promoting and obstructing the implementation of sustainable energy technologies through community-level projects.

The research for the project was carried out from 2004-6 and therefore reflects the political conditions at the time, and the various programmes and initiatives that were then in operation.

Key Questions

The overall aim of the research is to evaluate the role of community initiatives in the implementation and embedding of sustainable energy technologies in the UK. There are four main questions:

Why have community sustainable energy programmes emerged as a policy measure in the UK?
Under what conditions have community energy projects been developed within and outside national programmes?
In what ways is the idea of ‘community’ constructed and operationalised within energy projects?
How are the aims of community energy initiatives conceived by project participants, and to what extent are expected outcomes being realised?
What generic lessons can be learnt for the embedding of sustainable technologies through community-orientated strategies?

To top

APPROACH

There were four phases to the research design.

Phase 1: an extensive literature review and analysis of documentation on community initiatives

Phase 2: interviews with key people in organisations leading or managing community programmes.

23 ‘national level’ interviews were completed covering 12 programmes or networks with the term community in their rationale or remit – nearly double the number originally envisaged because of the diversity of initiatives that were identified and the need to capture a range of perspectives on recent policy and practice.

Phase 3: construction of an extensive database of community energy projects

A database was constructed and made available on the web (see link above). In our proposal we estimated that there were approximately 80 ‘community projects’ in the UK. This proved to be a gross underestimate as the database finally contained 509 projects in total (as of December 2004). Our approach was to include renewable energy projects in the database that were supported by a programme or network that has the word ‘community’ within its rationale or remit. It includes available factual information about each project (from web, programme data and other sources). We were not able to fill all of the fields in the database as we had to rely on what information was easily accessible and could not verify its accuracy or reliability. With necessary caveats, the database provided a useful snapshot of projects that we could use to inform case study selection and a simple statistical analysis provided a profile of activity supported by initiatives by technology type, region and initiative.

Phase 4: case studies of community renewable energy projects.

Six case study projects covered a variety of renewable resources and technologies, scales of development and institutional structures. They all had successfully installed renewable technology, and reported high levels of community involvement or beneficial outcomes in each place, as indicated by materials produced by the project organisers. Key aspects of each project are summarised in the following table:

Key aspects of the six cases study projects

Location	Technology context	Institutions	Funding
Llanwyddn	Biomass district heating network linking school and community centre plus 19 local houses	Public-private partnership	£375,000
Moel Moelogan	3 grid connected 1.3MW wind turbines (phase 1), later increased to 12 (phase 2)	3 local farmers	£2.6 million
Bro Dyfi	One 75kW wind turbine, grid connected	Committee-co-operative	£83,555
Kielder	Biomass district heating network linking school, youth hostel, 6 houses, workshop and castle	Public sector, local council	£630,000
Falstone	Solar photovoltaic panel and biomass boiler in village shop, tea rooms and visitor centre	Public sector partnership	£250,000
Gamblesby	Ground source heat pump for renovation project on village hall	Village hall committee	£42,100

Case study research involved interviews at local and regional levels and questionnaires with members of the public in the communities in which the projects are located (were all relatively small and rural). In total 41 local level and 15 regional interviews were undertaken. The case study research was undertaken in 2005-6.