The Local Power Plan is announced

Community energy, with local communities taking control of their own energy generation and sharing in the benefits of it, has always been close to our heart.

We built the very first community-funded solar project in the UK and have worked with other experts, councils, and community energy organisations ever since, to design and install rooftop mounted solar.

The Local Power Plan is published

The publication of the Government’s Local Power Plan this week, backed by £1 billion of funding, signals a historic investment in community energy in the UK. We welcome this positive, forward-looking commitment. As our Head of Solar, Ed Baughan says:

“The Local Power Plan is a really positive signal for the market. For years, community and locally-owned solar projects have had huge potential, but limited access to patient capital and structured support. If this funding is delivered well, it could unlock a new pipeline of rooftop and ground-mounted schemes that directly benefit local people and businesses”.

What will the Plan do? Key highlights 

• The Local Power Plan is looking to support over 1,000 local and community energy generation projects, boosting shared community ownership in the growth of clean energy.
• These projects will be a mixture of locations, size, and technologies.
• Great British Energy has also stated it will work collaboratively with partners to provide financial investment, deliver capacity building and business support, and to remove project barriers. They’ll provide grants for feasibility and development of projects, loans for construction and community shared ownership, and targeted investment in specific local projects.
• A Partnership Fund will also support collaboration between local authorities and community energy.

Plan details

More details of the funding and support available will be published in the GBE Product Portfolio in the Autumn and all the details currently available are here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-power-plan

A low-carbon future for all?

Great British Energy says their vision is “that by 2030, every community in the UK will have the opportunity to benefit from, and own, a local energy project”. Delivering clean energy and social value for communities across the UK is in our DNA, and this certainly aligns with our vision of a democratic, low carbon, all-electric future for all.

We look forward to the Autumn when more of the details are shared.