Community Energy

A letter from Edward Gildea to Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP, 29th February 2024.

Dear Kemi,

On Tuesday evening I attended a jam packed meeting in the Attlee Suite of Portcullis House hosted by Selaine Saxby MP on the subject of Community Energy.

Community Energy offers immense opportunities to the UK in terms of cutting the costs of energy, taking people out of fuel poverty, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, empowering communities and improving national energy security.

At the moment it generates a mere 0.5% of our electricity, but with supportive legislation this could grow by 12-20 times within 10 years, generating 10% of our needs: the equivalent of two large nuclear power stations!

The greatest infrastructure challenge for the UK is increasing the capacity of the National Grid. Locally produced energy by definition does not have to be transported far, and so would significantly reduce the extent and cost of that investment.

I would therefore urge you to:

• support the enactment of a Right to Local Supply, which would enable community-run renewable energy schemes to sell their power direct to local residents and businesses
• support the Local Electricity Bill
• ask the Energy Minister, Andrew Bowie, to launch the public consultation he promised on 5th September 2023, without further delay
• support the enlargement of the Community Energy Fund to apply to Scotland and Wales in order to realise the potential of community energy (far, far cheaper than nuclear power stations!) before the current fund ends in January 2026

Many thanks.

Yours sincerely,
Edward Gildea