Northern Powergrid's Community Energy Update

Funding

Net Zero Community Energy Fund

We’re launching a Net Zero Community Energy Fund to help groups to build capacity, access expertise, explore feasible project ideas and support emerging community energy organisations with start-up costs. In-kind support and grants up to £10,000 are available for new and existing community energy organisations and climate action groups across the North East, Yorkshire and North East Lincolnshire. Applications are now open and will be assessed bi-monthly until 31 July 2022. You can read the full guidance here, and fill out the application form here.



Great Big Green Week

The Great Big Green Week Community Fund offers different size grants to community groups to organise local events and activities during Great Big Green Week 2022 in September. The deadline to apply for small and medium grant applications are assessed monthly until 30 June. See more details and apply here.



Boiler Upgrade Scheme

The government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme is offering grants of up to £6,000 for homeowners and small businesses towards the cost of air and ground source heat pumps and biomass boilers. Grant applications opened on 23 May, and you can find out more here.



Energy Redress Fund

The Energy Redress Fund, which distributes fines levied on energy suppliers by Ofgem, has now been opened up to community energy groups. Community energy organisations are eligible to apply for the Innovation and Carbon Emissions Reduction Funds. If you're providing energy advice for vulnerable customers however, the Main Fund reserved for this purpose is still only available to charities. Community Energy England have collated more information about this fund here. From their website, you can also find an up-to-date version of all funding available to community energy groups.

Free Membership for Northern Community Energy Groups!

Community Energy England – 31st May Opportunity

Having been contacted by Northern Powergrid about the level of interest in locally owned renewables in the area, Community Energy England is offering a free annual membership to groups and organisations in Northern Powergrid’s region, if they express interest before May 31st 2022.



Community Energy England is a national body that supports individuals, organisations and groups to harness the power of democratically owned energy in their locality. They also run national events like Community Energy Fortnight, coming this June (more information below).



If you are interested in joining their 280+ membership for free this year, please send an email to s.jackson@communityenergyengland.org before May 31st.

Northern Powergrid has asked the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) to deliver a survey to help us gain an up-to-date picture of the services and agencies already delivering valuable support to vulnerable energy customers across the North East, Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire.



We will use this to plan how we can strengthen our partnership strategy and better allocate our spending so that all our vulnerable customers can access the support they need. The recent storms affecting our region and big increases in the cost of electricity affecting customers country-wide make it all the more important that support is available as needed for vulnerable and fuel poor households.



By responding to the CSE survey you will help us identify what services already exist, what support they are able to provide to vulnerable people and what are the existing gaps. This will enable us to see where we can support provision and innovation to benefit our customers. CSE will have contacted you during week commencing 23 May.

In 2020, we published our Community Energy Engagement Strategy, setting out how we want to work with you to build a thriving community energy sector in our region and setting out 26 commitments to support community energy groups in our region. Every year, we update you on the progress we’re making against the actions we set out, so that you can hold us to account on this and tell us what else you would like to see from us.



Between early 2020 and now, we have had more than 6,000 interactions with community energy stakeholders, and have observed a boom in local energy and climate action groups seeking to achieve net zero emissions on a local scale – the number of organisations in North East, Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire has increased from around 20 to over 80 (and we’re still counting!), while our community energy newsletter subscribers have increased more than ten-fold. As of now, we have delivered 20 of the 26 commitments, and are on track to achieve our targeted outcomes for the remaining six commitments by 2023.



You can access our 2022 progress update including a highlights’ infographic and detailed updates on our community energy webpage. Read our press release here.

The North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub has teamed up with Community Energy South to develop a new package of support and a grassroots network for community energy groups across the region. They will be announcing more details in the near future and will be holding a workshop to shape their work on 22 June. If you would like to be kept up to date please get in touch with joe.smee@communityenergysouth.org.

Our region historically has seen less community energy activity than other areas of England, but that is changing rapidly. We want to improve the visibility of the organisations who are driving this movement. To help you to find other like-minded, local organisations and to show the scale and scope of community energy in our region, let everyone know you’re out there!



We have created an online collaborative map to help support peer networking and local knowledge exchange. Simply add a marker to mark your location on the map, type in the name of your organization and add some description (what do you do? Who are you interested to network with and what knowledge could you share?), click save, then invite other community energy organisations to add themselves to the map.



Put your community on the map today by following this link.

Join us for an online training session with Carbon Co-op’s retrofit experts for practical advice, from how to begin engaging your community in retrofit, to starting a scheme like People Powered Retrofit in your community. The session will help community energy practitioners understand how able-to-pay retrofit relates to energy advice and fuel poverty alleviation work, and how you can build upon this work with more long-term solutions. Book your free place here. Over the summer, we’ll be running another training session, and in the autumn we’ll be hosting another community energy forum. Watch out for details on future events in the coming weeks on our community energy webpage.

Community Energy Fortnight 2022 – 11 to 24 June

Community Energy Fortnight (CEF) is the UK's annual celebration of all things community energy. CEF is intended to serve many purposes this year: inspire people to get involved in projects, set up new ones, take personal actions around energy – but also to engage with policy makers. This year’s CEF2022 key aim is to raise awareness of the vital part energy efficiency plays in this. This focus on #EfficiencyFirst also highlights the potential for community energy to respond to the energy bills crisis by delivering real help to local people with bills as well as reducing emissions. Visit Community Energy England's website to see how you can get involved with CEF.

Registration is now open for Community Energy Fortnight’s summer conference Energy Transition: Communities delivering local net zero. The event, co-organised by Community Energy England and Bristol Energy Network, will take place on Saturday 18 June at Engineer's House in Bristol and it will be our first in-person event since 2020. It is free to attend, but places are limited so book your place now.



The event will build on our track record of successful summer conferences and introducing a new format with a range of informative, engaging talks and networking opportunities. Community Energy England will be announcing more details about the event programme in the next few weeks.