REVIEW OF 2018

Energy: Mark Luntley & John Malone
Director and development director at Energy4All, an umbrella body facilitating new energy co-ops
How was 2018 for you and your sector?
The whole energy sector is undergoing massive shifts
as technology allows societies to change from dirty fossil
-fuelled power generation to clean green energy.
The pace of that transition is accelerating.
There are now 228 active community energy
organisations in England, Wales and NI – which is
great news. However the growth of community energy
groups has stalled in the UK, largely because of a less
supportive government framework.
2018 was also an incredibly busy year at Energy4All.
We’ve raised over £4.6m in capital in the last two years.
We have a series of projects in Scotland where the national
government is more supportive of community energy.
In spite of the hostile government framework there’s
a real sense of enthusiasm and entrepreneurialism among
our existing and new co-operatives. We’ve developed two
hydro schemes, and refinanced a key scheme at Mean
Moor. We’ve also been elected to the board of European
co-ops and have been supporting their work.
How did renewable energy co-ops make a difference
in 2018?
Community Energy England highlight that in 2017,
community energy capacity in England, Wales and NI
totalled around 169MW – with 33.5MW added in the
year. That’s enough to power 67,000 homes.
But co-operatives make more difference than the
energy generated: co-operatively owned community
projects put people, typically local people, in genuine
control of how their money is used to create democratically
controlled energy. This is in sharp contrast to the
existing models which seek to relegate citizens to the
role of passive, uninformed consumers. We believe that
community ownership is creating a growing band of
people informed about how their energy is generated,
and interested in making other changes in their lives
as a result. We are supporting independent academic
research to establish just how strong this relationship
is among the Energy4All co-ops and their members.
Renewable energy is one of the most popular ways
of generating electricity and community projects are
even more popular. If we want more projects to go
ahead, one key way of achieving this is to make sure
they are genuinely community owned.
How can renewable energy co-ops prepare for
the challenges ahead?
Putting individuals at the heart of the energy
transition is key. Umbrella organisations like
Energy4All help individuals and communities to
take control of energy generation by sharing skills
and expertise.
One opportunity is that the grid is becoming smarter
and energy storage is becoming cheaper. If we want
the public to embrace these technologies, we should
put communities – through co-operatives – at the heart
of these changes, as is happening in several other
European countries.
John Malone, and Mark Luntley
Review 2018 27