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One of the great things about working independently is that you only have yourself to answer to. So, while I’m grateful to the brilliant organisations I collaborate with on community energy (Co-operatives UK, Pure Leapfrog, Centre for Sustainable Energy to name a few) sometimes you just want to say exactly what you think, without having to represent anyone’s position.

That’s just what I did at the very enjoyable PoweringUp conference at Oxford Town Hall this week. Inspired (should that read provoked?) by Ed Davey’s declaration that he wants “nothing short of a community energy revolution”, I took his words » Continue Reading.

I found myself asking this question today. Not in an existential sense (though spending last week in a sea kayak spotting seals has made it much harder to chain myself to the desk since.) I was at Lancaster University talking to academics about what all this energy is for. Why do we each use fifteen times the amount of energy than we did two hundred years ago?

Regular readers will know this isn’t the first time I’ve asked this question. My 2011 pamphlet for Green Alliance, Demanding Less, attempts to get to grip with the big questions about energy » Continue Reading.

This week, MPs got down to the tricky business of line-by-line scrutiny of the Energy Bill, to see whether it’s doing what it should. And at last, we’ve had a proper debate about whether the UK is serious about community ownership of energy.

As I’ve said in previous posts, we pay lip-service to its importance, but until now, politicians have not really believed that community ownership could be a significant part of the energy mix, as it is in Denmark and Germany.

But on Tuesday, the government and the opposition frontbench teams were jostling over who was doing most » Continue Reading.

How can communities benefit from nearby wind farms? The government is keen to hear views on this, and have issued a ‘call for evidence’ – the deadline is this Thursday 15 November.

I’ve written a discussion paper for Co-operatives UK which argues that the best form of community benefit is community ownership. Through an ownership stake in the project, communities gain real engagement, proper understanding of the industry and technology, and a financial stake in its success.

There are some great examples of this happening already. Infinergy is working with community group TRESOC to develop the Totnes » Continue Reading.

Yesterday’s budget is far more than just bad news for the environment. I think it rips up more than two decades of careful, cautious progress on green politics.

Since the late 1980s, (and yes, that includes a previous Tory government) we have been edging toward some kind of political consensus: a growing agreement that, in order to sustain our economy and society, we need policies and a politics that values the environment. The Climate Change Act of 2008 was a milestone. For the first time, all political parties agreed a set of binding environmental limits, in the form of carbon » Continue Reading.