What will the project try to achieve?
Power for People aims to unleash the potential for community renewable energy businesses to spring up across the country. They are calling for new legislation – the Local Electricity Bill – that they authored, to be made law. This would establish a statutory Right to Local Supply and make the costs of selling energy locally proportionate to the scale of the business. Local energy suppliers would then become financially viable. This was a key recommendation in the Green Alliance’s 2019 ‘Manifesto for Community Energy’, endorsed by a large coalition including Friends Provident Foundation, and of the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee following their Technological Innovations and Climate Change inquiry this year.
To achieve this, Power for People are bringing thousands of people – community groups, councils, businesses and national organisations – together to support the Bill and call on MPs and the government to ensure that it is made law.
Who might be interested in this project?
Any individual who is concerned about climate change and who wants to ensure that the huge deployment of new renewable energy generation infrastructure that is needed to stop it benefits local communities and their economies.
The following groups and individuals are, or will likely be, interested (please note that this is not an exhaustive list):
- Community energy groups
- Community organisations concerned about climate change
- Parish, Town and Community Councils
- Local and County Authorities
- Members of the UK Parliament
- Members of the Welsh Assembly
- Members of the London Assembly
- Members of the Scottish Parliament
- The Welsh Government
- The Scottish Government
- Political parties
- Senior and relevant officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
- The UK Government, especially the Energy Minister and the Secretary of State for BEIS
- Journalists and writers covering the energy sector and the environment
- National organisations and charities concerned about climate change
- The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem)
- Trade associations linked to community-scale renewable energy
- Businesses involved in the energy system, for example the National Grid, Elexon and Distribution Network Operators
- Universities, other academic institutions and experts that specialise in the energy system