Benefits of Community Energy
Government recognises that community energy will be an increasingly important part of the energy system, delivering energy efficiency and demand management, supporting switching to renewable energy and working with residents and businesses to deliver changes. Rapid changes in technologies are providing many more opportunities for communities to benefit.
If communities like ours set up our own community energy company there are many benefits. We have chosen a community owned and operated wind turbine as the first project because it has the potential to:
- Provide a community benefit fund for additional projects
- Keep more money in the community – 15 times or more than industry standards
- Provide locally produced renewable energy
- Deliver cheaper electricity (especially if Government approves the Local Energy Bill)
- Help resource efficiency by reducing transmission costs
- Reduce Carbon emissions – essential to help reduce climate change
- Work with and encourage residents to reduce energy costs through efficiency
- Advocate for the community to roll out new technologies
- Stimulate the local economy – local spend, investments and reduced bills
- Increase resilience
- Work with the local schools on energy awareness
- Showcase benefits to other areas – tourism
Look at our resource pages to read much more about the benefits.
If you have any suggestions for schemes / projects please inform the committee.
Financial Section
So far we have received two grants from the West of England Combined Authority under the rural community Energy Fund (RCEF) and Devon County Council’s community Energy fund(CEF). We acknowledge with gratitude these two funds and the substantial amount of work our community made to successfully obtain these funds. We are extremely grateful for both RCEF and CEF for their flexibility and support to ensure the funds worked together to get us where we are now.
The Founding Directors
The directors all act in a voluntary, unpaid, capacity and have to abide by the Rules. The directors are of John Carter, who has experience leading a wind turbine project, Steve Batt a former senior regeneration officer within the Economy and European Office at Devon County Council, David Parker who bring experience of management, financial administration and an understanding of legal issues and finally Dave Harris a FCCA qualified finance professional.
Carbon Footprint
A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an individual, event, organisation, service, place or product, expressed as a carbon dioxide equivalent. For example when we light a gas fire carbon dioxide is given off into the atmosphere; a car emits carbon dioxide as it is driven. There are other greenhouse gas emissions such as methane from agriculture.