Martin Brocklehurst, who leads the Communication Dissemination and Exploitation work for project AURORA, sat down with Emma-Jayne Williams (Forest of Dean Local Authority) and Megan Blyth (Centre for Sustainable Energy – CSE) to explore how the AURORA project was developing in the Forest of Dean pilot in the United Kingdom.
Q: Emma-Jayne, tell me about project AURORA and how the programme is working in the Forest of Dean.
The Forest of Dean is one of five demonstration sites for the AURORA programme, an EU Horizon 2020 funded programme to engage local communities in citizen-led individual and collective carbon reduction activities.
In the Forest of Dean, the project is delivered by a collaborative partnership between the Forest of Dean District Council and the Centre for Sustainable Energy.
The project is working with Big Solar Coop to develop a solar photovoltaic panel system capable of generating at least 200 kW of renewable energy in the Forest of Dean district. Two installations are currently being developed on a local school and leisure centre. As well as generating renewable energy, what’s great about this project is the solar installation itself will be owned by everyone who wants to buy a share, via a community shares offer.
The project also aims to raise awareness of personal energy use from transport and home energy use through community events, workshops and an app which you can use to track your energy usage and calculate your individual footprint.
The AURORA programme has provided a springboard for the creation of the Forest Community Energy – a resident led group bringing together residents who are interested in energy and the climate emergency. These citizens want to run local projects that support the development of renewable energy generation in the Forest and inform local residents about energy saving tips and advice for reducing their own energy usage, installing low carbon measures, cutting carbon and saving money in their own homes.
Forest Community Energy group photo with event supporters from Forest of Dean District Council and the Centre for Sustainable Energy” (Credits: Forest of Dean District Council)
Q: You have set up the Forest Community Energy (FCE) group - who are its members and what have you achieved so far?
FCE is made up of a core set of members who regularly join meetings and plan and delivery activities (around 10 people), however we have a larger membership of people that join events, receive our newsletter (~165 people). The membership is made up of a mix of people from all over the district, some of which are local councillors, some are just interested residents that are passionate about sustainability and want to learn more about the role of community energy in our net zero transition.
Our key achievements to date have been:
- A great public engagement event in 2023 raising awareness of community energy
- A set of priority asks for the council to support and enable community energy projects in the future
- Looking at the potential to support local community buildings such as community centres and village halls with rooftop solar PV to reduce carbon and energy costs
- A pilot project exploring how FCE could loan out thermal imaging cameras to the community to help residents identify heat loss in their homes and get advice on how to reduce heat loss.
Q: You have exciting activities planned for the FCE, tell me about what we can expect over the next 12 months.
In the immediate term, we are planning an exciting solar PV information drop in event in September. This event aims to connect local residents to information and installers of rooftop solar PV to support them in exploring this for their own homes.
Over the next 12 months, we intend to run future events like this on other energy related topics such as insulating your home. We would also like to plan some talks bringing guest speakers such as a talk with Forest of Dean Climate Action Partnership and National Grid, all about the grid constraints in the district and how communities can navigate this when developing renewable energy projects.
We are also hoping to formally launch our local share-offer campaign soon to help raise local investment in the Big Solar Coop – who we are working with for our two solar PV installations. The funds raised through this share-offer will go towards those projects as well as others in the pipeline in the Forest of Dean.
Based on the success of and interest in our thermal imaging pilot we ran earlier in 2024, we would like to work with FCE to roll this out more widely in the district, offering other community “Hubs” the opportunity to get a thermal camera to loan out to their local residents to help them to identify heat loss in their homes and take appropriate actions to reduce their carbon footprint, save money and stay warm in the winter.
Q: You have a developing relationship with the Big Solar Co-operative. What are your future plans?
Yes, we (the AURORA Forest of Dean project team) and FCE have been working with Big Solar Coop for a couple years now to develop our two potential solar PV projects in Lydney, as well as exploring other potential sites to develop in the future. We’ve been fortunate to work with them as they have helped us to navigate the complicated nature of large-scale rooftop solar projects, including lease arrangements, technical jargon, planning regulations and much more. With input from the project team, and FCE volunteers, Big Solar Coop have helped us to investigate and plan a number of potential solar PV projects from local community centres and churches to a museum.
We recently published an interview with Noel Lambert from Big Solar Coop about our work with them which provides some useful context for how they fit into our AURORA Forest of Dean project and FCE.
Big Solar Coop is powered by volunteers, volunteers can be anyone in the country, their role is to identify suitable sites, and work with the Big Solar Coop experts to assess their viability for solar, then to liaise with the site owner to progress projects. The other sites that have been identified as potentially suitable in the Forest will need local volunteers to take the lead on. We are therefore strongly encouraging our FCE members to join Big Solar Coop as volunteers to drive forward some of these projects in the future.
Big Solar Gathering event where AURORA FOD shared updates on a panel about community solar and working with Big Solar Coop and presented the AURORA energy tracker app (Credits: Big Solar Coop).
Q: How do you plan to reach out and coordinate your work with others active in the Forest of Dean and across the County?
We have good links with Forest Voluntary Action Forum, Forest Climate Network and Forest of Dean Climate Action Partnership and are always looking at ways to work together. We often promote our activities through them, and will be looking to co-deliver more events (like the grid capacity event) but also will be exploring how we can partner to provide a legacy for FCE beyond AURORA
FCE also is a member of a Gloucestershire Community Energy Network. We hope through this we can connect with other community energy practitioners in the region and learn from them, as well as share our experiences in the Forest of Dean. Through this we may develop new partnerships to develop community-owned renewable projects in the future.
There are also some developments happening at the council level we are hoping to tap into – such as the council’s retrofit information service.
Q: I understand you are seeking Ambassadors for the local programme. How is recruitment going, what do you want ambassadors to do and how can people volunteer?
Recruitment has been slow; we think this is generally due to people feeling really busy. We struggle to get commitment from local volunteers and stakeholders who are often really busy with their day jobs or other volunteering commitments, who maybe have had some links to FCE and AURORA on a more local scale but are not as connected to the programme in a wider sense.
We would love for anyone who is interested in the AURORA programme more widely or even in the local approach we’re taking to get involved. We would want our ambassadors to use their networks and links to stakeholders, the community and decision makers to promote what we’re doing and the impact of citizen-led action on energy in a more general sense.
Q: You are testing the AURORA energy tracker app in the Forest. How can people take part? What benefits do local people get from using the app?
In all honesty it’s been a real challenge getting people to use the app in the Forest. There were some teething issues in the beginning which made it not user friendly for a UK audience (e.g. Incorrect units). Not having a web-based version was also a barrier as many of our energy community members and audience we engage with are in an older age bracket, some don’t have smartphones, or are reluctant to download an app. Now there is a web-based version of the app we have been doing some more promotion to focus on this.
We also noticed that the audience we are engaging with in the Forest of Dean is very mixed. As we do not have a student base like the other demo-sites, we have been unable to integrate the app into education modules, so we are really just relying on people’s interests to use the app.
We are continuing to promote the app and will be collecting more feedback along the way. We are also exploring other avenues such as testing it with a younger audience through links with the University of West England and running workshops broadly to discuss the use of apps in relation to encouraging behaviour change.
If anyone is interested in testing the app, and sharing their feedback, please do get in touch – you may learn something about your energy use along the way! The app can help you to monitor your carbon footprint in terms of transport and home energy use, and can be a good starting point to have wider conversations about how we can individually and collectively reduce our impact on the planet.
Q: What have you learnt so far from your current app users?
Emerging feedback shows that with busy lives using an app such as this in an ongoing basis is not a high priority for people. It has been challenging to get commitment from users to continue inputting data into this app. It’s also been clear from discussions with some users that the app has to be a starting point for people to get advice and support, as the data itself is not going to encourage behaviour change. Often, people feel disempowered with what they can do in their lives, so having a label without the support can have an opposite effect where it might prevent people from taking action. Having FCE as a potential long-term infrastructure for connecting residents to advice and information to help them act on what the app is telling them will be important if it’s to be successful locally.
One of the functions that is planned that we are looking forward to is the recommendations based on data being inputted in the app. We think this will be a good way of getting people to engage with the app on a more ongoing basis.
Q: I hear that your approach in setting up the FCE is being shared with colleagues who are setting up a similar initiative across 67 rural villages in Spain. Tell me more about what is happening and how others can share your approach. Are we seeing the Forest of Dean as a pioneer in tackling climate change?
We are delighted to be sharing our experiences through our Spanish partner with villages along the Jalon river in the Municipality of Calataynd. It is a rural area in the heart of Spain in the Aragon Region. It is an exciting development and brings to life the idea that when communities work together, across national boundaries we can make a difference.
Through this project, we are learning a lot about the barriers and opportunities about working with our local communities to tackle climate change. For our team it has been exciting to see people realise that they can be part of the energy transition. The realization that they can drive that process, bring lower energy costs to public community buildings and gain profit from small investments is truly empowering. Our partnership with the Big Solar Co-op is also developing very quickly and removes many of the risks in setting up community energy schemes. Sharing these ideas with other municipalities in the UK and across Europe, on how we move towards net zero carbon and tackle climate change is a key part of the AURORA project and the Spanish example is a small step in that direction.
