Forest Community Energy (FCE) member and AURORA Ambassador Helen Jeffrey has responded to the UK Government’s “Energy Security and Net Zero Committee Inquiry: Unlocking Community Energy at Scale”.
Helen is an active volunteer driving forward strategic work for Forest Community Energy, including leading on organising and hosting a successful event with Octopus Energy in October 2024.
In November 2024, the UK Government launched an inquiry to consider the policy, market and regulatory reforms needed to support the growth of community energy and achieve the sector’s potential impact in supporting our collective effort towards the country’s net zero targets.
Helen’s response tells the story of the Forest of Dean’s history, its relationship to coal mining and the challenges that its communities face in relation to fuel poverty, poor insulation and reliance on fossil fuels to heat their homes.
Helen also sets out the journey that FCE has taken from being set up through AURORA to where it finds itself now, and highlights the following key points:
- FCE have the passion and competence to drive forward community energy projects but lack the funding and long-term support.
- The grid capacity constraints in the Forest of Dean make traditional community owned large-scale renewables challenging.
- There is appetite for community-supported roll out of domestic solar but this is challenging without government subsidies.
- Community groups are well placed to work with residents to incentivise demand flexibility and educate households on behaviour change to take up low carbon and smart technologies.
- The government should formally recognise the local benefits community energy projects can have and recognise them as material consideration in planning decisions in relation to domestic solar in conservation areas.
Read Helen’s full response aqui.
