Agenda item

Members of the Commission, officers, community representatives, and stakeholders will discuss how Community Energy could be best taken forward in Southwark.

Sustainable Energy 24 (SE24) have provided a paper; attached.

The Mayor of London’s office has provided a comment on behalf of Shirley Rodrigues, Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, who is unable to attend; see attached.

Members of the Commission, officers, community representatives, and stakeholders discussed how Community Energy could be best taken forward in Southwark. Sustainable Energy 24 (SE24) contributed to this item and provided a paper.  The Mayor of London’s office sent apologies and provided a comment on behalf of Shirley Rodrigues, Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy; also attached.

SE24 reinforced the point made by Repowering London that there will be emerging business models post FiT, and that different sources such as grants will come into play. They noted that carbon offsets are a particular opportunity that is often underused by London boroughs; this is an area worth looking at. 

SE24 recommended the council consider the benefits solar could bring from other parts of the borough estate; e.g. primary schools.  Schools can use solar generation as a way of changing behaviour. Community energy and solar generation provides an opportunity to educate children who then influence their families. Extending the scope of this programme to education could have a real impact on future generations.  Schools may be able to pre-register for FiT, as well as community groups.

A member queried which residents would benefit from the community benefit funds generated by Repowering London solar schemes. Repowering London explained that the benefit would go to the residents on the estate with the solar arrays. This could be a way of sharing the benefits with residents, given the challenges of directly reducing bills to council tenants.

The Juniper House secretary emphasised the important of sharing the cash benefit directly and equally with estate residents. He said schemes like this offer an opportunity to provide validation for social housing. To date residents have worked hard on this with little guarantee that there will be a direct benefit.  The council has the capacity to employ solar at economies of scale. He said that people want to focus on their own lives as they have a deficit of leisure and family time, and the trick is to ensure that residents are involved in ways they enjoy and are good at, not to make them bureaucrats.

The chair invited officers to respond to the issue of sharing the benefit directly through reductions to bills. Officers explained that tenants would benefit to a small extent under existing policy as the savings from communal electricity costs would be shared across the borough. His said the policy to share communal costs was introduced as part of rent restructuring in 2003, in response to government policy. That does not mean to say the council cannot change this policy, however he said that while it would benefit places with planned schemes it would also be to the detriment of other social housing tenants.

There are different categories of communal costs e.g. ground maintenance, lighting , door entry etc., however it is difficult to extract a particular estate service potentially  benefiting from solar ( e.g. lifts) as it will always be somewhat reliant on the grid during the night, so subject to the pooling policy.

The chair asked community energy representatives if this dilemma had been solved in other schemes across the country, and if local authorities have been able to directly reduce the bills of people who are involved in schemes. Representatives said they are unaware of this, unless the scheme was a direct energy supplier. This is the challenge that Repowering Energy also faced in council housing estates where commonly the communal costs are socialised across the borough. The challenge of sharing the benefit with tenants was a driver in developing community funds. Housing associations do share the cash benefits directly with both tenants and leaseholders.

A TMO representative commented that savings to communal electricity from solar would benefit all residents indirectly by increasing the estate coffers.

A cabinet member asked officers if the current policy to pool communal costs could be changed via an amendment to the policy and what would be the challenges, difficulties, impact on the budget, and potential objections from other tenants.  Officers advised it could be conceived as inequitable by other tenants who would lose out. If cabinet decided to make those changes it would go into the overall account and not effect the council budget overall, however it would mean a variation to the charges to estate communal areas.  Juniper House commented that once one scheme has got going other community energy projects would join thereby reducing the overall bills of more and more social housing tenants. A Commission member commented that as a council tenant he supported the current pooling arrangement and sharing the costs and benefit across the council as he thought this was more equitable and a principle of social housing.

A tenant asked if solar installations could reduce the electricity bills in individual estate homes, not just the communal bills, as this would provide more direct benefit to tenants and leaseholders in the line with the council’s aspiration to utilise community energy to reduce residents’ bills.

A roundtable participant commented that the real savings in carbon would come from combined heat and power schemes, district heating, energy reduction schemes, as well as developing solar.

Officers were asked why these three pilots were chosen. Officers said that each is using a different approach so this enables testing of different models, addressing the technical challenges and understanding the potential benefits.  They also all have a strong TRA or TMO who expressed an interest so there is existing community enthusiasm and buy in.  The council has commissioned a feasibility study of each site which will report by the end of February.

Pre-registration to benefit from the FiT was discussed. Groups who are a legal entity and have an Energy Performance Certificate will probably be able to pre-register by 31 March 2019. It may be possible to piggy back with a community energy group.

Concern was raised about the viability of solar with the end of FiT and the importance of lobbying government for this to continue.

A participant said often the most direct way of reducing energy is actually through insulation, and through LED lighting. The savings from the installing solar on estates could be redirected towards this.

Haddonhall said that their estate is already well insulated so they were looking at other ways of reducing their carbon footprint.

There are eco funds from the GLA and the government which will pay for metering and other initiatives. This reopened last year. The council can apply for this. There are also large finance schemes, with very small interest repayments, and communal heating funds from government/ Mayors office. These are huge schemes that are available and a big opportunity for the commission to champion and monitor. There are also communal heating systems that combine heat and power that are one of the most efficient methods of saving money and carbon.

The maintenance of solar installations was discussed. Community Energy representatives that said a maintenance contract is drawn up lasting 20 year, this is a long legal document and includes maintenance and other eventualities such as taking down the solar panels once to replace roofs.

The post FiT business model was discussed, and if solar schemes would be viable when FiT ends.  SELCE gave a quick run through of the emerging models: one is ‘energy local where users club together. Solar panels and the associated technology is developing, particularly the storage of energy, which is reducing the cost of installation and the potential to sell to the national grid at peak time generating preferential rates. Diverting benefits from solar into insulation and other energy reduction methods is a significant part of the current community energy model. The schemes also currently make use of the eco funds available, which are targeted at owner occupiers.  Community energy representatives were confident that a new business model will emerge.

SELCE, SE24 and Repowering London invited the Commission to visit projects and see how initiatives like energy cafes benefit residents.