The joint DECC & OxFutures (Oxford City Council) conference called Powering UP held its first national conference on community energy for local authorities and community energy groups and is seen by government as a key component of DECCs’ recently published Community Energy Strategy.

Our work with Bath & West Community Energy (BWCE) is cited in the Strategy as a key case study of what local authorities can do to support the development of renewable energy within their own communities and BWCE and the Council were invited to speak at the conference to jointly present the local authority and community enterprise perspectives. Of the eight case studies presented, B&NES was the only authority presenting a genuine partnership with a community organisation. B&NES, under my Liberal Democrat Cabinet leadership, was very supportive in setting up BWCE as a community energy group and we are now seen as leaders in the UK on partnership working with community energy.

In addition, the Council was singled out in the keynote speech at the beginning of the day by Rebecca Willis, former Chief Executive of the Green Alliance, now Cooperatives UK – a well-known figure in the energy and climate change field.  She mentioned us particularly in terms of not being one of the usual suspects – ie showing that you don’t have to be a big council to make a difference on this.  Then, after lunch, Liberal Democrat MP Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, also gave us a good plug in his address! Here is the link to his speech: http://www.wired-gov.net/wg/news.nsf/articles/DNWA-9NNG3Y

B&NES will now be working with APSE Energy, Plymouth and Oxford Councils along with an expert consultancy to create an event for local authorities on short term investment opportunities and issues and then to look at longer terms issues such as future pension investment in low carbon and renewable energy (which in the long term is likely to be safer and higher performing than investment in fossil fuel energy companies), with a view to APSE producing a guidance note for local authorities.

At the awards ceremony in the evening for the UK’s first Community Energy Awards – BWCE took the award for best community energy organisation and Pete Capener (Chair of BWCE and adviser to DECC on these issues) was awarded community energy ‘leader of the year’. Well done to Peter and all at BWCE