‘Building Community Capacity’ workshop, Renewable & Low Carbon Energy in the West of England
Saturday 14 January 2012

My opening remarks for the workshop day

• I am very pleased to be here today to welcome you all to this important workshop about community energy

• As a local authority, we exist for the well-being of our residents
• This well-being is threatened by the twin challenge of climate change and rising energy prices
• We have made de-carbonising our district a priority and aim to help cut our district’s carbon emissions by 45% by 2026 and of course this is an important issue for all of us across the West of England
• So we are very pleased to be leading a series of low carbon projects, on behalf of all the authorities in the West of England, including one looking at what we can all do to realise the potential for ‘Renewable and Low Carbon Energy in the West of England’ – which this workshop is a part of
• Because of course local sustainable energy production is not just essential to cutting carbon emissions, but also to the future economic prosperity and well-being of our communities
• We are very concerned to ensure that local people have a real say and a real stake in local energy projects that are of real benefit to them in every sense – and that local businesses benefit and can create new ‘green’ jobs, retaining economic benefits locally
• For some time now we have been supporting the work of the Transition movement in our area. We have several very active Transition groups now – as well as a number of organisations that have emerged from Transition, such as Bath & West Community Energy and Energy Efficient Widcombe, who benefitted directly from the Council’s local energy champion training. ( Both of these organisations are here today)
• All of these community groups have been making a real impact on the ground
• Quite literally in some cases – I have just agreed to hand over a plot of land to Transition Larkhall in Bath for vegetable growing – not a topic for today, but nonetheless very important work in our efforts to cut carbon emissions!
• We are very proud of our partnership with Bath & West Community Energy, whose twin aims of delivering local sustainable energy and keeping the income from those projects in the community will help us to deliver our priorities.
• I know that you will be hearing from them later on this morning along with other community based organisations and local support organisations, so that we can all learn from each other
• And that really is the point of today – to see how we can work together to build further on all the exciting community based work that is already happening across the West of England and to see if we can find ways, together, to engage more local people in this work, to accelerate community sustainable energy development and realise the huge potential that we know is out there to generate local clean energy and make an even bigger difference
• So thanks again for making the effort to come along and I wish you a truly inspiring and productive day