In 2014, the government’s community energy strategy imagined that one million homes would be powered by community energy schemes by 2020. Four years later, that vision lies abandoned with only 67,000 homes benefiting. Since the scrapping of the strategy and the subsequent reduction in feed-in tariffs, community energy groups have struggled to make a reasonable business case. Consequently, in 2017, it is known that at least 66 community projects either stalled or failed.
The development of distributed energy technologies and different ownership models throws up new challenges for policy makers. This report makes four recommendations to the government to support the community ownership of energy in a way that also meets its goal to rapidly decarbonise the economy.
