Current Projects
The Community Energy Revolution
If you want to buy your electricity from local renewable sources, such as solar panels on the local school or sports centre, you cannot. We all buy our electricity from a utility company that sources it form anything connected to the National Grid, be it a field of solar panels in Wiltshire or a gas fired power station in Yorkshire. This is happening because becoming a supplier of energy to local customers involves set-up and running costs of millions of pounds.
In 2017, we founded Power for People to campaign for the Local Electricity Bill - that we authored - to become law. This would create a ‘Right to Local Supply’, which would give electricity generators the right to become local suppliers and make it financially viable to do so. This would unleash the UK’s huge potential for more community renewable energy generation and keep its knock-on economic benefits within local communities.
Reducing emissions and protecting biodiversity: The Climate and Ecology Bill
We provide strategic advice to the campaign for the Climate and Ecology Bill. If made law, the Bill would require the government to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) at a rate consistent with limiting the global mean temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Bill also requires the government to halt and reverse the UK’s overall contribution to the degradation and loss of nature in the UK and overseas.
We helped draft the Bill and work to raise the awareness of the need for the Bill with local authorities and political parties. We are also conducting research into the social benefits and climate change impact that the Bill would create.
Improving Home Energy Efficiency in the UK: The Domestic Premises Bill
Reducing energy use in our homes is a key step in the fight against climate change whilst creating healthy, warm and affordable homes to live in – something that is not possible for those living in fuel poverty or cold and damp homes today.
In partnership with the Sustainable Energy Association, we research and promote the need to improve home energy efficiency in the UK. This informs the campaign for the Domestic Premises (Minimum Energy Performance) Bill.
Currently, more than 12 million homes fall behind Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band C, meaning occupants are spending more on their energy bills and are emitting more carbon than is necessary. If made law, the Domestic Premises Bill would compel the government to develop a more detailed plan of action to bring all fuel-poor homes to EPC Band C by 2030, and all those not classified as fuel poor by 2035. It will also require the Energy Minister to maximise the adoption of existing, new and innovative technologies and to consider how best they can be utilised to realise the Bill’s aims.