Community Energy in Gloucestershire

Our Chair, Helen Jeffrey, and our wonderful Professional Advisor Emma-Jayne Williams attended and supported the "Empowering our Councils: Community Energy in Gloucestershire" event this month. There were people from all over the county, and also from our close neighbours. Councillors and Officers attended, as well as the members of Gloucestershire Community Energy Forum.

Congratulations to everyone who made the event such a success!

"How do we (as councils) speed up energy infrastructure deployment, potentially lower bills at our buildings, and increase community power and wealth?

Supporting community energy projects can do all of this, and with GB Energy funding imminent there’s a real window of opportunity about to be thrown open.

We ran an event in Gloucester on community energy for councils which explored this opportunity, bringing together community energy organisations, Councillors and officers. it was great to see so much enthusiasm for harnessing community experience and expertise to see renewable deployment on suitable assets, and share the formal partnership agreement we’re putting in place to do that."

"Huge thanks to the South West Net Zero Hub for supporting this. To all our speakers including Helen Jeffrey, Dean G. Hill, David Witherspoon, Steven Roberts, Jess Farr and Councillor Richard Pineger FISTC and for the support of Forest Community Energy (and Emma-Jayne Williams), Gloucestershire Community Energy Coop, and all of our Gloucestershire Community Energy Forum."

I was delighted to be invited to present the introductory session at the "Empowering Our Councils - Community Energy in Gloucestershire" event. It was a challenge; Community Energy and it's potential is a wide topic to condense into a few slides. There are many examples of LAs and councils doing really ambitious things in partnership with community energy groups. I really want to inspire Gloucestershire to do the same...