Name: Brighton Energy Co-operative
Location: Brighton

About: Brighton Energy Co-op focus on developing Brighton and Hove’s renewable capacity – and benefiting our community.

Photo:Damian Tow

Brighton Energy Co-op (BEC) was created as a result of the founder, Will Cottrell, attending the failed Copenhagen Climate Change negotiations at the end of 2009. Coming away feeling the need to ‘do something about it’ he visited communities in Denmark that had their own wind farms, and found out that 20% of Danish renewable energy was community-owned. This led to the seed of an idea which was nourished by the UK Government’s planned launch of Feed in Tariffs (FiTs) in 2010, and blossomed when he held a public meeting about it in June 2010.

The FiTs are essentially a mechanism to subsidise the roll-out of renewable energy infrastructure which have proved highly successful in Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries over the last few years.

With the vision of enabling community-owned solar power in Brighton, and the funding mechanism now making this viable, a business plan was born and Will was joined by two fellow Directors, Danni Craker and Damian Tow. Over the last 7 months they have followed a steep learning curve to set up a ‘Community Benefit Society’, understand how other community-owned renewable energy projects have succeeded, raised early-stage investments and identified at least 6 sites for the installation of solar panels. Their next and biggest objective is to be the first community solar project to raise £1M in Spring 2011, and to install around 300kWs of photovoltaic panels on the roofs of local buildings.

Essentially, BEC aims to make the opportunity to invest in low carbon energy generation more democratic. At present a minimum of around £10,000 is needed to invest in solar panels for an average 3 bedroom semi.  Furthermore, if you live in flats in central Brighton or Hove, as do BEC’s 3 Directors, it can be difficult to get agreement from the building owner or planning permission for solar panels. BEC’s vision therefore is to enable local people to invest smaller sums of money into a large ‘pot’ that will provide them with not only some financial return, but also importantly an environmental and social return, from working together to generate low carbon energy in Brighton.

Raising £1M is certainly a daunting prospect but the Directors of BEC are getting expert advice from across the UK on how to go about this, and more importantly they believe that the City by the Sea with the country’s first Green MP is the perfect place to start the ‘people power’ revolution!

For more information on Brighton Energy Co-op, visit their website.

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