Cultures of Community Energy: Community Brief

In June 2015, the Academy released an invitation to tender for a portion of this research. Through this commission, the Academy wishes to understand better the international cultural dimensions to community energy generation, to help inform policy.

Project Working Group:
Professor Tim O'Riordan FBA, University of East Anglia (Chair)
Professor Nigel Gilbert FREng, University of Sussex
Fraser Macleod, DECC
Professor David Newbery FBA, University of Cambridge
Dr Alan Walker, Royal Academy of Engineering
Professor Sarah Whatmore FBA, University of Oxford

The aim of the project was to identify opportunities that promote, and barriers that inhibit, community energy projects in the UK. Our interest is in community energy generation and supply projects, characterised by local ownership, participation and benefit sharing. The approach used was to incorporate comparative institutional analysis with other countries where cooperatives and shared ownership of local energy infrastructure are more common. Barriers to widespread take-up of shared energy generation in the UK may be economic, regulatory, technical, constitutional or political. But there may also be cultural barriers that need to be better understood.