Enabling Community Energy

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this important debate, and I also recognise the work of the hon. Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Ceredigion (Ben Lake); indeed, the hon. Member for Ceredigion allowed a number of interventions during his recent Adjournment debate on this subject.

We know that we face a global climate crisis, which will require significant shifts in how we go about our day-to-day lives. Supporting such changes clearly requires Government direction and support, and many communities recognise the importance of proactively transitioning to green living. I am proud to have examples of that in my constituency of North East Fife.

For instance, Sustainable Cupar is a charity that was set up 10 years ago to focus on the protection of the local environment and on supporting local residents in transitioning to a low-carbon, sustainable and ethical future. Since its formation, it has engaged with the local council and the Scottish Government on programmes for fewer road emissions, better public transport and walking routes, and the building of more sustainable homes, as well as exploring issues around direct heat schemes.

Also in my constituency is the University of Saint Andrews, which is North East Fife’s largest employer. The university is led in this regard by its environmental sustainability board, which is chaired by Professor Sir Ian Boyd, previously chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and now the professor of biology at the university. The university is taking on the net zero challenge, alongside community organisations and businesses, and I attended the first meeting of the outreach group back in May.

Under complementary environmental, sustainability and carbon management plans, the scope of the group’s approach encompasses procurement activities and the travel of international students coming to the university to study. The aim is to reach net zero by 2035. A new biomass plant and a potential onshore wind farm development will deliver energy to meet the university’s needs and potentially those of the wider community, too.

Communities are clearly vital in the move to net zero; they are best placed to know what changes work best for them. Where communities are ahead of the Government’s policies, which we are hearing today, they should be enabled to act, not blocked from acting.

I look to the success of wind power energy in Denmark and Germany, and I see systems that empower such citizen engagement. It is achieved through the formation of wind guilds in Denmark, which are forms of partnerships or co-operatives that own or part-own wind farms. Indeed, so ingrained is this idea of citizen ownership that there is now a law in Denmark requiring that the local population must be afforded the ability to purchase up to 20% of the value of any new wind installation.

Although no system is without faults, we see that countries such as Germany and Denmark lead the way on clean energy through community energy programmes, while the UK, which arguably was initially an early-market entrant in relation to wind, is sadly being left behind.

We do not have to be left behind. Just this week, I visited Orkney with the Scottish Affairs Committee, as part of our inquiry into renewable energy in Scotland. Orkney has long been home to renewable energy and it is now expanding its scope into marine renewables. It recently became the home of the European Marine Energy Centre’s orbital tidal turbine, a prototype that is the world’s most powerful marine turbine.

Altogether, Orkney produces 120% of its own energy needs, and again community engagement and collaboration with local authorities are vital. Orkney Islands Council’s Responsive Flexibility, or ReFLEX, project is a £28.5 million scheme, aiming to create an integrated energy system for the islands, with the communities in those islands at its heart.

Those developments should be applauded, but on my trip to Orkney we spoke to a local community news outlet that highlighted some of the issues around fuel poverty on the islands. As other Members have already said, it is clear that issues such as transmission charges need to be addressed and that all Governments need to provide a focus on ensuring that such innovative energy sources are used to heat energy-efficient homes. Communities must be put front and centre in the shift to clean energy, and given a stake in this change.

The Government say they are committed to reaching net zero, in order to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. This is not the time to be stuck in the old ways of doing things; those ways will not work now. We must embrace new ways of working with and for our communities without delay, and community energy is part of that process.