Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans he has to encourage investment in community energy generation.

This Government has put clean growth at the heart of its Industrial Strategy. As set out in the Clean Growth Strategy, we will ensure that local communities and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) are empowered to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the clean energy economy. This will ensure they are better able to make use of local skills and energy resources in order to drive widespread inclusive economic growth. We expect local areas to consider clean energy and the economy-wide shift to clean growth as important elements in the development and implementation of Local Industrial Strategies.

Since 2013, the UK Government have committed over £16m to directly support community energy. This includes the Rural Community Energy Fund which continues to offer feasibility and development finance for renewable energy projects. In addition, community renewable energy projects remain eligible to apply for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) and Feed-In Tariff (FiT) schemes. The Government is also currently considering options for the design and delivery of the main scheme of the £320m Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP), including opening it out to community groups.

The UK Green Finance Taskforce has been convened to provide government with recommendations on how to accelerate the growth of green finance, and the Terms of Reference include the question of connecting small-scale, local projects to sources of finance.