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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support his Department makes available for new community energy co-operatives.

This Government is committed to empowering communities and these projects, which put local people in the driving seat, are an important part of a clean, secure and affordable energy system.

To deliver this ambition, we announced a new Local Energy Programme in the Clean Growth Strategy and to date have committed £7m with a further £1m allocated for this year. This will support communities in all their forms, alongside Local Authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships, to design and develop low carbon projects locally.

Since 2013, the UK Government has committed over £16 million to support community energy, including:

• the £15m Rural Community Energy Fund, which continues to offer support and development finance for community-scale renewable energy projects in England;
• a local authority best practice community energy programme with Bristol City, supporting Greater Manchester through their Devolution deal and working with London on their community energy funds; and
• supporting the Community Energy Hub, a digital platform owned and run by the community energy sector to enable peer networking and knowledge transfer.