Webinar: Fighting for Local Power: How a UK Bill Seeks to Support Local Energy Producers

Countries across Europe are struggling to meet their climate targets and to transition to clean energy systems. Community-scale renewable energy has great potential to help decarbonise local economies, while benefiting local communities. Unfortunately, this potential is too often blocked by high supply costs and a lack of opportunities to sell generated energy directly to local people.

The good news is that policies and campaigns are working to change these legal and regulatory regimes that favour large energy suppliers.

The organsiation Power for People provides a notable example of this work. The not-for-profit is working to transition the United Kingdom (UK) to 100 percent clean energy. As part of their efforts, they have drafted the 'Local Electricity Bill' (currently being debated in the UK Parliament), which aims to enable local energy producers to directly sell their energy, and thus create a market for decentralised renewable energy systems.

Although the Bill is not yet law, it is already proving to be impactful. ICLEI Member Bristol (UK) will trial a local version, which will enable people generating wind and solar energy close to the city to sell their energy directly to consumers through the grid network.

The United Kingdom is not the only country exploring ways to support local community-scale renewable energy. In fact, Switzerland is far ahead of many countries with respect to supporting peer-to-peer energy exchange.

On 15 September from 11:30-13:00 CEST, the SONNET project will bring experts together to explore various facets of supporting local power generation and trade. Contributors will include:

• Steve Shaw, Director of Power for People and initiator of the 'Local Electricity Bill'
• David Gray, Energy Supply Programme Manager at the City of Bristol
• Cyrill Burch, founder and manager of Zevvy, a Swiss startup working on peer-to-peer energy trading

To register for the discussion, please click here.