RIF: Ian Walker – The Community Energy Fund

RIF posts: This series of posts looks at the RIF workshops. See here for an explanation.

Ian Walker, of Element Energy, provided an explanation of the Community Energy Fund. This offered an understanding of the choices facing local authorities with respect to the ‘allowable solutions’ that will become a source of funding as a result of the government’s zero-carbon homes target.

Ian explained (as he does in the video above)that, where developers build in a local authority’s area, in order to reach the zero-carbon policy they will be able to pay into ‘allowable solutions’ – off-site renewable energy schemes.

The community energy fund would provide authorities with a mechanism to pool finance coming from local developments to invest in local schemes of their choosing. This would:-

• Ensure investment stays in the local area.
• Give local authorities control over the allowable solution investments in their area.
• Offers neighbouring local authorities the chance to pool together to invest in larger schemes.
• Allows authorities to invest and support projects that wouldn’t otherwise be supported by the private sector.