"Towards a Zero Carbon Community"

Green Energy Company

Posted Monday, February 25, 2008

Sustainable Youlgrave explores the possibilities of community owned ‘Green Energy’

Sustainable Youlgrave recently met John Malone, a consultant who works for E4All (‘Energy4All’). He explained that they are working for the East Midlands Development Agency (emda), which is inviting applications for a development grant designed to help community groups such as Sustainable Youlgrave.

It’s called Community Owned Green Energy. It’s all very new – a pilot programme in which emda, E4All and the communities learn from each other. The initial programme fund is £160k, for eight ventures across the East Midlands region.

On first impressions, it looks as though this might be timely for the energy strand of Sustainable Youlgrave’s three-pronged road map. However, as John Malone said, our project is more marginal and more complex, and some elements are smaller in scale, than a ‘simple’ large wind turbine venture, which isn’t for this area.

Energy4All is a consultancy service that grew out of the Baywind Co-operative, now nearly 10 years old, and which takes a 9% p.a. return from England’s first community owned wind turbines in southern Cumbria. Several others have been developed since, around the UK. Through consultancy, Energy4All passes on the expertise it has developed to new ventures.

So there’s a challenge! We await with interest the outcome of John’s meetings with his client, emda.

John Youatt
Chair, Sustainable Youlgrave

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