Support community energy at the national climate lobby!

Local community benefit society Energise Sussex Coast is calling on people to travel to London on Wednesday 9 July to support community energy at a national climate lobby of Parliament. Energise Sussex Coast’s Gabriel Carlyle explains.

The ‘Act Now. Change Forever’ lobby of MPs on 9 July is being organised by the Climate Coalition, which encompasses over 130 organisations, including Oxfam GB, the National Trust and the Co-op.

With over 20 million members, the Coalition is the UK’s largest group of people and organisations dedicated to tackling climate change and restoring nature.

Thousands of people from every corner of the UK are expected to come to Westminster on 9 July to tell their MPs: this is a moment for leadership that protects what matters most — our health, our nature, our communities, our climate, and our future.

Community energy

Founded in 2012, Energise Sussex Coast’s mission is to act co-operatively to tackle the climate crisis and energy injustice through community-owned renewable power and energy saving schemes.

Together with its sister project, Energise South, it has helped to install solar panels on a dozen sites across East Sussex including six schools in Hastings & St Leonards, a block of flats in Bexhill, and community centres in Tiling Green and Pebsham. It is currently working on new community solar projects in Battle, Bexhill, Crowhurst, Eastbourne and Rye.

The government’s Clean Power Action Plan envisions a massive expansion of the community energy sector over the next five years, creating thousands of new jobs.

However, according to Community Energy England, the recent extension of funding for the Community Energy Fund – a programme that funds feasibility and development work for community energy projects – is ‘so inadequate that it almost guarantees that [it] will run out of money again before the end of the year … caus[ing] a catastrophic slump in confidence and activity in the sector’.

Community Energy also remains hobbled by the lack of a Local Electricity Bill which would enable smaller renewable energy schemes – especially those owned and run by local community groups – to sell their power directly to local people.

Join us on 9 July!

The climate crisis and the cost-of-living crises are both urgent and community energy projects can be part of the solution to both.

That’s why we need as many people as possible to take part in the mass climate lobby of Parliament on 9 July and press their MPs on adequate funding for the Community Energy Fund and the need for a Local Electricity Bill.

With the big energy companies, the shareholders enrich themselves at the expense of our communities. But with community energy, local people get lower bills, our community gets clean energy, and the whole community gets to benefit from a community fund.

Residents of East Sussex who want to take part in the lobby should register online at https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/act-now-change-forever and email gabriel@energisesussexcoast.co.uk so that Energise Sussex Coast can assist them in the run-up to the event.

More info here.

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