Report: Powering Communities with Renewables Workshop

In February, we delivered a workshop to community groups, councillors, and CPRE members in the West of England to explain the CEV process and offer guidance to those in the process of developing a community energy scheme.

At our workshop we were kindly joined by CEV lead Andy Tickle, who facilitated the event, alongside guest speakers including Paul Miner, Head of Policy and Planning for CPRE; Marion Britton, Regional Low Carbon Delivery Programme Manager for the West of England Combined Authority; and representatives from Bristol Energy Cooperative: Communications & Community Engagement Manager, Marianne Brown and Senior Project Developer, Will Houghton.

The workshop included presentations from speakers around the importance of transitioning to renewables, grant and funding opportunities, and the story of Bristol Energy Cooperative. The second half of the session was dedicated to allowing participants to work with the speakers in breakout groups to discuss their personal experience in community energy and any questions or concerns they needed answering.

We wanted the workshop to act as a starting point for us at CPRE Avon and Bristol, to understand the concerns of our communities on their pathway to local renewables, and how we can best support them. This is just the beginning of our work with community-led renewable energy, and we are so excited to bring you more support in the coming year.

We would like to thank all those that were able to join us at the workshop. If you weren’t able to attend but are interested in what we discussed, this is the report complete with a transcript of the presentations and summaries of the breakout groups.

Thank you to Quartet Community foundation who awarded us funds and made this project possible.