Local Energy Systems - Our Vision

Community Energy Wales were invited to participate on a panel hosted by Ynni Cymru for the Senedd's Wales Climate Week. The topic for discussion was Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) and how local energy can save money, improve resilience, reduce pressure on the transmission network (National Grid) and help communities.

Co-executive Director of Ynni Cymunedol Cymru Leanne Wood spoke alongside Jeff Hardy from Ynni Cymru and Professor Calvin Jones from Cardiff Business School.

Jeff Hardy talked about the changes we can expect to see as a result of climate breakdown in the coming years and outlined the challenges and barriers standing in the way of rolling out smart local energy systems, as well as the role SLESs can play in grid and energy resilience.

Calvin Jones talked through the macro and micro economic opportunities that Smart Local Energy Systems can bring about.

From Community Energy Wales' perspective, the creation of local energy markets is a priority. We believe that there would be more public support for renewable energy infrastructure if there was more community ownership of it and if people could see reductions to their bills if they live close to it.

CEW has supported the Power4People campaign that sought to bring about a law change during the term of the last Westminster government (and failed) to enable local energy trading.

Given the cost-of-living crisis, the cost of energy is a key question when it comes to public support or opposition for the changes we are seeing as we transition to a reduced emissions economy. The UK is one of the largest economies in the world, yet 45% of people in Wales were living in fuel poverty last year.

Local Energy Markets are a potential solution to the myriad of challenges:

• Public opposition, logistical barriers and costs mean that we cannot rely entirely on large scale generation and new transmission lines. Community owned, small-scale generation is popular and can be optimised through local energy markets.
• Working together with local authorities, communities can build local energy markets that incorporate heat, EV charging and generation, meeting our future energy needs locally.
• Developing local energy markets that encourage people to use local power while it is generated will mean we are less reliant on transmission lines (pylons and undergrounded lines), as our use of the grid would be far more efficient.
• Local energy markets mean cheaper bills for energy users and better rates for energy generators. It would lead to a profound change to people living in fuel poverty.
• Demand and generation are matched as much as possible within a local energy market – meaning we are less reliant on external energy sources such as gas, and less vulnerable to global price spikes.
• Local energy markets allow small scale generators to have a viable business model, meaning communities can develop and own their own energy projects.
• Many older energy projects that are reliant on the feed-in-tariff will need repowering soon in a completely different energy landscape to the one that they were developed in originally. Grid capacity and infrastructure are at danger of being wasted if we do not repower these projects. A local energy market would provide a viable business model for repowering.

Without supporting local energy markets and addressing current barriers, government's meeting their climate targets and objectives will be very difficult. With local energy markets however, the community sector would be able to exceed the current targets, as well as tangibly improve lives.

What are we waiting for?

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If you want to support the building of a Local Energy Market please consider joining RhanNi - the movement for community energy.

Keep an eye out for our State of the Sector report, our annual flagship report, launching in December, that highlights the current trends within community energy.

Join a local community energy organisation, if there isn't one local to you, look to set one up. Community Energy Wales can help you with this.

Consider coming along to our conference, where you will be able to meet community energy practitioners.

You can also support Power4People, who are leading the campaign for legislative change on community energy.