Communities

Communities Hold the Key to Success

Local communities and their future energy choices are integral to delivering a low carbon world. A range of renewables have already been developed, financed and owned by various communities including wind, hydro and PV. Often the revenue from such renewables can be used to finance home refurbishment within the community.

It’s easier to take action together, to share experience, and to find the skills and energy to deliver. Already there are several mechanisms for sharing experience, like the Low Carbon Communities Network and Transition Towns network. But there comes a point where professional help is needed and Susenco wants to provide that help.

At Susenco we believe that the development of community projects is key to delivering a siginificant carbon reduction

Our Commitment to Working with Communities 

Our team has been involved with a range of community projects as founder / managers, shareholders and advisers. One of us was a founder and runs the Flights Mill Community Hydro Power Company (www.flightsmillhydro.co.uk), an Industrial Provident Society set up to generate power from the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire. He is a shareholder in that company and another of us is a shareholder in both West Oxford Carbon Renewables (www.wocr.org.uk) (currently owners of PV installations) and the Westmill Wind Farm (www.westmill.coop). As advisers, Susenco team members have been involved in assisting communities not only on technology but also with the various legal and financial options available.

Different Options to Support Your Needs

At Susenco we believe that the development of community projects is key to the UK delivering a significant carbon reduction. Hence, in the right circumstances and in the right way, we would like to become a member of your community and work with you to help you play your part.

There are 2 ways we can do this. We can support you in developing a community led and owned initiative or, through community benefit payments and outreach, we can use the developments we are leading to support the communities in the vicinity of our projects. Support for a community led scheme may, for example, cover technical assessment, community consultation, assessment of financial viability, assistance with planning, procurement support, setting up the legal and tax structures and / or raising money from a share issue.

We wish to use our developments to support the communities in the vicinity of our projects through community benefit payments and outreach. The former are cash payments used, within certain guidelines, for grants or to set up more ambitious initiatives such as community low carbon revolving funds. As part of our outreach work, we can help if the community decides either to set up a renewable energy generation scheme or undertake energy efficiency improvements to the local housing stock and public buildings.

There is a lot of information on the web to help communities begin their thought process on what they want to do but the documents on the links below we believe are particularly useful:

www.cse.org.uk/downloads/file/Delivering%20community%20benefits%20from%20wind%20energy%20-%20a%20tookit.pdf

www.forumforthefuture.org/project/funding-revolution/overview

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Our Approach

Susenco provides services to a wide range of customers from small farms to large corporate organisations.

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