Regen have partnered with the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA), as part of the IWA's Re-energising Wales project, to set out a number of clear recommendations on how to protect, promote and achieve scale in community and local ownership of renewable energy in Wales.
The Welsh Government have made significant steps towards achieving genuine local benefit from energy generated in Wales, including a target for 1 GW of renewable electricity capacity in Wales to be locally owned by 2030. However, without specific actions to drive forward the changes necessary to meet this target, Wales could fail to grasp the opportunity to create a thriving local energy economy that delivers a more resilient society, as envisaged in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The report contains a number of evidence-based recommendations for the Welsh Government, public bodies in Wales and network operators around shared ownership, planning and land access and grid. If acted upon, the recommendations in this report will help protect, promote and, crucially, help achieve scale in community and local ownership of renewable energy in Wales.
We’ve recently been commissioned by the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA) to write a report producing recommendations for community and local ownership of renewable energy schemes in Wales. The report is part of the IWA’s Re-energising Wales project, a three-year project to deliver a roadmap for how Wales can meet its projected energy demand from 100% renewable sources by 2035.
The report recognises the need to stimulate the stalling renewables sector, and how with the pipeline of projects flowing again, the value can be retained locally for Welsh communities, businesses and the public sector. The report makes recommendations for the protection, promotion and upscaling of community and local ownership of renewable energy in Wales to maximise its social and economic value. It looks at examples of how this has been achieved in other places, along with uniquely Welsh factors that could be used to encourage more community and local ownership of renewable energy schemes. Our recommendations to achieve this followed four themes:
The recommendations we set out build on the Welsh Government’s renewable energy targets set in September 2017:
Onshore renewable electricity generation capacity, in line with these ambitious ownership targets set by the Welsh Government, forms the scope of the report, which comprised of desk-based research and a series of interviews with key stakeholders, also drawing on Regen’s expertise in innovative local energy models.
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