Uk: renewable energy

Back in the mid 1990s, when wind farms were a novelty, a pioneering Swedish company decided the time was ripe to bring community ownership of renewables to the UK. They established their first wind farm in Cumbria and they also established a co-operative, which raised enough cash from a public share offer to buy two of the five turbines on the site. Unfortunately the UK planning system then intervened and having failed to get permission for additional projects, the Swedes ran out of cash and went back to Sweden, leaving the community co-op as the minority owner of the site and with zero experience of site management. From that unpromising beginning, Baywind Energy Co-op has turned into a real success story for the co-op movement, taking on full ownership and management of the site with the help of a loan from the Co-operative Bank, paying good rates of share interest to its members and supporting a range of environmental and educational projects. In 2002, Baywind also set up Energy4All to support and encourage other communities to get involved in renewables of all types. This company is owned by the co-ops it creates, thereby forming a commonwealth of co-operative enterprises. Elsewhere, Energy4All has proved the catalyst for a series of other encouraging recent developments. Energy4All has signed unique and innovative deals with carefully selected developers to enable communities to establish local co-ops in parallel with major new sites being planned in Scotland, England and Wales. The first of these projects is due for launch in Spring 2006 in Aberdeenshire; others will follow over the next three years, each delivering social and economic benefits to the local area. Most significantly, Energy4All is finally in a position to launch its first major new 100% community-owned project, at Westmill on the Oxford/Wiltshire border. This site has been developed over 12 years by an organic farmer who wanted to see community-owned renewable energy generated on his land. www.energy4all.co.uk