Low-carbon community guide launched today
Today we launch Funding revolution, a guide to establishing and running community revolving funds, at the Carbon Leapfrog conference in the City of London Guildhall. The guide, written with Bates Wells and Braithwaite solicitors, is sponsored by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It pulls together the knowledge and experience of several community groups and local authorities using “smart finance” to save carbon locally.
A revolving fund recycles revenues from carbon saving projects, such as solar PV panels or energy savings, to invest in more projects. That simple idea has the power to change the way we fund a low-carbon UK and, indeed, world.
We hope that this guide will give practical help to local authorities and community groups who want an alternative to relying on grant funding. The guide offers advice on how to achieve the right community structure to enable investment in a low-carbon future, for example, through local share issues.
Working with leading communities and experts in finance, communications and commerce to support the growth of low-carbon communities, I have been struck by how willing enterprises and local authorities are to share ways of success. I think this ‘open source’ approach, driven by a social goal above the financial, is at the heart of the progress of the low-carbon communities worldwide, not just in the UK.
It is this willingness to share that has meant that Bates, Wells and Braithwaite solicitors and the Forum haveacted as much ascollators of information and as experts when we wrote this guide together. I found the process of ‘co-creation’ so refreshing, which has resulted in a rich and detailed guide that draws on real experience.
The guide provides a range of information, so there is something useful for communities just starting out as well as for those that are already running a fund and investing in projects. It goes right through the process of running a low-carbon community group and gives worked explanations of how to fund energy saving and generation projects, including making loans or leasing sites to benefit from feed-in tariffs.
We are interested in helping to spread the models used by low-carbon community groups. If you are interested in being a part of this potential project, please drop me an email.
Download the executive summary and the full guide.(link needed)
Comments
Interesting it was an open source approach P-CED deployed in 1996 when placing the white paper on people-centered economic development in the public domain by publishing on the we free to use. This paper included a proposal for a community re-investment business model as an alternative to free market capitalism and replacement for charity. Some of the features of this approach were incorporated in UK law 9 years later with the community interest company.
What government left out however was the mechanism to capitalise this new paradigm. In the original, an irrevocable trust fund was suggested and when introduced to the UK in 2004, the obvious choice was the CDFI, to provide seed funding for further social enterprise.
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