The Government has published its response to the consultation to remove pre-registration and pre-accreditation confirming that these will be removed with effect from 1 October 2015.

Following this confirmation and the Government’s announcement last month that it plans to cut the Feed in Tariff (FiT), September saw a period of intensive activity for GMCR. The good news is that we have managed to pre-register 5 sites!

Thank you very much to Salford City Council for their co-operation, and to the forward thinking schools in Salford and the social enterprise in Trafford who agreed to work with us.

We can’t name names yet as we still have to do detailed feasibility and discuss the detail with the sites – but in the face of adversity, a great result.

GMCR has submitted a response to the DECC consultation to remove pre-accreditation. We have urged the Government to retain this facility, particularly for community groups.

A couple of weeks after this consultation closed, another commenced, proposing to slash the Feed-in Tariff payable for generators of clean energy with effect from 1 January 2016. Payments for installations such as schools could be slashed from 11.3p to 3.69p for each unit of clean energy produced, or even removed altogether.

If the Government is serious about tackling climate change, enabling communities to develop their own businesses, and supporting a growing UK industry, it needs to support renewables ahead of fossil fuels.

The good news – our UCEF grant application was successful!

Not so good news – DECC have launched a consultation to remove pre-registration and pre-accreditation with effect from 1 October 2015. These are the facilities that allow community groups to lock in the Feed in Tariff (FiT) , the payment renewable energy generators receive for producing green electricity, at the time they have identified a site. Locking in a FiT rate before seeking investment from the community provides a level of certainty to those people thinking of investing. This helps give assurance during the process to raise the money from the community required to pay for the installation of the panels.

GMCR has finalised our offer to schools and community buildings. We will provide free solar panels and a discount of 20% on the cost of the electricity generated by the panels.

Once we have raised investment from the community to pay for the cost of installing the panels, our ongoing income will come from the sale of electricity to the sites, the export tariff (for any electricity the site doesn’t use which goes into the National Grid), and the Feed In Tariff (the payment received by generators of clean energy).

Our ongoing expenditure will include insurance, maintenance and administration, and share interest payments to members who invested, after which surplus profits can be saved as reserves and/or distributed to community projects to reduce carbon emissions.

This month, two friendly schools have supported our project by allowing us to have installer site visits, so we can select a partner to deliver the installation of our solar panels. We would like to thank the schools involved and all the installers who expressed interest in our project and submitted quotes.

We would like to tell you something interesting happened this month, but it hasn’t. Unless talking to people and poring over spreadsheets counts? No, thought not.

GMCR helped to organise the inspiring Powering Up North conference at the Friends Meeting House, Manchester, on 26 February 2015, where the following key themes were discussed:

Opportunity – exploring the potential for community energy in the North. Highlighting the multiple benefits this can bring, not just lowering carbon, but bringing social change and levering investment into renewable energy infrastructure.

Challenges – examining the issues and challenges, are they different from the South, if so, how and why?

Co-operation and networks – the keys to success in community energy are partnerships, collaboration and co-operation.

Support – working together to make it happen, delivering the full potential of community energy together.

For more information, please see http://claspinfo.org/powering-up