June 2026
Our Club Development Manager Temi Omojola joined Energy Local last year with experience in commercial modelling and renewable energy policy engagement, having completed an MSc in Renewable Energy Systems Engineering. Here she shares her thoughts from her first trip to this summer's Community Energy England conference, sponsored by NGED, in Birmingham.
At the start of the morning, Community Energy England CEO Matthew Vickers mentioned a piece of graffiti he'd spotted on a wall across from the venue:
"You can't add days to your life, but you can add life to your days."
It stuck with me, partly because it felt like a fitting way to think about community energy too. How do we add life to the days of community energy? How do we make sure it is not something that only works for a season, or only when funding is available, or only when the same people are able to keep carrying things forward?
A big part of the day was about how community energy becomes more mainstream. There was definitely optimism in the room, but I also appreciated that the conversations were honest. People spoke about scale, funding, public awareness, grid connections, volunteer fatigue, commercial resilience and what it actually takes to move from good individual projects to something more coordinated and long-lasting.
Ensuring communities have a role in the energy system
One point that really stayed with me was from Barbara Hammond, CEO of the Low Carbon Hub, who spoke about carbon becoming less useful as a "currency" as we decarbonise. It is such a useful framing because it pushes you to ask what community energy is actually building toward. The answer she was pointing to, and that others echoed, is something more like trust, local ownership and giving communities a real role in an energy system that can often feel distant from them.
That question of distance came up again in the session from our partner supplier 100Green Communities, which spoke directly to the role of local energy clubs. For decades, energy in the UK has often been something that happens to communities, rather than something shaped by them. Power is generated elsewhere, decisions are made elsewhere, and value can be extracted elsewhere.
Local energy clubs offer a practical way to change that relationship. Where a community has, or develops, local renewable generation, homes and businesses in the area can be linked to that generator through an Energy Local Club. When local demand matches local generation, members can access a locally agreed match tariff, while the generator can receive better value than a standard export arrangement. When the generator is not producing enough, members still have supply through the wider grid. When there is surplus generation, it can still be exported.
What I find interesting about the Energy Local model is that it is both technical and very human. It depends on data, settlement, tariffs, modelling and coordination, but the aim is simple: to help people see the link between local generation and local benefit. It gives people a reason to care about when and how they use energy, because the benefit is no longer abstract. It is connected to a place, a generator and a community they recognise.
No single model for community energy
The session on shared ownership was another practically useful part of the day. Speakers walked through the difference between split ownership, joint ventures and revenue share arrangements, what each model gives a community in terms of control and reward, and the trade-offs involved. It was a good reminder that there is no single route, and that is part of what makes the work both exciting and complicated.
For me, that was one of the biggest takeaways from the conference. Community energy is not just one model or one type of project. It can involve local energy clubs, shared ownership, rooftop solar, hydro, wind, batteries, energy advice, heat networks, local planning and a lot of relationship-building. The challenge is not only to create more projects, but to make the routes into them clearer, more understandable and more sustainable for the communities trying to take part.
I left feeling encouraged, but also with a lot of questions.
Benefitting local people
Mainstreaming community energy will need more than enthusiasm. It will need practical tools, good partnerships, fair regulation, better data, sustainable models and space for the people doing the work to keep going.
It will also need us to keep showing, in simple terms, why local energy matters. Not just because it can help with bills or carbon emissions, although both are important, but because it can help people feel less distant from the energy transition and more able to shape what happens in their own places.
In our Energy Local Clubs, small-scale renewable generators club together with local people and businesses. By 'matching' the timing of generation and consumption at a mutually agreed price, everyone can benefit. We do not help set up or install renewable generation projects - anyone interested in doing so can find information and resources at Community Energy Wales, Community Energy England, or Community Energy Scotland.