Review of Repowering Communities by Tindale and Vaze

I find it really difficult nowadays to find time to read a whole book. Not only is time squeezed by having a young family but most of my reading time now is devoted to e-mail, tweets, and science or policy articles.

However I'm glad I found the time to read Stephen Tindale and Prashant Vaze's new book Repowering Communities. It provided a really positive vision of community energy, based on experiences from across the globe

Stephen and Prashant make a number of recommendations which we would broadly support. Unfortunately when looking through them it is clear the Government isn't delivering. For example:

• Local authorities should develop community energy and area-based energy efficiency plans. But despite the Big Society rhetoric Ministers have so far resisted calls for local authorities to have a duty to deliver carbon emission reductions in their area (of which local energy and energy efficiency plans would be an important subset).
• Energy companies that both produce and sell energy should be broken-up and community energy companies should be established. Sadly the Government still seems to be in thrall to the big 6 energy firms, despite bemoaning their dominance.
• Low cost capital should be available to community energy projects. The Government's recent attack on the feed-in tariff scheme makes community energy investments even more difficult.
• Introduce a high and escalating energy tax - the Government will introduce a carbon tax (so-called carbon floor price) from 1 April 2013, but rather than targeting the revenue raised at energy efficiency measures it is simply planning to let consumers feel the pain, without any gain.
• Energy tariffs should be changed to make it cheaper to use small quantities of energy and more expensive for using lots. This will make it more affordable to use energy for 'essentials' - and discourage people from being wasteful. Perversely at the moment energy gets cheaper the more you use. The Government should have established rising energy tariffs years ago, but there are currently no signs it will.

Repowering Communities is thorough and informative. It is, I think, essential reading for those involved in energy policy. I would especially recommend it to those Government Ministers and civil servants who don't yet understand the benefits of community energy.

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