Intro Commercial advisor to WREN and Director of CfR which helps - PDF document

Intro Commercial advisor to WREN and Director of CfR which helps local energy coops to develop and implement local energy strategies I don’t live in Wadebridge, down the road near Truro, but seem to have spent much of the last 2 years there 1

Wadebridge is a market town in North Cornwall 2

It is at the top of the Camel estuary which goes down to Padstow 3

4

5

Wadebridge’s economy is based around toursism (not Padstow by we do have the camel trail), agriculture, public sector Wages are not high – ave Cornwall is £21,000 per year 6

Like any market town, Wadebridge has an interesting history Wadebridge had first railway in the UK – shifting sand from estuary up to fields above Bodmin World leading water wheel manufacturing Stone for Edison lighthouse off Plymouth Wadebridge has had its ups and downs. It faces the same challenges of any market town, but is doing ok, has a strong community and is a great place to live 7

Wadebridge is interesting because it is uninteresting - there is nothing really unique about it. In many ways it is similar to many market towns across the UK, including Rye 8

So this is all about energy. And one very un-special thing about Wadebridge is that it spends a lot of money on energy. Energy makes everything happen. We can’t do without it. So £13 million pounds is the amount per year that Wadebridge spends on energy each year 9

That’s 15% of earned income in the town 10

Over the twice the income that comes into the town from tourism leaves the town through energy spend 11

The definition is households spending >10% of their income on home energy The reality is people having to chose between eating well and keeping warm Business is booming for the foodbank in Wadebridge 12

What makes up the £13m? Biggest chunk is road transport - £7m Then Elec - £5m Gas £1m (but not all of area on gas) 13

That’s 15% of earned income in the town 14

Crazy when you think about it but we tend not to think about it because we take energy for granted. It comes out of a hole in the wall and we pay the bill each quarter, and there’s not much we can do about it? But what seems normal, hasn’t always been normal Wadebridge (like other towns) used to have its own electric company, and its own gas company. Then the Wadebrige elec company got bought by the Cornwall elec company, which got swallowed up by the publicly owned the South West Energy Board which then got privatized and sold to EdF. 15

In that picture there is an accountant, an artist, an epidemiologist now running a small holding, a teacher, a doctor, a town councilor who helps run the family shop, an engineer, and a technical copy writer 2 years ago that group of relatively normal people began to think about what we take for granted, and question whether we should. Why when we have some of the best wind and sun resources in the UK, is energy a burden on the Wadebridge economy. Surely it should be a benefit to the economy? 16

If you had a spring running past your house, would you import bottled mineral water from France to flush the toilet? 17

So they set up a community cooperative to see if they could do something about it They call it WREN – Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network A WREN is a small bird with a big chirp 18

WREN’s objectives 19

WREN’s objectives 20

WREN’s objectives 21

WREN’s objectives 22

Create jobs from developing a low carbon economy To put Wadebridge back at the centre of its own economy, rather than the periphery of the UK and global economy 23

WREN realised from the outset that to have any chance of success WREN needed to be a mainstream initiative with the support of Wadebridge people and institutions WREN started by clearly articulating the challenge and opportunity that energy presented Wadebrdige. We set objectives that where ambitious enough to be material for the town, and then developed a credible business plan to achieve them We took those ideas to the key institutions in the town – the Town Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the schools, the churches and community organisations. The point of that was to make sure everyone was bought into the idea, and realised that WREN was complementary to their activities and objectives, not treading on their toes 24

We then held a launch event in the town hall, and amazingly over 600 people turned up. The only complaint we has was that people couldn’t get it 25

Then we opened a shop – which was a huge risk – we didn’t really have the money to do it But the idea of the shop was to make engaging in energy as normal as going to the post office, butcher or green grocer (which we still have in Wadebridge) The cheque by the way is not for WREN but is the first community fund award WREN made to the Foodbank – we will come back to that 26

The local press got behind it, and we managed to get interest from the national press. The reason for that was that people tend to take local issues more seriously when they read about them in the national media 27

Kids get it straight away – here is me playing ‘guess how much your family spends on energy’ with one of the primary schools This is at an exhibition the other week on Wadebridge’s energy past, present and future, which was a great success, and was made possible by money from WREN wining the Ashden Award 28

And the government is quite interested in what’s going on – here is Ed Davey energy and climate change secretary with some WREN interns outside of the shop, and signing his membership form! 29

Most importantly WREN is building up a strong membership base in the town. We now have over 1,000 members, which is a good start. We don’t ask much of members – they only have to pay a pound, but the membership provides a way of reaching the town WREN is democratic – it is 1 member 1 vote 30

So what is WREN actually doing? We have set up a range of business models which help to achieve WRENs objectives of reducing, stabilising and localising energy spend, generating income to re-invest in the community, and growing a local low carbon economy Most of them are not particularly innovative in themselves, and they are doable by any community 31

We have set up installer partnerships with local providers of low carbon technologies. We have set these up now for PV, biomass boilers, Evs and electric aga conversions The partners are chosen through a formal procurement proces WREN makes noise about the benefits of a solar PV, receives enquiries from the public, helps people understand if it is a good idea for them, and then passes the leads onto local installers who provide a quote and do the work The customer benefits as they get assurance they are getting an appropriate technology at a good price from a good local installer The installer benefits from increased sales and endorsement from a trusted local coop WREN benefits from a sales fee for each installation 32

Energy is boring and insulation is really boring It is so boring it is very hard to give it away for free Under the old CERT scheme, a number of companies had tried promoting free insulation in Wadebridge with very little success So WREN came up with its own scheme and to get people interested we made a giant WREN and towed it through the town behind an electric quad bike singing the WREN song 33

We then invested a local currency and actually paid people to take the free insulation (which was possible under the old CERT scheme) In 2 months we did over 200 surveys and 100 homes were treated We are now looking at doing something similar with the ECO and Green Deal scheme 34

And we are going back to the future and setting up a WREN Energy Company Initially the WREN Energy Co will raise investment from local people to provide ‘free’ solar panels and biomass heating for businesses, community buildings and homes. WREN energy Co will earn income from the feed-in tariff / RHI which it will use to pay investors a fair return and generate income to re-invest in the community (inc more community owned energy). The building owner benefits from reduced energy costs We are also looking at larger scale PV and wind The objective is that at least 30% of Wadebridge’s elec needs should be met by locally owned, locally generated renewables Not easy as there is a land rush going on for good wind and solar sites, and most of the suitable sites in Wadebridge have already gone to commercial developers. 35

36

So what have we achieved? Small start and slow progress of WEC is frustrating but….

FiT / RO income retained locally and bill savings 38

39

40