40: Micro grids and community cohousing
Making homes both more sustainable and more affordable: these are two of the most pressing challenges facing society today. In this episode, the team explore solutions presented by community-led cohousing, and community-owned micro-grid energy. In particular, we look at what exciting possibilities can be unlocked when both systems can be integrated together onto one site. We hear from Andy O’Brien from the Bristol Energy Cooperative, and Monica King from Bridport Cohousing in Dorset.
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Episode Transcript:
[Music flourish]
‘Our aim is that people have an affordable way of life. It’s not just an affordable home but that by reducing their consumption and expenditure, they will have a better quality of life and so, therefore, a microgrid.’
‘These are fully net-zero microgrids here because actually, it’s internal. You’re not putting a load on the grid. You’re actually taking a load off the grid and you’ve got the battery storage there that provides a two-way support network for the grid.’
Matt: Hello and welcome to Local Zero with Matt, Becky and Fraser. Today, we’ll be talking about community energy and cooperative housing and hearing from a group of organisations that together are breaking new ground.
Rebecca: To unpack that, we’re looking at the blending of these two community-led movements, exploring how they can be combined to tackle the dual challenges of delivering environmentally sustainable and affordable homes.
Matt: These are two of the biggest issues facing society today. In 2002, median house prices in England were five times higher than median gross annual earnings. In 2021, that had grown to nine times. At the same time, the bulk of homes are highly energy inefficient and still dependent on gas.
Rebecca: So in today’s episode, we’ll be chatting with Monica King, founding member of Bridport Cohousing and Andy O’Brien, Co-director of Bristol Energy Cooperative.
[Music flourish]
Matt: As always, you can reach out to us on our dedicated Twitter handle. If you haven’t already, go find and follow us @LocalZeroPod to get involved with discussions over there. Also, email us at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com if you want to share some longer thoughts.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: So, we’re all back. Easter has been and gone. It’s been a longer break for most people than usual with Local Zero pod and so probably some people are having withdrawal symptoms maybe [laughter]. Let’s bring Fraser in. Welcome come back, Fraser, and have a wee chat.
Fraser: Yeah, yeah. Thanks. It’s nice to be back. I’ll be honest, I haven’t had withdrawal symptoms. I’ve quite enjoyed it to be honest [laughter].
Matt: Too busy with the Easter eggs.
Fraser: Every other week listening to you guys... ah, it’s just a nightmare [laughter]. No, it’s lovely to be back with all three of us as well. The last time, it was just Matt and I. So to have everyone back feels good. It feels good. How are you guys doing?
Matt: Yeah, very well. I’ve been here, there and everywhere over the Easter holiday and catching up with folk and friends I hadn’t seen since lockdown, so it’s been nice. It’s also been good to get out of Scotland and see other parts of Britain and remind yourself that there are other places out there [laughter]. Yeah, it’s been great to catch up but firmly back at the desk now. Becky, did you have a good Easter?
Rebecca: I did. I had a great Easter. I didn’t go anywhere but I had lots of people coming to me. My twins turned five over the Easter break.
Matt: Wow!
Rebecca: My husband turned thirty-something. I can’t remember what [laughter].
Matt: You need that kind of information for the birthday card surely... and the big badge [laughter].
Rebecca: Exactly [laughter]. No, it’s been really great. It’s been really nice to completely have a break from energy and the work mindset and to just focus on blowing up balloons, party bags and all that kind of stuff [laughter].
Matt: Absolutely. Fraser, as we speak, you are in a brand new office. You have started a new job.
Fraser: I have started a new job, yeah. It’s actually with Regen. Regen, for anyone who doesn’t know – formerly Regen Southwest – are a non-profit organisation using energy expertise to advocate for change in the energy system. It’s very much evidence-driven and very much analysis-driven. They’ve brought me in to lower the tone I suppose [laughter]. They’ve brought me in to lead on their energy just transitions and fuel poverty work.
Matt: Oh, brilliant.
Fraser: So advocating anywhere from Ofgen base level to local communities to build energy justice into the work that Regen does. Yeah, it’s been exciting. I should say they’ve also since expanded into Scotland, so supporting the expansion across the UK as well and out of the Southwest and out of England and Wales. Yeah, it’s exciting. It’s a great organisation and great work to be doing. I’m extremely, extremely happy to be doing it.
Matt: Fantastic and I think another Strathclyde alumni, Simon Gill, I believe. Are you working with him? Another strong Scottish connection. He’s done a lot of work up in Scotland too. It’s great to see you broadening out into that area.
Fraser: Yeah, this is it. Strathclyders, we’re everywhere. The Caledonian Mafia: that’s who we are [laughter]. We’re here, by stealth, to take over the organisation eventually is our plan.
Matt: Good stuff.
Rebecca: And Scotland isn’t losing you, just to be clear. You are staying firmly in Scotland.
Fraser: No, no, no.
Rebecca: Okay, great. Good news.
Fraser: Yeah, I’ll travel down to the office every now and then but I’ll be firmly, firmly based in Glasgow.
Matt: It’s a fair old commute to Exeter though, Fraser, and you’ll be getting to know that West Coast mainline pretty well.
Fraser: Ah, I was 11 hours on a train yesterday on the way down here. 11 hours – my arse is killing me still.
Matt: The next episode surely is going to be on transport and the state of our railways.
Fraser: Yeah [laughter].
Matt: Okay, and you just blethering on for an hour. I was on holiday, fortunately, and in the midst of the holiday, I was very glad and very honoured to be asked to contribute to a Scottish Parliamentary Committee enquiry into energy prices.
Rebecca: Wow!
Matt: That was on the Tuesday after Bank Holiday Monday. So Bank Holiday Monday was spent doing quite a lot of preparation for that. Yeah, thrilled to be part of that, obviously, with energy prices being where they are. I also know, Becky, that you had one eye on other events just before Easter with the IPCC report, the Sixth Assessment Report.
Rebecca: Yes, yes! We heard from Working Group 3. The report is amazing, hefty and worth the read if you’re interested in it but I also have to say that the Carbon Brief has done an amazing analysis if you just want to dip into some of the top findings.
Fraser: Thank god for the Carbon Brief [laughter].
Rebecca: I know, right? Absolutely [laughter]. Absolutely brilliant. The report covers a huge amount of stuff but there are a couple of things that I think are just worth bringing up which are relevant to Local Zero. For the first time ever, there was a chapter dedicated to demand services and social aspects of mitigation and that is really, really exciting. That’s looking at all of the social science literature to try and understand how our behaviour and the choices that we make in our day-to-day lives can help cut emissions. Big parts of the focus on this or one massive part is around the food we eat but also the way we move around – so, Fraser, linking to your train journeys – and how we’re using energy in our buildings. Those last two, in particular, our travel and our buildings, link quite strongly to another chapter which is all about cities and urban areas. I think this is really, really important for us to think about in Local Zero. These places have a huge and growing share in greenhouse gas emissions and, in fact, the top hundred highest-emitting cities account for almost 20%...
Matt: Wow!
Rebecca: ...of the global carbon footprint. That’s huge and urban land areas are set to triple between 2015 and 2050. This has a massive implication for carbon emissions but also presents huge opportunities around resource efficiency and decarbonisation that can happen in these areas.
Matt: Yeah, excellent.
Rebecca: So really, really exciting to see and I just thought I’d share with you some of the big-ticket items that are talked about in this space. One massive aspect is using spatial planning, making cities more compact and resource-efficient. If we do that, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around about a quarter by 2050. So that’s really exciting just to see how planning and changing a small element can have a massive role on impact: things like making our homes closer to job centres; getting people away from private vehicles; more walking; more and better public transport and also green infrastructure which I think is really, really important because this sort of stuff, like urban forest and green roofs, has a massive impact on sequestration but also avoiding emissions and reducing energy use just because of the cooling that’s in place. So huge opportunities here for cities to really contribute to our greenhouse gas emission reductions and great evidence backing all of this up from the IPCC.
Matt: I can see Fraser there nodding with strong agreement there around more efficient and low-carbon public transportation
Fraser: Yes, please.
Matt: Obviously, Fraser, you’re already feeling the strain on the train [laughter]. That’s really important to hear.
Fraser: We’ve been banging that drum for a long time in terms of public transport and not just that we need to reduce emissions which we do but when you expand public transport, you make it more affordable, more efficient and more convenient. You can also, as Becky mentioned in the report, connect people to opportunities and to each other much more effectively. That on its own is an amazing thing. In terms of greening roof space and all that kind of stuff, it’s great for sequestration and cooling but also great for mental health and well-being. The holistic benefits are so massive if you’re willing to jump on it and I think with the local council elections coming up, this is something that we can do with pushing on and nudging on a little bit more as well.
Matt: And something we covered in a previous episode on co-benefits and the PwC report. So definitely, listeners, please pick that up because it’s not just energy as energy bleeds into other stuff. On the train travel, it was noted a few days ago that the various train operators are severely discounting train travel over the coming months in light of the cost of living crisis. So fingers crossed that will make a difference. I think probably the last thing just to note is that, Fraser, when the last episode went out, the Energy Security Strategy was being announced and so we didn’t really get our teeth into it. Any quick reflections from you both? I noted there wasn’t a great deal around energy demand there, Becky, which you’ve talked a lot about. There was a little bit in there around other community energy-type pieces like onshore wind if communities want it and warm words around solar. Any reflections on things you liked and things you didn’t?
Fraser: Ultimately, it was disappointing. Great commitment. I think the offshore wind stuff is quite exciting. I think it was genuinely reasonably ambitious for what we’re going for but the big issue was around short-term solutions to the crisis. This wouldn’t have been such a big issue had they not kicked the can in the spring statement in the Budget originally saying, ‘We’ve got an Energy Security Strategy coming up,’ and so everyone was expecting something to come out. It wasn’t there. We don’t know if there’s ever going to be an Energy Demand Strategy either. In terms of the crisis that we’re in the midst of just now, nuclear in ten years is going to do nothing to help someone who is one missed payment away from an irretrievable spiral of poverty within the coming months, even over the summer. If you’re talking about someone on a standing charge on a prepayment meter, they’re in danger still now and not just when the prices go up in October. There’s nothing in the short term and nothing around efficiency which is so easy and so obvious. It makes me wonder why on earth... what is the reasoning behind it other than the Chancellor or the Treasury saying no? What is the actual reasoning behind it? I have to know. I have to know. Onshore wind, again, the last one was just massively disappointing in general. We kind of knew it was coming in the weeks before. There was a big effort from some of the backbenchers around The Marr Show and stuff like that and saying, ‘No, but people don’t like to look at it.’ I was just thinking, ‘Come on, man. Come on, it’s 2022. We’ve got shovel-ready projects. We’ve got stuff ready to go that can help people in a year or two years at most. There’s stuff we can do now.’
Matt: Yeah, but it’s people’s bills over the next few months. Becky?
Rebecca: I’m not surprised and I’m simultaneously disappointed to see a lack of focus on the demand side basically and what people can be doing. It’s an area that worries me once we start to talk about people’s behaviour and people’s choices because I think, often, it’s framed as a choice that everyone has. Sometimes, it’s not as simple as that and the choice isn’t always as obvious or there are these barriers that could be hidden. I can see why it’s not there. I can see why it’s much easier to grab hold of things like offshore wind and the big technology items. It’s a lot simpler to deal with. I think that the demand side is absolutely critical but we’ve got to be so careful about embedding it in here. The devil is going to be in the detail in that one and I don’t think we’ve fully cracked that nut yet.
Matt: Absolutely.
Fraser: I think a cynic might argue that the reason we’ve not focused on efficiency and demand side is that there isn’t as much money in it or perceived to be. Do you think that’s part of it? We’re going for all this big stuff when we’ve got easy and relatively straightforward stuff just now to do. I don’t know.
Rebecca: If I think back to the episode we did with Rufus Grantham from Bankers Without Boundaries, he gave us some really interesting figures to think about which shows that efficiency on its own just doesn’t cut it but when you start to combine efficiency with these other measures and come up with really innovative and new whole system mechanisms... so bringing together local supply, efficiency and some of these greening projects where you get multiple benefits back, you can start to build a better financial case.
[Music flourish]
Matt: I think that leads us nicely on to today’s episode which is looking to combine those dual challenges of affordable housing and environmental sustainability by bringing communities together to finance, design and govern their own housing in a way that is socially progressive but also environmentally friendly. So on that point, I really do think we ought to bring in the guests.
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Andy: Hello, my name is Andy O’Brien. I’m the Co-founder and Director of Bristol Energy Cooperative. We have a mission and that mission is to invest in renewables, cut carbon and build community. We’ve been going for just over ten years now.
Monica: My name is Monica King. I’m part of Bridport Cohousing and our objective is to build 53 homes and a common house. They’re all affordable homes and everybody that lives there has an equal say in how it’s all run.
[Music flourish]
Matt: Monica, cohousing will be an unfamiliar topic and notion for many of our listeners. I just wanted to begin please by defining what cohousing means and especially what it means to you and how you’ve taken this idea forward in your area.
Monica: Okay, so cohousing is a form of living whereby a group, usually, organises a number of homes and a common house. The homes are private spaces but the common house is shared by everybody. It offers a whole range of benefits such as you can have smaller homes because... I don’t need a big dining room if I can use the common house to hold a party or invite all my friends around. I don’t need a spare bedroom if we’ve got guest accommodation. That’s the way it works. It’s usually started by the people who want to live in it. That’s the normal arrangement. As you develop the project, you’re also developing a community. We regularly advertise to people about what we’re trying to do and if they’re interested to come and talk to us, join us and help us make it happen. I’ve been doing this pretty much full-time for 13 years. So it is not a speedy process but actually, it will be faster in future because other groups have pioneered this and they take a long time as well but now there is more support in the planning system and government funding system for projects like ours. You’ve still got to satisfy them with the legality and all that sort of thing.
Matt: Absolutely. So it’s not a small development. These are 53 homes that you’re developing as I understand and it’s something, as you say, that’s been in development for 12 years or more. I just wanted you to tell me a little bit more about how you’ve taken the principles of cohousing and applied them against some of the principles of environmental sustainability because I can imagine you could develop a cohousing development without it being a sustainable one. How key is the notion of clean, green living to your vision of cohousing?
Monica: Well, it’s key to ours and generally, I would say that most cohousing groups aim to be greener because the origins of cohousing really are in Denmark in the ‘60s. All those hippies that we like to make jokes about and some of the values that they purported are gradually now, 50 years later, coming good. Our aim is that people have an affordable way of life. It’s not just an affordable home but that by reducing their consumption and expenditure, they will have a better quality of life and so, therefore, a microgrid. When Damon came and talked to us about it, we thought, ‘This would be perfect.’ This is just what we needed because we had promised that we will reduce our expenditure as households by 40% in the first four years. So going from a gas cooker to an induction hob from our own electricity will have a huge impact on our bills.
Rebecca: You mentioned the switch from gas to induction. What are the other things that people are really experiencing as you start to implement that microgrid? Where is the difference? Are people seeing the energy generation right there and then? Are they directly investing in it? What is the real experience for people living in this cooperative housing with a microgrid compared to what they might have had before?
Monica: It’s a little bit premature to answer you because nobody has actually moved in yet. The first people will be moving in August. The sorts of changes that we made were that we had people that didn’t want to give up gas cooking but we persuaded them that an induction hob is as good as a gas cooker. We’d like to find out whether that is true [laughter] and also, of course, we haven’t had to pipe gas. It costs thousands of pounds to connect to the gas grid and to pipe the gas around the site and costs have a huge impact on what a cohousing group can do. We’ve had to compromise right, left and centre but we have managed to stick to many of our green intentions.
Rebecca: So folk haven’t moved in yet but they’ve been intricately involved with the development. With the microgrid, do they have shares in the ownership and can they see it? Is it there and then? Is it going to be a visceral experience for them or is it something that’s really behind the scenes?
Monica: Oh, no. It’s going to be in a particular spot on our site to the northeast. It will be like a little bit of hallowed ground [laughter] that’s fenced off, obviously, to keep our kids safe and everybody else. No, it won’t be hidden. I don’t really know about our people investing. My husband and I have invested in other energy groups around our area but we haven’t invested in this one because we didn’t have any money at the time. So I don’t know what individuals have done but our big commitment is that we have taken this on and we want this to happen. In a way, there’s an element of pioneering and cohousing itself is pioneering because you’re going against society’s normal way of doing things and similarly, going for microgrids...
Matt: Well, you’re doing it twice. You’re doing it two-fold. You’re doing two things against the grain. Normally, it’s centralised power and normally, major housing developers build identikit housing.
Monica: Not only are we going against the normal way of doing things but we also use sociocracy as a way of working together. That, combined with us being a community benefit society, means that everybody who’s part of the group is required to speak. If you don’t know enough to be able to answer sensibly, fair enough. Hold your fire until you know more but the idea is that we want to hear from everybody. We make decisions by consent and that means if somebody has an objection, we welcome it because they’ve seen a flaw in what we’re proposing. It might be one that we can just change by delaying it or we’ll try it for three months and see if it works. Nonetheless, I really like the fact that people are encouraged to speak up.
Matt: That’s an interesting topic which we’ve touched upon on the pod before around citizens’ assemblies and there’s obviously a different format there in that you’re inviting the views of the community but not maybe a community that co-owns and co-governs a particular entity and, in your case, a housing association. How do you find that process? This is an uninformed position but I’m assuming this is a long, laborious process but, ultimately, leads to decisions that people are bought into.
Monica: It varies, actually. Sometimes, decisions that you think might take forever are actually done within ten minutes. Sociocracy aims to be effective and efficient and there are times when it really is and even we’re surprised. To be honest, because within a group there are a lot of different people and views, what you really want is everybody to feel heard, everybody’s views to be considered and everybody to know that even though they didn’t really get exactly what they wanted, they were part of it.
Matt: And given that, by 2050, we’re looking to be net zero, there are many, many other targets in the interim around reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions from our housing. Looking at the cohousing model against those objectives, do you see that cohousing can help us achieve those objectives in terms of making our homes – our new homes, I might add – more sustainable? Is it critical and essential to delivering on those targets and if so, why?
Monica: One of the factors about the site that we got permission to build on... one of the reasons why they allowed us to do it was because we are avowed to reduce car use. It’s our primary goal to reduce journeys and car use. At one of the very first meetings that our group held, we had a facilitator and what she got us to do was put a rope across the room and you had to go and put yourself on the rope in relation to how important your car was to you. Some people were at one end because they were disabled and couldn’t get around otherwise and many of us were crammed near the other end. Okay, you have to have a car now and then but exercising green practices in a group like this, there will be peer pressure. I might feel like I can’t be bothered with organising my tin foil or whatever but people will say, ‘Monica, what are you doing with your tin foil?’ That might sound like a bit trying but it does encourage good behaviour and it does encourage people to do the right thing when they would be inclined to forget it. If you can’t be bothered, you could say, ‘Look, I’ll bring my silver paper round to you and you can sort it.’ Cooperation is about give and take. What you want is people with the right sort of intention and direction of travel.
Rebecca: Monica, I know you’ve been at this for quite a long time. I think it was back in 2008, was it, that you initially set this rolling? We’re now in 2022, so it’s not something that’s happened fast. Have you learnt anything during that time that could help other groups transition or adopt cohousing approaches perhaps more rapidly? If this is something that we think is going to be a key component that could help underpin some of our transition to net zero, how do you think we could do this in a way where we might be able to shift at a faster rate and really get some of this into action in a shorter timeframe?
Monica: First of all, for the purposes of accuracy, I started in April 2009. It was started by other people, some of whom are still members. That doesn’t change the essence of what you’re asking. I think the reason that it will happen more quickly is that now there are what are called community housing hubs and they’ve been set up over the UK. They’re a place where you can go for advice. Say there were ten of us and we wanted advice on how to start, you’d go to one of these hubs and they will be able to tell you about things like how to get government funds to help you get going, how to find an architect and point you to the cohousing network. The UK Cohousing Network is a resource that represents all the various cohousing networks in the UK which come in many forms. I genuinely think that from now on, it will happen more quickly. There are a lot of cohousing groups that are like mushrooms at the moment and suddenly, they’re all going to pop up.
Rebecca: With what sounds like a very exciting experience; not just having an environmental impact and reducing bills but building that community and a sense of social cohesion and belonging. Especially in an age where we’ve all been – for me at least – locked inside a room and talking to people through a virtual interface for the last few years, it sounds like something very appealing.
Monica: Actually, somebody did some work on how cohousing groups managed through the lockdown because people couldn’t use their common houses. Obviously, within cohousing, you’re always working on the basis of trust. You know who your neighbours are and so when something doesn’t go right, you know that they know that you’re a reliable person. Maybe they’ll know that you’re not reliable but at least they’ll be forewarned [laughter]. I got really interested in cohousing having first come through the whole thing about learning about life after oil and the 2008 crash. I thought, ‘Actually, other people are our insurance.’ In cohousing, I see that we are each other’s insurance policy. There could be a shortfall met by different people at different times. Some people will bring financial resources and other people will bring understanding and a load of other things to it but as a group, we’re greater than the sum of the parts.
Rebecca: I don’t know that I had a huge amount additional to go on. I was really interested in the learning that you’re taking from this and thinking about... I like the analogy to mushrooms springing up all over the place because you’re right that it’s not something that’s been particularly prevalent in the conversation. It sounds like there could be quite a lot of benefits and opportunities. Where do you see those key barriers? There are clearly opportunities here for people to engage through these hubs. What are some of the critical barriers that you think still remain and is there anything that we really need to be doing about them?
Monica: Land and money. Every cohousing group struggles to find a site. We were very fortunate. We have a lovely, beautiful site in a beautiful county. We don’t have much money. We’ve got some people that have significant resources but we haven’t got any millionaires. Obviously, if you live in an affordable housing neighbourhood, you’re excluded if you’re wealthy. You can’t live with us.
Matt: Good stuff and probably a really good spot for us to hand over.
Monica: It’s been fascinating. Thank you very much.
Rebecca: It’s so great to hear Monica’s enthusiasm for cohousing but now let’s bring in Andy O’Brien.
[Music flourish]
Andy, we’ve heard from Monica about cohousing but today, we’re talking about the nexus between cohousing and microgrids. I know this is something that you’re doing in Bristol Energy Cooperative. Before we get into the detailed discussion, maybe we could just step back and you could give us a bit of an overview of what Bristol Energy Cooperative is and what you’re doing.
Andy: Yeah, sure. We actually set up back in 2011, so over ten years ago now. Back then, we were all volunteers but now we’ve got five staff members. We had a mission to invest in renewables, cut carbon and build community. That’s what we’re about. We’ve now got over 1,200 members and we’ve raised over £15 million over the years to actually fund our projects. That’s come from a mixture of commercial loans, loans from social funders and also from community share and bond offers. About half of that has come from the community, so that’s key that the community really is involved. That’s allowed us to build up a portfolio of 9 megawatts of solar PV and 100 kilowatts of battery storage. All that power is equivalent to about 3,000 typical homes. We’re a co-op but also a community benefit society. We exist to provide benefits to the community and one of those benefits is providing renewable energy but also we provide physical money to the community. We’ve managed to facilitate over £300,000 worth of community benefit funds or payments to the local community since we started. In the past, we’ve done lots of solar and some battery storage. We’ve got a hydro scheme in development at the moment but as exciting as any of them to us really right now are the microgrids that we’ve been working on. This has been going on for a good number of years now and it’s really exciting that two of the schemes we’re working on are very, very close to fruition.
Matt: So, Andy, before we move into the microgrids, because we desperately want to hear more about those two projects, microgrid will be an unfamiliar term to many of our listeners and I wanted you just to pause and unpack exactly what that means to you and what are the two projects that you’ve been working on.
Andy: A microgrid is pretty much a stand-alone electricity network. Some people call it an energy island. It might be a complete island. You might still be connected to the outside world because if you’re just generating your own energy on site and then something desperately big happens on site and it all goes down, then you’re a bit stuck. Usually, there is some connection to the outside world. In terms of the microgrids that we’ve been working on, it’s all about renewables. If you think of, say, a new-build housing estate which are the ones we’re mainly talking about today, they combine really good energy efficiency with on-site renewables, with energy storage and then there’s smart technology which is linking it all together. If it’s been done in a smart way and say, for example, with the energy storage, we’ve got one big battery rather than lots of individual batteries, that system can be used in a smart way. Residents are getting most of their energy from the on-site generation and it’s being shared across the site but we can top up from the grid when needed and also we can export any excess energy to the grid. It’s a two-way thing. We can actually be providing services to the National Grid helping the outside world to be more stable in terms of keeping the frequency of the network stable. That’s the beauty of it. These microgrids are not just isolated but they’re actually contributing to a much more wider and flexible system.
Matt: Excellent and you haven’t just developed one. You’ve developed two of these extremely cutting-edge projects. We’ve heard a little bit about Bridport Cohousing from Monica, so that’s one project you’re involved with but there is another project, Water Lillies, which is a bit closer to home in Northwest Bristol. Which would you like to begin with first because they both sound fascinating?
Andy: I need to go one step back first actually and just introduce Damon who is a big partner in this scheme. Damon has his own company called Clean Energy Prospector. We’ve been working with him for a number of years because his company manages the metering and billing for our rooftop solar sites. He’s got very much a technical background and so in terms of the microgrid development, his company has been leading on the technical aspects and we, as a co-op, lead on the community funding bits. We’ve had this long-standing relationship and Damon was particularly involved at a community centre in Easton where he’s looking to do a lot of energy efficiency. We had solar panels on the roof there already but he wanted to take this further and he managed to get some grant funding to replace the gas heating in the building with an electric heat network. This has ended up using interseasonal heat and it’s stored in boreholes in the park behind the community centre. There’s actually about two kilometres of piping in the ground. The system was designed by a company called ICAX and our solar panels help power their electricity energy centre that’s running the whole heat network. The neighbouring building also gets its heat from this electricity network and we’re currently looking to extend that to the neighbouring houses that are on the same electricity substation. This was actually the first proper microgrid we did. It’s a retrofit rather than a new build and that’s known as the Owen Square Community Energy Project. We got an awful lot of learning out of that. What we wanted to do was to move on there because we’d been doing solar on rooftops for ages and we had some stand-alone battery storage that we’d been running as a pilot for a few years. We wanted to go further and integrate all these technologies into new residential housing and that’s where we started to look for who we could work with on that in terms of we needed very supportive housing developers who were willing to go the extra mile to accommodate innovation along with the typical complexity of building any housing development. We’re very lucky that in Bristol there’s a developer called Bright Green Futures who very much meets that bill. They’d been doing lots of interesting community-driven housing development for quite a few years and they were developing this scheme in Bristol called the Water Lillies scheme. There are about 30 homes in total. They were willing to go on this journey with us. Back as an energy co-op, it is funding the microgrid elements of this and so that is the big battery, the cabling for the network and we’re also funding some of the solar PV. Damon’s company is CEPRO and he’s the technical developer really and then we’ve got Bright Green Futures who are the housing developer who is covering the traditional costs of building these schemes. On site, we’ve got very good energy efficiency, we’ve got PV, we’ve heat pumps, one large Tesla battery and smart controls with EV charging in there. It’s all linked together. I have to say it’s amazing to go on site. You work away on these things for years and years and slog away overcoming this barrier and that barrier but now it’s there and it’s up. Some residents are already on site and some are finishing some internal self-builds themselves. The vast majority of the residents are moving in in the summer and they’re going to be largely zero carbon. That is what we’re aiming for.
Rebecca: I could see your entire body pricking up when you were talking about going on site and the experience that you’re having because it sounds like these are very complex schemes where you’ve got these homes that are energy efficient and you’ve got all these different bits of kit and technology. The technical side of it, I’m sure you could spend hours and hours talking about but what really fascinates me is the experiential side of it; so the experience that you have being on site. I’m also wondering what that’s like for people that are living in those homes. What are they seeing? What’s the impact of this site on them? Is it something that’s all behind the scenes and they might just be getting cheaper energy or saving emissions or is there something else that’s quite exciting for them as well?
Andy: They’re very excited about it. They’ve been involved in this from the outset because for us to be able to actually develop a microgrid, you have to design the underlying network in a specific way which takes a lot of sign-off from various organisations. Once it’s built that way, you can’t just change it or not easily at all. So they had to be involved in the discussions at the very outset. There are lots of parties involved in this. The legal documents are quite complicated and so they need to be fully aware of what’s going on. They need to understand that, for example, they can choose to opt out of this if they want to. They can get their electricity from a traditional supplier but really, for the microgrid to work best and for them to get energy savings, it’s best if they’re all in it together. We’ve worked really hard to explain how it all works and what the benefits are and they’re completely behind it. They actually voted to decide whether they wanted to go ahead with it and if they said no, we wouldn’t have gone ahead with a full-blown microgrid. You may have had elements of these different bits of technologies but you wouldn’t have had the full-blown, smart, integrated technologies. So, yes, they’re very much behind it and it’s the same at Bridport. The enthusiasm for doing something together, almost like a typical cohousing group has, not surprisingly, they’ve got the same enthusiasm for doing something about climate change. They’re willing to work together with us and different partners to make it happen. There are slightly more bodies involved because you’ve actually got Bridport Cohousing who are going to own some of the buildings and then you’ve got Bridport Community Land Trust which is also involved. Ultimately, the technology is the same and the overall coworking is the same. What’s so nice really is that we are a community energy group and they are a community group. We’re both co-ops, ultimately, and there’s a natural synergy between the two groups. As co-ops, it’s in our DNA to cooperate. We’re used to working collaboratively to overcome problems and the housing side has the confidence that the community energy side can deliver the technology and the finance and we’ve got confidence in them that they’ll bear with us as we deal with the bumps in the road that come with doing these sorts of innovation projects. It’s a bit like if you’re being bullied at work, it’s really hard to work with your boss but if you’ve got a really collaboratively way of working with your work colleagues, then it’s a joy to be there and things happen in a nicer way and they’re more likely to actually happen in the end as well. That’s how it feels with these schemes.
Matt: So, Andy, there are two key points there I think about those synergies between the two cooperatives. One is that BEC (Bristol Energy Cooperative) has a very strong emphasis on environmentally sustainable development but you’re saying that actually, your partners at Bridport Cohousing and their cooperative members have that similar mindset. You’ve also actually got that same community cooperative ethos. It’s not just they’re environmentally-minded as you but you’ve got a similar way of working. That’s quite important I think to deliver on the same objectives because you could be very environmentally-minded and they too but actually, you might be approaching this from a cooperative perspective (community action and grassroots); whereas, another environmentally-minded organisation might be private and for profit. Has that been really important from the get-go?
Andy: It has, yeah. It really has. That’s one of the reasons why we set up the co-op in the first place because nice as it is that we’ve got very large companies building lots of renewables across the country and we do work with some of them, quite often, the money that those companies make leaves the local area and it doesn’t really stay with the local area. In doing what we’re doing, money does stay in the local area. We’ve got an awful lot of local contractors working on the schemes as well. That’s really key. If we’re going to bring people with us in the energy transition, then they need to feel involved and they need to feel wanted and treasured. We know how big some of these intrusions on life and some of these changes may end up being and if we’re not going to bring everybody with us with what we need to do, then it’s not going to work. Community energy is about working with the neighbours in your street and working it all out together. It’s really crucial.
Rebecca: It sounds like a really, really exciting development but one thing that strikes me is that it seems also fairly niche. When we were chatting with Monica, we talked about the fact that the cohousing development has been a very long and evolving process. If this is going to bring the benefits that we’re talking about and if we think about how we could roll that out and how we could start to see those benefits perhaps arising elsewhere around the country, do you see there being any barriers that need to be addressed in this? What have you learnt along the way that you think could help others perhaps learn from your lessons, take this on further or reach the end of it in a faster state?
Andy: I suppose the good thing is we’ve had a lot of learning. We know how to do it now, at least to a certain extent, and there are nice templates that people can use there. I think there are different aspects. What we’re aiming here for is that these are fully net-zero microgrids and that means they’re not having to draw down overall energy from the grid. Where you’ve got parts of the country where there are real grid constraints, you can’t build new stand-alone renewables there because they can’t connect to the grid but here, because it’s internal, you’re not putting a load on the grid. You’re actually taking a load off the grid and you’ve got the battery storage there that provides a two-way support network for the grid. There’s a real plus there. In terms of pure money, we are aiming to provide energy to the residents on these two schemes at between 5-15% less than the typical local energy bill and we can do that because it’s all integrated. You’re getting the best benefit from that. We’re aware that in the middle of winter, the site is not going to be producing enough energy on its own, so we need to import the energy there. What we’ve done is we’ve actually signed a 30-year contract with Ripple Energy to buy the equivalent of the electricity shortfall that we’ll need and we’ll be buying the electricity from one of their wind farms. It’s truly net zero in terms of any energy we’re not generating on the site is coming from renewable sources elsewhere. Especially right now with the energy crisis, this is a really good hedge against price volatility. It won’t cover all our expenses but it is smoothing things out and we can tell the residents that now. They know that there’s an element of stability in their energy supply and right now, how many people across the country can say that in terms of what’s going to happen to their energy bills in the next six to 12 months? It’s all over the show and it’s not going to go away. Even if Ukraine is sorted out, this isn’t going to go away because it’s not just related to Ukraine.
Matt: Andy, we’re already looking to the future here and I just wanted to end really on a question for you. What does BEC’s future look like? Are you looking to do more of these microgrids in conjunction with cohousing? I know that isn’t the only thing you do but what does the future look like?
Andy: We’re working on lots of different things. Just this week, I’m spending an awful lot of time progressing the idea of having a regional energy services company that is providing deep energy retrofit, whole house/whole street, along the Energiesprong model. It was very interesting listening to Rufus on your podcast just the other week. So much of what he was saying, I was jumping up and down saying, ‘Yes, I know! I couldn’t agree more!’ All this stuff will only happen if it’s done at scale. We can’t just insulate a few odd houses right now because it doesn’t stack up financially to those householders but if we’re doing it at a local energy plan level and doing it working, say, with local authorities and the money is actually coming in from the pension funds from institutional investors, then it starts stacking up and then you can do all sorts. If we don’t get to that stage and if we’re just forever thinking it’s going to come in through the odd government grant or the odd handout, it’s not going to work. For me, if there’s one thing I could change really around this energy system, it’s to somehow get it out there that the money for all this transition isn’t going to come from government. It doesn’t need to. It’s coming from the commercial sector and it’s coming from the institutional sector. What we need is the seed funding and supportive policies from the government to allow these things to happen and it’s not there at the moment. There aren’t enough carrots, there aren’t enough sticks and so we’re all running around trying to do little things. At the moment, there’s virtually no government support for early-stage development funding for community schemes, whether it’s a microgrid or something else. The Urban Community Energy Fund went a while ago. The Rural Community Energy Fund is just going now I think and there’s nothing to replace it. Just for tiny amounts of money that could be put in – I mean really tiny amounts of money – all sorts of massive things could come out of it as a result of that funding. Whatever BEC ends up doing in the next five years hugely depends on our ability to actually make proper connections with the institution investment sector and bringing them in to support anything we’re working at that just becomes so much bigger at scale.
Matt: Well, Andy, thank you. We wish you all the best for the future and we wish you all the best with these two housing developments. I hope, when I’m down there in Dorset and Bristol next time around, I’ll make sure to pay a visit. Thank you very much for your time. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Andy: Great. Thank you very much indeed.
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Rebecca: You’ve been listening to Local Zero. Thank you again to our guests Andy O’Brien from Bristol Energy Cooperative and Monica King of Bridport Cohousing in Dorset who we heard from earlier in the episode.
Matt: Our next episode will be a live one or a little bit live. We’ll be reflecting on the recording of the live event that we’ll be running at the University of Edinburgh which is all about green-led and voluntary carbon offsetting. We will be joined, hopefully, by Fraser Stewart again but also Magnus Davidson and, of course... can I say Becky? Will you be there?
Rebecca: I don’t know yet [laughter].
Matt: She might be there [laughter]. Fingers and toes crossed. It will be a really special episode and we hope you can tune in for that one.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, go find and follow us @LocalZeroPod on Twitter to get involved with the chats over there and if you’ve got any longer thoughts, the email address is LocalZeroPod@gmail.com. Until then, thank you for listening and goodbye.
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