70: Putting the "us" in energy justice
Becky and Fraser double as both co-hosts AND expert guests this time - updating Matt on a major local and community energy project they've been running for the Scottish Government, as part of their work at Regen. The team talk about how and why local and community energy can support a fairer transition to net zero. We also hear insights from a 'People's Panel' that was run as part of the project, asking how energy can be made to work for everyone, including low income, vulnerable, and 'hard to reach' communities.
Episode Transcript:
[Music flourish]
Fraser: Do we want to just start now?
Matt: Yeah.
Rebecca: Why not?
Fraser: Hello and welcome to Local Zero.
Rebecca: Today, Fraser and I are going to chat about a really awesome project we’ve been working on with Scottish Government all about local and community energy.
Matt: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it but before we get into this chat, a massive thank you to the new listeners on Twitter who have reached out in the past couple of weeks. For example, we had this lovely message from @Jestermouse on Twitter who said, ‘Just discovered this superb podcast on achieving net zero in Scotland.’ This episode was focusing on Edinburgh in particular. Glad you enjoyed it.
Fraser: You can go and check out that particular Edinburgh episode and also the first two episodes of Professor Hannon’s mini-series on nature-based carbon community offsetting wherever you get your podcasts.
Rebecca: If you’ve not already... well, let’s be honest, where have you been for the past few years? But now is the time to catch up. Search Local Zero wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Also, find us on Twitter. We are @LocalZeroPod if you want to connect with us there and we also love to hear from you via email, so send any episode suggestions, potential guests or just your wider thoughts to the pod on LocalZeroPod@gmail.com.
Fraser: Would you believe that this is the first episode that all three of us have been together on since March 9th?
Rebecca: No!
Matt: Really?
Rebecca: That doesn’t feel right.
Matt: I genuinely am surprised. I know it’s in the episode notes here and I have read them but I’m surprised again that you’re saying it aloud. What have we been doing?
Fraser: I don’t know if it’s related but I’ve been noticeably just really happy and relaxed.
Matt: Noticeably absent [laughter].
Fraser: I don’t know about correlation and causation and all that [laughter].
Matt: Very good. Well, what have we been doing? I’ll tell you one of the things I was doing just before Easter which would have been maybe just after that recording. I was down in Westminster on a pairing scheme for the Royal Society and I was paired with one of our local MPs, Alison Thewliss, who is the MP for Central Glasgow. I was basically paired with her for a couple of days and got the run of Westminster and let me tell you, it is a labyrinth and a pretty exciting place. I don’t know whether you’ve had the opportunity to walk around the Palace of Westminster ever. Have you been inside?
Fraser: No, I tried to go in once but the security alarms went off.
Matt: It would ordinarily, yeah, if you tried to get in [laughter]. That figures. It’s an amazing place and thank you to Alison for looking after me and to the Royal Society. I wrote a blog basically reflecting on my time there. Politicians – geez, they work at another level. It was really interesting to see not just inside the House of Commons Chamber where I sat for a number of hours over a couple of days but actually to see all of the other side events that were happening like Parliamentary Committees, APPGs (All-Party Parliamentary Groups) and all of the evening soirees where policy is done and made. Yeah, really interesting.
Rebecca: Particularly as academics, I think we can be quite hard sometimes on policymakers and politicians. We can reflect on some of the challenges and where maybe enough isn’t being done and look to policymakers and politicians and perhaps critique the lack of action. Matt, being part and parcel of it all and getting this new insight, do you have a new appreciation for the challenge? Do you see things in a different way now?
Matt: Yeah. I mean whether you’re working in academia now or you’re in consultancy, either way, in order to shift the dial for politicians and policy, you’ve got to have that kind of elevator pitch. I knew what we had to have. I didn’t necessarily know why we had to have it because they are being bombarded 24/7 by a whole myriad of different policy imperatives and also each policy imperative or debate is coming with different lines of evidence or inquiry attached to it. People have got different perspectives and those perspectives are built on different types of evidence. The big thing I came away with, as a scientist and as a researcher – and I use that very broadly, not just academia – it is incumbent on us to present that information in an objective fashion, in a really easy-to-understand manner and in a way that people actually want to digest it. That’s slightly different from easy. It’s enjoyable. They’ve only got 30 seconds and probably, the MP isn’t going to read it or the Minister. It will be one of their group. Maybe it’s an obvious finding but it helped me understand who my audience was and it’s often not the MP and understand how they want it. So yeah, interest. If anybody wants to understand more, there’s a blog out there and the Royal Society have kindly retweeted that. That isn’t the only news. There has been lots of other stuff happening. Fraser, you wanted to pick up something I think about the impending Glasgow Low Emission Zone.
Fraser: Yeah, we’ve covered a little bit on Low Emission Zones more on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and transport in general. Glasgow, for the last year or so, has been putting plans in place to implement its Low Emission Zone from June 1st 2023. At the time of this pod going out, it should be in play. However, there has been a last-minute stooshie around Low Emissions Zones predominantly from opposition within Glasgow Council arguing that some businesses haven’t had enough time to adapt to that and arguing that some charities might suffer because of it which is really, really interesting because we’ve talked a lot about the politics of this before and the Glasgow Low Emission Zone has been in the works for at least the last year or so if not before, including within opposition manifestos and not just the governing SNP and Green coalition.
Matt: The signs are up and have been up on the motorway for months. It’s there.
Fraser: They have been and actually, compared to some of them, in terms of the vehicles that can get through and in terms of the exemptions, it’s relatively lax but very much that kind of microcosm of a political backlash that seems to mire all of these discussions now. Matt, I don’t know if you’ve been across this at all being the only remaining Glasgow resident.
Matt: A little and I’ve been picking up bad vibes on Twitter about it recently but what are people getting upset about, Fraser?
Fraser: It seems to be this argument. We hear this all the time about Low Emission Zones and that somehow it’s going to penalise the working classes and you’re trying to take things away from people. The reality, of course, is that Low Emission Zones deal with the air pollution that disproportionately impacts lower-income groups and more socially disadvantaged groups.
Matt: For the sake of listeners, in simple terms, the older your car, the more likely it is to be penalised.
Fraser: This is it. The argument generally lacking in evidence is that people on lower incomes tend to have much older, dirtier cars. That is sometimes the case and not often the case. Far more often, people rely on public transport and they’re not car owners at all. So a big part of the argument is that it’s going to penalise people with older cars which is right but that doesn’t exclusively fall within lower-income groups but also the political opposition seems to be that local businesses and charities are going to suffer because of this and they’ve not had enough time to prepare for it. They want to see a delay for another 12 months down the line. The problem with that is it’s 12 months more of emissions.
Matt: Shades of the Deposit Return Scheme for recycling.
Fraser: This is something that I want to pick up on because this is something that I do find a little bit concerning as much as my opinion generally is just to please get on with it. This is embarrassing now. Let’s just do it. We need to do it. We know we need to do it, so let’s do it. But I worry a little bit about the Deposit Return Scheme in Scotland...
Matt: Again, for listeners who aren’t familiar, it’s about returning plastics, aluminium cans and bottles into a reverse vending machine and getting 20 pence returned but 20 pence would be added to the cost of it, so you just get it back.
Fraser: Exactly. It works in any number of places just like other things we’ve talked about. Free public transport and Low Emission Zones work perfectly well everywhere else but somehow, Scotland seems uniquely unable to make any progress on it which is really frustrating. What I find worrying about it is that, luckily, the general public doesn’t seem to be overly connected with the Deposit Return Scheme but Low Emission Zones are contentious. What I worry about is that if you’re struggling to deliver these relatively minor, parochial climate policies, you’re going to struggle to bring people along for the bigger transformative changes that you need to deliver to maintain trust in your ability to do that. So before we start talking about the work that we’re doing with various governments, my message to anyone listening is please, for the love of god, just get on with it. It doesn’t have to be this difficult. We can get it done and it will be nice.
Matt: There you go. Sage words. Now I think the final item, Becky, speaks squarely to your own personal experiences but I saw something retweeted by various people, including Jan Rosenow who is a big heating researcher and expert on this, that 80% of people with heat pumps are happy and satisfied. They surveyed 2,500 domestic heat pump owners and more than 1,000 domestic gas boilers across the UK basically and 80% of them were happy. This was roughly on par with gas boiler owners and operators. Now, Becky, you are one step ahead of Fraser and I and you have a heat pump.
Rebecca: I do have a heat pump.
Matt: What did you think about the results?
Rebecca: Looking through these results, they ask people about how easy it is to use and control and their satisfaction with how it’s heating their water, heating their space, running costs, reliability and all of those sorts of things. Overwhelmingly, there are pretty high levels of satisfaction as you point out. I have to say from having a heat pump, all of those things to me are very similar to the way my boiler operated. With the way I use it, I have a thermostat and it’s a device that’s got almost nothing to do with the heat pump and I just set the temperature on it. I’m not 100% sure yet what my running costs are going to be.
Matt: Interestingly, and I think we should flag this, running costs were what folk were least satisfied with but still almost 70% were either satisfied or very satisfied.
Rebecca: Yeah, and I note that the survey was conducted in December which is great because obviously, I could say right now that I’m satisfied with my heat pump but come winter, it might not work. It’s good to see this happening in winter. I would say what, to me, this survey misses on and where I think one of the bigger challenges that heat pumps will face is around getting it in the first place. Once it’s in there, it’s great. I’ve already paid my £10-15,000 upfront and maybe got some proportion of my money back from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme but that was the difficulty for me. It was knowing where to go for that advice and information. Also, we were really keen and went with these MCS-accredited suppliers which was a big tick in terms of who you want to go with to make sure they’ve got all the relevant training and knowledge and still had conflicting information. So just knowing who to trust, who to go with and where that industry and peer support is just hard to navigate. It really makes me think back to the very last episode we recorded, Matt, about retrofit and the social relations of retrofit and the need for that better information in your trusted peer network or maybe a one-stop shop. I would say that so important for heat pumps.
Matt: Becky, you’re speaking my language [laughter]. Also, the 2,500 people who have had these positive experiences, who are they going to tell and that ripple effect and networking effect? How do you get that message out there? I won’t name them but if you pick up certain newspapers, they are leading day in and day out with stories about how dissatisfied people are with heat pumps and electric vehicles. Now, you are the sage on this because you’ve had an EV, you didn’t get on with it because of the network and you’ve swapped up. You’ve got a heat pump. Look, it’s not all perfect but let’s take this in the round and 80% of people, according to this study, are happy and those are good numbers in my view.
Rebecca: They are and now the heat pump is in, it’s absolutely grand. We had a few teething issues but, again, that’s not really captured in this survey. So I would say this is great to hear that people, once they’ve got it, are happy with it. Now, we need to think about how to really support people getting these into their homes and making that transition in the first place.
Matt: Agreed. Good. Well, shall we move on to the meat which is your big study and project which I’ve kind of been involved with on the fringes? It would be great to bring the guests up to speed about what the project is, who’s funding it and why it’s important before we get into a chat.
Fraser: Becky?
Rebecca: Why don’t you kick us off, Fraser? Do we want to do our self-IDs? [Laughter]
Fraser: Hello, I’m Fraser Stewart, the Just Transitions Lead at Regen and so-called Malcolm Tucker of the energy system [laughter].
Matt: So-called by whom? [Laughter] Becky?
Rebecca: My name is Rebecca Ford. I am the Head of Demand and Flexibility at Regen and the poor person that has to keep Fraser in check throughout this work [laughter].
Matt: Wow! Goodness! Yeah, you deserve the Victoria Cross I think.
Fraser: That’s two full-time jobs.
Matt: Two full-time jobs, yeah [laughter]. Well, tell us a bit more. What’s the project about?
Fraser: So for about six months now, Becky and I have been working with Scottish Government and funded by Climate Exchange, which funds policy research on behalf of Scottish Government, looking into how we can leverage local and community energy to deliver against Scotland’s national just transition outcomes. Some of you will know already that Scotland has a draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan out just now. They’ve just finished the consultation. It’s really the next flagship energy strategy for Scotland bringing together those big transition principles as well as fairness and about equity within the shift to a low-carbon energy system. Within that, they’ve been very, very keen to figure out how to re-energise and revitalise local and community energy and recognise the opportunity that local and community energy has to deliver much wider value to people and places right across the country. So we were commissioned to dig into this research and we did a whole lot of academic research at the beginning. We held a small-scale citizens’ jury, a people’s panel, where we talked with actual normal human folk about the issue to see how we can build those principles of fairness into new local and community energy initiatives. We’re currently finalising our recommendations for Scottish Government having spoken to a load of stakeholders as well. Becky, did I miss anything?
Rebecca: You never do, Fraser [laughter].
Matt: Good and I’d like to come back to the citizens’ jury but why are they commissioning you at this point? There’s a big consultation that’s just gone out from Scottish Government. I know because Strathclyde had to respond to this and I was involved in leading it with 50-60 questions and it was a big exercise. So they’ve got a whole load of information coming in there about how you do a clean and fair energy transition. What’s the niche you’re filling with this project?
Rebecca: So our real focus on this is local and community energy and I think that’s a really important topic not just for Scotland but the UK more broadly. Scotland has always been very strong on community energy. They have a whole team in Scottish Government and a support programme called CARES all about community energy. It is a real priority for Scotland but I would say increasingly, maybe over the last five to ten years, we’ve seen local energy crop up more and more and really focused less on, say, small community groups or community groups in a specific area often formed just through people living in that area taking action and coming together but we’ve started to also see this growth in local authorities and cities, towns and sometimes regions play a much bigger role in their energy system, whether that’s in an energy project looking at involvement, for example, in developing energy resources in that area or whether it’s things like Local Area Energy Planning which we’re seeing much more of in Scotland, particularly, the local heat and energy efficiency strategies that all councils are having to develop. So with local and community energy, as I said, there’s been a big focus, particularly in Scotland, for a while and that focus is growing, particularly with regards to local. I think what’s really important now is to understand the role that this is going to play in that broader energy transition. How can we make sure that as this grows, it does it in a way that is actually going to benefit the people of Scotland and not just people in one community or one area but everyone across the board?
Matt: Now, I said earlier in the kickaround that compared with an MP, it’s about understanding a little bit more about the type of information they want and how they want it and so I’m going to give you both a bit of an elevator pitch. Why do we need to be talking about local and community energy or local or community energy as they’re not necessarily the same thing? Why do we need these for emissions but also for social justice and for making the UK and Scotland a fairer place? What do they give us that non-local and non-community energy doesn’t?
Fraser: There are a few different benefits. There are distinct benefits first for the energy system. The more locally you do energy, the better you can optimise that energy use locally. If you look at the work that we did with Prospering From the Energy Revolution, we know that you can save a hell of a lot of money on things like network investment too. The energy system is becoming more decentralised and more local but that provides a real opportunity to tailor the energy system locally to local needs and to better reflect the needs of people. I think, for me, this is the big sell on this, especially at a community level where you have really, really direct influence. With that more local nature and that ‘lower level approach’ to energy, you have a better opportunity for people to feed into the process to leverage local actors, stakeholders and organisations to reach those typically excluded within energy decision-making to, again, better tailor those solutions locally to the needs of local people. We also know, finally, from community energy in particular but also local energy increasingly that there’s a range of opportunities on offer. Community-owned energy systems have generated, on average, 34 times more financial value for communities than community benefit funds from big developments, for instance. Smart Local Energy Systems can provide a mass of new job opportunities for local tradespeople and installers but also in data and digital engineering, etcetera. So there’s a whole lot of value being captured there for businesses and for the economy as well by doing things locally and with communities and citizens at the heart of that process versus a one-size-fits-all approach where you just horse on with it and hope for the best.
Rebecca: I don’t think we’re saying local versus national. There’s so much stuff that still has to happen at that national scale. We’re not going to get to net zero by trying to do all of our energy generation in a local way but a lot of the challenges that we are now faced with have to be addressed locally. Local councils are in a prime place to deliver and implement solutions. So we’re seeing network constraints happening at local levels and that can’t be dealt with on a national scale. We have to address this locally because the problems are happening locally. We’re trying to transform our heating systems and our transport systems and, again, these are all things that are so place-dependent and place-specific. There’s absolutely no way that we’re going to be able to deliver these solutions at the speed and scale we need to for net zero unless local places are involved in developing locally-specific solutions and people are such an important part of that. Matt, you mentioned in our earlier discussion about heat pumps. Well, heating is massive. People are at the heart of this and doing things in those local areas is the only way to bring people really into this mix that we’re going to need for the future.
Fraser: I think that place-specific point around the way that you use energy and the way that you get around is so important, Becky. I think that’s so right. I think that’s why trying to do a transition that’s place-agnostic – again, not to say that it’s just local or it’s just national – without recognising place somewhere within that fundamentally overlooks so much of the detail and the critical way that we do interact with energy. I would argue as well though that a big part of this is the just-transition element and if you do it agnostic to that social justice piece, then that’s where you’re at the big risk of leaving people behind. It’s trying to marry those two things together; that more localised or local within the national transition and how you leverage that to deliver the social justice side of things.
Matt: Okay, so here’s the crux, isn’t it? You’ve outlined a number of the positives and you’re starting to move into some of the potential catches because what you initially presented, Fraser, was sort of utopian and I was like, ‘Sign me up.’ [Laughter] You obviously then think, ‘What’s the catch?’ One of the things that we hear time and time again is that if you go local and if it’s at that sort of granular, disaggregated level, you are hypersensitive to place and then you’re having to develop something that’s potentially bespoke in some form, either a bespoke project or you are tailoring a consultation or participation and engagement process to that locality, you have to be sensitive to where you are. How do you marry that bespoke nature with scalability and replicability because that’s where scale comes from? I completely hear you but how do we get big and get there quickly?
Rebecca: I think there’s a really important distinction here between the ultimate solution that you create and the method or the approach that you use to develop that solution. Actually, at the moment, what we see is a lot of bespoke solutions being developed that are, therefore, not replicability. Sometimes, you end up with the more bespoke they are, the better married they are to that place and the better solutions they might bring in that place but the less replicable they are. On the flip side, if they’re developed in a way that’s replicable, they might be less tailored to that place and less likely to engage people in that place, so might deliver not such great outcomes for that place.
Matt: Is there a sweet spot?
Rebecca: I think there is a sweet spot and, as I said, I think the sweet spot is in the approach that you take. With the work that the physical team in the EnergyRev space dealt with, they were particularly looking at what are some of the underpinning things that need to be in place to allow you to manage a system to give you those very contextually-specific outputs that you want. What they came up with is the need for Plug-and-Play. You need to have solutions and replicable methods that can be tailored then to deliver the outcomes that different places need.
Fraser: With the replicability and scalability point, I think Becky is right in everything she’s said. I’d also say, and it may be a bit controversial, that I think replicability is overrated and I think scalability is not necessarily about having the one solution that works everywhere. Particularly when you’re talking about community ownership or if you’re talking about communities being able to engage in other projects, it’s not so much about having the same model or the same project but it’s about having the capacity equitably across communities, local authorities and regions so that every community or area realistically could develop this kind of project if they were so inclined. Now you can promote that in the areas where there has been less activity around local and community energy and I think that’s a really important undertaking but for me, the key to scaling it up and making it happen across the country is much more about building that capacity into communities, local authorities and local areas because right now, it is patchy. Some places do it really well and other places don’t have it quite so much. So it’s about making sure that everyone has the opportunity realistically to get it done.
Matt: Now we’re getting into it. Can I just briefly come back to Fraser’s point? What I wanted to raise was having the capacity to do something and the capability are separate things and we’ve covered these on the pod. In my mind, capability is the skills and resources and the capacity is actually the time and money to exercise them if you will. That’s one thing. You need those in place not just in a community but in a local authority or place-based coalition to get something done. On the other hand, there needs to be something on the shelf somewhere, ideally, that can be pulled off, manipulated, adapted in terms of that place-based context and then used. What you don’t want is a blank piece of paper because I think that’s too frightening and you want to know what you’re picking up. So with that replicability point, I think there’s something there. It’s almost an adaptability point.
Fraser: Yeah, maybe. I think having something to point to isn’t a bad thing. For Local Energy Scotland, Community Energy Scotland and anyone working in community energy (I know there are a few listeners), case studies, case studies, case studies are a really big thing to help and at least provide a foundation or a baseline to say, ‘This has been done, so could this be possible? Could we adapt it?’ I think that’s right but I think there’s a seeming desire to want to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got this model. This is the model. Let’s do it everywhere,’ versus saying, ‘Here’s a range of opportunities. How can we make it work in our area or in our community?’
Rebecca: Yeah, and I would say when you look at and when you talk to people doing community energy or when you talk to people in local authorities doing local energy, some of the things that need to be replicable are not the full solution. It might be the legal structure to set up the cooperative. It might be the digital tools to enable them to do the planning. It’s not that you’re taking one solution from one place and replicating it elsewhere. It’s that the tools and the support structures that underpin it can be replicable and can help build that capacity in different places.
Matt: Okay, so my head is just exploding now [laughter]. So there’s something here about the will and then there’s the way. Often, it’s like where there’s a will, there’s a way but that’s not necessarily the case. You ask any community environmental group who has tried to do something or even a council that comes up against lots of barriers. I want to maybe broaden the point out a little bit. Is there anything your study tells us about how you can cultivate the will to do something and then how do you clear the way to exercise that will? We’re not just talking about a community. We are talking about these place-based consortia or the coalition of the willing if you will.
Fraser: Well, something that came through strongly, particularly in the people’s panel that we did on the smallscale citizens’ jury, we went into that with 22 people randomly selected from the Scottish population. One of them had heard of local or community energy. Just for clarity, when we say local energy, we’re thinking typically about local authority-led projects. When we say community energy, we’re talking about community-owned and community-developed and delivered.
Matt: And the rest had not heard of this?
Fraser: No idea. Absolutely no idea. So that jury or that people’s panel that we ran, we ran over four evening sessions. They were 2-2.5 hour sessions and by the end of it, people were delivering lots of recommendations. Numero uno among those recommendations was that there needs to be some kind of widescale promotion of local and community energy because you cannot get people to want to deliver projects or you cannot demystify a process if people don’t have a clue what it is in the first place. I think before we even think about how you mobilise will... because you’ll be the same, Matt. You’ve been working in this space. Becky, you’ve been working on local energy systems for yonks now. There are very few people in the world that you talk to, particularly about community involvement and community ownership of energy, who come back to you and say, ‘That sounds like a terrible idea.’ Most people think, ‘That sounds really, really good. We own energy locally, it generates revenue for us, we make a bit of money and maybe one day, we’ll be able to use the energy if Ofgem gets their finger out and fix the regulations on supply.’ People generally like the idea but nobody knows about it and certainly, that has to be then matched to mobilise that will with adequate resources distributed relatively evenly across the country with that capability and capacity-building. I think that point on letting people know first but then following that up with resources so that people, realistically, can get their projects done.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. The other key point I think that came out very strongly from this people’s panel was that during the sessions, we were basically talking to people about how local and community energy can be done in a way that it does include and benefit people in a fair way. We were really trying to understand how it could work for all people, particularly people who are typically excluded from energy system projects or from the energy system transition. That was our focus as well as the notion that it needs to be better promoted because people just didn’t know anything about it and didn’t know how to get involved. Although we were talking about local energy, one of the most agreed-upon statements was that with national government and local government – so across all levels of government – there needed to be conclusive and resounding support. This is something that needs to be supported and action taken on not just in those local areas but from national governments as well.
Matt: Okay, I’d like to pick up on that point then before we conclude around broadening this out beyond the usual suspects because I think that does two things here. One is what is it you would hope it starts to reach people who haven’t been reached and many of those individuals will need reaching? I think there’s a strong justice component to that. The second is that it will offer scale and momentum in terms of taking local climate action which, obviously, this pod is all about. So how do we go beyond the usual suspects? Fraser, you’ve identified awareness-raising. You’ve talked about levelling the playing field but I’d maybe like to get a little bit more specific because this is something on the back of the last pod around the social relations of retrofit. We were talking very specifically and saying that if you had a pot of money, which stakeholders would you target to then cascade down and reach households? It could be the local football team, the church, the Scouts or Girl Guides. It goes into recommendations for Scottish Government and others. How do you reach the so far unreachable?
Fraser: I think there are a couple of ways. The first is on that capacity and capability-building. It’s not anything really fancy or innovative. It involves funding development officers from the likes of Community Energy Scotland or Local Energy Scotland or even within local authorities to go out into those communities, whether that’s in the local sports teams, community centres or whatever it might be, to try and reach those people and build the ideas there. The second thing, and this is something that came out really, really strongly in a lot of the stakeholder engagement that we did, is that fuel poverty charities and social justice charities on the ground in these communities are crucial as trusted organisations that can reach people not typically reached by development trust associations who are putting up a wind turbine in the Highlands someplace. No offence. Great things. The problem with that, of course, is that we know from this pod and from speaking to South Seeds’ Poppy and Agnes that those organisations are really, really strapped. They rely on temporary, piecemeal, competitive funding to get things done. I think you could do a hell of a lot by providing more substantive, less competitive, less restrictive resources into organisations like those and building that institutional organisational capacity at a local level to help access people not typically accessed. That’s a general rule of thumb as well and bearing in mind that local authorities have some of that capability but they also could benefit a lot from 1) having their own energy projects that generate additional revenue and 2) having some of that additional connection to community organisations.
Matt: Yeah, and with that trusted intermediary or that trusted organisation, Fraser, a lot of that comes down to brand and it takes ages to build a brand. South Seeds has been around now for over ten years and it’s only at that point I think that most people I mention it to in the Southside say, ‘Yeah, I know them.’ You can’t build that overnight and that worries me if we’re trying to get 2030 net zero in Glasgow, Edinburgh and many others across the UK and far beyond. In order to build that brand and develop that legitimacy, we need to start building stuff now.
Rebecca: I will also say that as well as having that trusted source of information, it’s what information is being shared and how it’s being shared. One of the things that Fraser and I worked really hard on with this people’s panel was to make sure that we brought in people to share information in clear ways. In fact, all of the participants in this had red cards and so if somebody started talking using jargon or terms that were too complex, they could hold up their red card which I loved.
Matt: I think we need some of those.
Rebecca: Absolutely.
Matt: An amateur referee kit, Fraser. We’ll get that sorted [laughter].
Rebecca: We really challenged people and said, ‘You cannot use a graph.’ We had Calum Watkins who has been deeply involved in Glasgow Community Energy. He came on and explained the energy system transition from a centralised fossil-based system to where we are now without using a single graph. I mean we really challenged our contributors but the fact of the matter is that information was presented to people in a way that they could understand and engage with it and also in a way that made them get it. Just like you were saying, Matt, about presenting information to politicians, the same is true for sharing information with the public.
Matt: I actually don’t think there’s a great deal of difference if I’m honest and that isn’t doing a disservice to politicians or, by extension, the public [laughter]. I think it’s a similar language if I’m honest.
Rebecca: I think so and I think the power of that communication is so strong. We had one of the members of our people’s panel share a story and said that when she came into this, she didn’t know really much about energy. She’d looked at wind turbines and thought they were really alien, ugly, horrible and unsightly things and wished they weren’t in Scotland. Three sessions in, she said, ‘I get it. I understand them now. I understand why we’ve got them. I want to invest. I’ve talked to my family about how we could maybe invest and get involved in share ownerships.’ She just completely changed her perspective on energy, renewable energy and the role she could play in the energy system. I think that’s so important. So part of it is the information and how it’s presented and then the other side of that is... ‘Okay, I want to engage but how do I engage? What’s the path in?’ That might be saying, ‘Okay, how we even start a community energy project?’ There’s a lot of information there but for a lot of people, they just didn’t even know where to access that information or what is out there. So I think we need better pointers to some of those solutions but the other side of that I think is better business models, no-interest loans and financial support to allow people to engage and participate in this as well. It’s a whole kind of mixture of things. There’s no single, silver bullet. It is about reaching people and then it’s providing the mechanisms that overcome those barriers to engagement.
Matt: Well, you’ve sold it to me [laughter] and, hopefully, you’ve sold it to a few others. I thought that was absolutely fascinating. Thank you for uncovering that and I’m guessing we’ll hear the results relatively soon. Will it be available with Regen and others?
Fraser: It will be. I have definitely finished writing it [laughter].
Matt: What I’m prodding at is that if our listeners are wanting to learn more, I guess it will be out there in the online ether in the not-too-distant future.
Fraser: It will. Becky is writing the brief on the people’s panel and there’s a blog coming with that. There will be a blog coming with the main report and the main report will be out shortly once it’s all been sent through, signed off and all that good stuff. So you’ll have it soon enough.
[Music flourish]
Matt: I feel a whole episode coming on about citizens’ juries and people’s panels. You guys have obviously been bitten by the bug [laughter]. Maybe that’s for a future episode. Thank you both. Now, Fraser, why don’t you pivot nicely now from guest to host?
Fraser: Yeah, a fascinating discussion and really one of the better ones that we’ve had recently.
Matt: They were good guests. They were good.
Fraser: They were.
Matt: Very informed [laughter].
Fraser: Apart from that Scottish guy [laughter]. Thank you very much. You’ve been listening to Local Zero. Please take two seconds if you can – you definitely can – to subscribe to the pod. Hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to us and if you haven’t already, go and find and follow us on Twitter @LocalZeroPod to get involved with the discussions there. Also, email us at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com if you want to share some longer thoughts but for now, thank you and goodbye.
Matt: Goodbye.
Rebecca: Bye.
[Music flourish]
Transcribed by
PODTRANSCRIBE