Local Energy Action Force (LEAF)

Project Description:

This innovative pilot will engage five local communities aiming to generate and trade sustainable energy. The project will recruit one part-time Project Manager and three Project Officers; recruit 5 clusters of 3-5 ‘project champion’ volunteers; deliver an intensive programme of  activities engaging citizens at community events / on the doorstep / through online / print media; build CEP’s capacity as a hub for five key projects acting on sustainable energy – co-ordinating and enabling access to support, skills, knowledge and experience & sharing learning; Deliver capacity building / dissemination sessions, plus fact-finding trips to other community projects. LEAF creates an Action Force of officers and volunteers to drive projects moving Pembrokeshire towards a low carbon economy.

Project Outcomes:

The Project aimed to support communities to work with existing energy providers, generators and local businesses to identify novel and innovative opportunities for local supply and sale of renewable energy. The communities involved worked with large local businesses to consider joint collaboration for production and private sale agreements. The project provided a series of capacity building days, study tours and digital workshops to the community volunteers. Some were pre-designed to support the development specifically of community owned renewable energy and others were provided in response to identified want and need from communities such as the study tour to Ty Solar, a local energy efficient housing company. The Project provided over 400 hours of volunteer support, engagement and capacity development through the series of workshops, study tours and events as well as individually through meetings. A core aspect of the delivery of the project was to work with communities to develop their capacity in order for them to access pre-existing support from organisations such as WGES and PAVS. This was achieved to some extend in three of the projects communities.

‘’ By working with the communities in the LEAF project we have supported the increase of embedded capacity within each one. This has enabled them to work towards the development of locally owned renewable energy and local supply chains’’

Lessons Learned:

The team tell us that there was a lot to achieve in a short period of time, and ‘this caused a major problem for the project as the project budget was heavy on staff time which required secure match funding in order to fully utilise’. They tell us that the average length of development from the ground up for a community owned renewable energy project is several years.