Communities all around the country come together and achieve amazing things. In the village where I’ve grown up we lacked a shop which meant that we had to travel to the nearest town to buy small things like milk, or bread. As a community my village clubbed together and built a village shop staffed by volunteers and a paid manager. Communities already solve their own problems all around the country, so there is no reason why they shouldn’t be able to take control of their own energy needs and create a more renewable future.

The campaign that we as a group envisaged would start with parish councils reaching out to the community institutions in their area, the doctor’s surgeries, schools, retirement homes, and hospitals which serve them, and asking them to house solar cells, and wind turbines on their sites. To fund this the parish council would encourage the community to buy shares in the renewable energy that is produced, and asking for part funding from local business.

The spare energy that is generated can be sold to the grid, and profits ploughed back into the local community who funded the energy project. This means that both the community and the institutions that serve it will benefit.

This campaign would be a grassroots campaign for the co-operative party, it would require us to make alliances in our community, and sell our idea to those who do not know about us or our ideals. These campaigns should start in rural areas, where there is more of sense of community, and these projects are already quite common. After seeing our success here we could look to spread the idea of community energy to more urban areas.