to celebrate with you the power of
collective grassroots action to drive
change and things that we as local
people from Plymouth believe in and want
to see change in when I came to Plymouth
my landlady of the time repeatedly
asserted that Plymouth was the graveyard
of all ambition a great place for
surfing great place for lifestyle but
not a great place if you want to drive
change stop with me because I’m a Nature
Boy I’m an environmentalist I want to
and what makes me tick is driving change
not in any specific area but generally
the environment that’s a big piece but I
wanted to see something about and so
this that statement sticks with me and I
want to provide to you some evidence of
why it’s fundamentally wrong in 2013 100
people came together with a shared sense
of ideal and a shared sense of mission
as to what they wanted to change they
wanted to fuel a local energy revolution
they came together with a shared sense
what they were collective group any
collective group and they shared three
things they all wanted to fundamentally
shift issues around affordable warmth
they wanted to challenge that they
wanted to change the fact that regularly
people in Plymouth were having to choose
between eating and eating I wanted to
take better advantage of the solar the
Pens blount bountiful solar energy that
falls are out beautiful sunny city and
capture that into clean green renewable
energy and they wanted to challenge the
incumbent corporates there come we
supply in a very poor inexpensive way
our basic needs of heat and power now
the issues associated with the
frustrations with the
six something well articulated many of
you will share them with me the issues
around our need to wean ourselves off
fossil fuels are also well articulated
and that move towards a renewable
low-carbon future needs no further
articulation here but the issues around
fuel poverty are more poorly understood
more deeply hidden but the fact is that
in 1415 the winter that year 44,000
people died in the UK from what recorded
preventable excess winter death thirty
percent of those died because they were
in a home that was too cold just here in
Plymouth just within our city fifteen
thousand households live in that
situation of fuel poverty they are
regularly having to make those choices
those very difficult choices between
heating and eating that means and in
certain wards that gets up to twenty
eight percent some averages 13 / 7
certain words of the city that’s
twenty-eight percent to one in three
four households when you’re walking down
so those hundred people came together in
April of 2013 and defined what they felt
to be a different future they defined a
future that was divided around
cooperation they define it an
organization called Plymouth energy
community cooperative at its heart the
structure where every member has a vote
in how that organization goes forward
every member gets to vote as to the
board directors who will control the
direction of that business they had a
simple mission which was to take
revenues from so locally owned solar
power solar power stations solar power
solutions and drive those revenues to
support a fuel poor in the city they
believed the ownership was important
that if we were going to make a driver
change in these difficult areas we
needed a different paradigm a different
model
and we know that people care about the
things they own so let’s give them the
power to own their energy infrastructure
and take choices about that and take
choices about how we generate our energy
now we use it from that Plymouth energy
community was born those simple ideals
that simple collective action that
well thus answer that question in a
different way where we naive absolutely
were we nearly naive have we got it all
right no we’ve got lots of things wrong
but is it working absolutely is working
just last year 2016 the ideals of those
first hundred people landed with 3,500
households in this city receiving advice
which will save them four million pounds
cuz the lifetimes of the safe to that
advice and the measures of energy
efficiency and renewables at that lands
as four million pounds staying here with
in Plymouth as a result of the ambition
of those 100 people it resulted in
70,000 pounds if small-scale fuel debt
from you know fuel poor households
across the city being written off
through a relationship the Plymouth
energy community has established with a
charitable trust as 200 45,000 pounds of
fuel debt being written off between 300
pounds and 9,000 pounds worth of debt is
alleviating that burden from how there
are some of most vulnerable households
in the city it resulted in the
equivalent of eight football pitches
worth of solar panels being placed on 32
school roofs across the city from our
smallest one here at Shekinah mission in
bass tree was just ten panels to our
largest one here Ernest Ethel sixteen
thousand solar panels all coming from
those hundred people’s initial vision
and mission
that generates 47 thousand megawatts out
of hours of clean green electricity last
year that’s enough electricity coming
from locally owned energy infrastructure
to make 43,000 cups of tea something we
are very proud of so how have we done
that well we’re a corporate eight
cooperative and we’re a community
benefit society so we’ve done it by
collaboration by working and building
partnerships with those that share our
values we’ve grown our membership from
those hundred whose original 100 is now
1500 we have grown a staff team of
brilliant staff team from one and a half
people half a person to 10 people we
built a strong partnership with the
local authority and 45 other
organizations around the Devon and
Cornwall area who share our mission and
share our values a desire to support
those vulnerable households with energy
issues we’ve partnered with the devil so
through a partnership with British Gas
we landed 3.2 million pounds worth of
grant that came into the city that
wouldn’t come here otherwise and that’s
resulted in seven hundred houses getting
external wall insulation at big cozy
blanket around their houses which means
that Theresa here and her daughter no
longer will now save about in the order
of 400 pounds per year of their energy
bill but more importantly to resist
daughter no longer stuffers with the
colds and flus and the circulatory
issues that she did year-on-year in her
and we’ve built and articulate a
500 of our members have invested between
50 pounds and a hundred thousand pounds
in our solar installations we’ve sold
them community shares to the value of
2.4 million pounds and we’ve used that
community
capital to leverage in over four million
pounds of social investment back into
the city to help us own are locally
owned energy infrastructure we’ve
offered them on six percent return on
their investment a very fair return in
our view and for that they get obviously
their interest payments but they get to
share in our mission they get a vote in
the direction of our business in the
future and they get to share in the
outcomes they’ve invested in us because
we are about community benefit we are
putting people before profit so your job
is if you hear statements like Plymouth
is the graveyard of ambition or anything
else of that inclination is to go away
from tonight and recount the stories of
all the people in the front row and of
Plymouth energy community and the local
thank you [Applause]