Guest blog: Move Your Money Into Community Energy

Agamemnon Otero, Co-Founder & Project Manager of Brixton Energy, tells us about this exciting new project that combines community empowerment, addresses climate change and offers an alternative way to invest your money.

“This week I closed my ecological stock market investment fund and moved it to a real ecological investment I could see. Brixton Energy Solar 1 is a local inner city socially responsible renewable energy project investment with better financial and social rewards.” Jason Neylon, 35, London

“Just knowing some of those electrons are turning on my lights is awesome, and as a bonus I get a return on my investment.” Katia Wengraf, 28, Loughbrough estate resident and investor

Move Your Money is taking great strides to give people investment options other than the big banks. Community renewable energy projects like Brixton Energy Solar 1 are fast becoming an investment options to the “Big Six” who control 96% of the UK energy market.

You have been locked out of the energy market. Not only have you and I been locked out of investing in our energy, we have been force-fed fossil fuel. Investment into community-owned renewable energy unlocks the door to ownership, the type of energy generated, where it comes from, who makes it, and the amount of carbon reduced. Co-operatives are not-for-profit organisations that are jointly owned and operated by a group of people for their mutual benefit. They are democratic enterprises, operating with a one member, one vote policy. These co-operative models allow people to buy up to 20,000 shares in a project. Here, larger invested shareholders do not get to steer projects for personal gain since whether they have one or 20,000 shares, each has only one vote.

Although investment into renewable energy projects has hit at an all time high in the last 10 years, 78% of global energy consumption is still fossil fuels. Equity and debt finance of multinational utility firms, developers, institutional investors, and banks whose main objective is to provide fiduciary profits, constitute 90% of this sector. Renewable energy generated from the sun, wind, tide and biofuels make up 19% of this. Renewable energy projects are funded by these same corporate models, and corporate investors.

Renewable energy is not being developed by multinational utility companies at a rate that scientists believe will offset climate destabilization. Simply put, the rate of return to risk-ratio for size and technology of renewable energy projects is not attractive to corporate investors. While governments try to promote renewable energy projects by offering subsidies like the Feed in Tariff (FiT) to make investment returns more attractive, they are not giving anywhere close to what they gave to oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries in tax relief. The main governmental party argument is, “We need to keep giving the fossil fuel industry incentives for energy security”. In the current recalibration of governmental incentives there are no provisions for community owned renewable energy. But surely nothing is more secure than the proliferation of decentralized energy generated from clean fuel technologies. And it can be done,- Denmark for instance has 40% community owned renewable energy compared to UK’s 1%.

Here and now in London a share offer is open until March 20
Brixton Energy Solar 1 is the first inner-city co-operatively owned power station built on social housing and has also pioneered a self-sustaining, financially viable Community Energy Efficiency Fund.

Visible inner-city projects like Brixton Energy Solar 1 allow passive viewers to contemplate and control personal energy consumption. Facilitating a share offer for end user individuals in the community to invest in, and receiving financial returns builds further awareness. Generating and maintaining a Community Energy Efficiency Fund from a portion of the annual revenue allows practical application, a hands on re-skilling and energy efficiency education. These three elements, generating, educating and investing allow individuals to be part of the solution to a low carbon future. Empowered individuals joined as communities find more time for contemplating change, which in turn triangulates and resolves indifference.

Move your money into Brixton Energy Solar 1

• Be at the start and a part of community owned renewable energy in London.
• Be a part of the first community owned renewable energy on social housing.
• Help set up a Community Energy Efficiency Fund that will run for 25 years.
• Help offset 20 tonnes of carbon per annum.
• Receive up to 3% return on your money.

“How can I do this?”

Read through the offer and invest £250- £20,000 by March 20. If £250 is out of your range a bunch of friends can chip in. Just designate one as share-holder. Conversely, if £20,000 is no skin off your back, consider allocating your annual share payment to our Community Energy Efficiency fund. Last week two people convinced their employers to match fund their investment. Please consider this if it applies to you.

Originally published in March 2012 at moveyourmoney.org.uk