Connecting communities through energy sharing
YouGov polling commissioned by E.ON shows energy sharing has surprising potential for connecting communities.
We are living in increasingly polarised times. The last decade has seen economic and political divisions open up in the UK both at national and local levels, and the Khan Review published in March this year pointed to a national backdrop of “overall declining civic engagement as well as declining trust and participation in democracy and its institutions.”
This affects all of us, and though the causes are complex, we know that people across the country want to feel connected to their communities, and that the UK is stronger when they do.
Whether it’s starting a conversation with a neighbour, founding a five-a-side league, or getting involved in local politics, every one of us can do something to build up our community and bring the UK together. For our part as an energy supplier to millions of customers across the UK and a leading employer in the industry, we’re conscious of our role in improving the communities we work in, and are excited to explore a new way of connecting people and the public institutions that serve them: Energy Sharing Communities.
What can energy sharing do for a community?
Energy sharing is a straightforward idea. By installing solar panels on the roofs of public buildings such as schools, hospitals, libraries, and churches, the services our communities rely on can generate their own free electricity and raise additional funds by selling surplus at a good price to local households.
In a nationally representative survey of 2,000 people we commissioned from YouGov, 85% of respondents said that generating and selling electricity from rooftop solar is a good way for public services like schools and hospitals to raise additional funds, compared to just 4% who said it was not.
This isn’t especially surprising. For communities, energy sharing is a win-win situation. Not only does it mean that public services enjoy energy security and better funding, but local people get to buy green power from a place they trust. What we didn’t expect when we commissioned this polling were energy sharing’s less tangible benefits.
A staggering 77% of the people asked said that they would feel “more proud of and connected to [their] community knowing that local services like schools, hospitals, churches, and libraries were powering local homes through rooftop solar”. This is compared to only 9% who said they would not.
At a time when we are increasingly worried about the growing divisions between us, more than three quarters of people think those gaps could be made smaller through an intervention that would also make valuable contributions to public services, energy security, the net zero transition, and individual households’ finances. No wonder 93% of people say the core concept of energy sharing – installing solar panels on public buildings to help power local communities – is a good idea. And perhaps best of all: we can set this virtuous circle in motion with little more than a change of policy.
How we can harness energy sharing to connect communities
One of the most attractive things about bringing energy sharing communities to the UK is that they would not require any new major infrastructure or government investment. In fact, we could make them possible with just a simple tweak to existing policy.
As it currently stands, if a public building is generating its own power and selling it locally, that electricity will be subject to transmission costs and other levies as if it had been sent to the high voltage grid before reaching local households. But this doesn’t reflect the reality that the electricity actually flows directly from the prosumer (a school or hospital) to the consumer without using the high voltage grid at all.
By changing existing policy to reflect this and remove these unnecessary costs, the UK could make energy sharing financially viable for thousands of potential prosumers and make solar power a major component of the country’s energy transition. That’s why we’re working to set up pilots in the UK, and are doing everything we can to demonstrate energy sharing's unique potential not just for connecting members of our communities to cheaper, greener power, but for connecting us to each other.
To find out more about energy sharing communities, take a look at: How we hope to empower communties across the UK.