Local MP supporting community energry

Sarah Edwards, Member of Parliament for Tamworth, a constituency which includes many villages, visited Whittington Village Hall recently to learn about the work of Staffordshire Community Energy (SCE), a Community Benefit Society which has owned the solar panels on both the Village Hall and St Giles Hospice since 2011. The panels provide free solar power for both buildings saving the two organisations an estimated £12000 in total over the past 13 years while helping to reduce the parish’s carbon footprint.

The funds to provide the solar panels were raised from local residents who bought shares in the project, becoming joint owners of the PV systems, and receiving a modest rate of interest. SCE’s work has since expanded across the County and it has installed over 300kW of solar power on the roofs of Royal Stoke Hospital and County Hospital, Stafford cutting their energy costs and carbon emissions. An additional £300,000 was raised from a further share offering to fund these systems.

SCE is currently exploring further NHS installations through a grant from the Community Energy Fund, aiming to enhance their impact in the region. The surplus from SCE’s income supports the Keep Warm Keep Well (KWKW) scheme, funding Beat the Cold, Staffordshire’s Fuel Poverty advice agency, to provide advice and support for patients who have conditions which are caused or exacerbated by living in cold and/or damp conditions. KWKW has proved an outstanding success, winning national awards, including from the British Medical Journal, and SCE is now working with hospital trusts and primary care providers to expand the solar scheme and the KWKW project across Staffordshire.

Sarah Edwards, MP, said “It was fantastic to see how much SCE have achieved and how much progress they have made in reducing the carbon footprint of the village. I have promised to support them in the projects they are investigating and to encourage my ministerial colleagues to look at them as a model for future schemes to achieve net zero carbon emissions areas across the UK.”

Mike Kinghan, resident of Whittington, Director and co-founder of SCE said: “We were very pleased to welcome Sarah to the village to see and hear about the exciting work SCE has done with local organisations and about its plans for the future. Community ownership of renewables is a fantastic way to build support for the vital cause of getting to net zero carbon emissions and we are delighted to have Sarah’s support.”

Sarah Edwards supporting community energy in Tamworth

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