Co-op Congress in Birmingham

Co-op Congress is a yearly conference for the professional Co-operative movement. I’ve attended on behalf of several organisations in the past five years. This years Co-op Congress was held in Birmingham. As an avid Co-operator I was keen to have some Birmingham Co-operatives featured at this years Congress. Congress had been held in Birmingham a couple of years ago, but no Brummie Co-ops were part of the programme. I reached out to the organisers when I realised that Co-op Congress was happening in Birmingham again this year. Fortunately for me the organisers had taken feedback about featuring local co-ops on board and I was asked to talk on an energy panel about my experiences with Community Energy Birmingham (CEB).

Community Energy Panel Session

On Saturday the 15th of June I represented Community Energy Birmingham on a panel with other people in the co-operative energy sector, which was facilitated by John Robb. John Robb is a punk musician and journalist with an interest in co-operatives. Dr Vicky Dunn represented Grimsby Community Energy, Michaela Cryar from Younity, and Cllr Eva Murray who is the Campaigns Officer for the Co-operative Party.

My experiences with Community Energy Birmingham

In the session about Community Energy John asked us about our individual experiences of working within the sector. I spoke about my time on the board of Community Energy Birmingham. When I joined the board of Community Energy Birmingham, the Community Benefit had already successfully installed solar panels on a community building in Birmingham with an external grant from by coincidence, my employers E.On. In the early days of my time on the board, CEB attempted to create a community share offer for a co-operatively owned wind turbine in Birmingham. Unfortunately, this plan was scuppered, when we realised that the predicted wind speeds we had from the Met Office did not agree with our own testing on the site. Scrapping the plan was very difficult for us because we put a lot of time and effort into the project. I felt it was important to talk about the negative side and the challenges that community energy has faced.

We did move on at CEB and we did successfully complete a Community Share Offer for Solar Arrays in the city at a Ski Centre and a community building in the city. We then were able to complete two more Community Share Offers for Solar Arrays in the city including a social housing HQ and a football stadium.

Sadly, the landscape for community energy became a lot more difficult with the ending of the Feed in Tariff. The Feed in Tariff made the three solar community share offers economically viable. The Feed in Tariff guaranteed a rate of electricity for every unit of electricity generated and also a rate for electricity exported to the national grid paid for by the Government.

A long period of wilderness followed for CEB as the community energy landscape recalibrated. In good news, Community Energy Birmingham has recently obtained some funding to deliver Free Energy Advice to those living in Birmingham. We have begun delivering this project and I am one of the Energy Advisors, delivering both video call assessments and in person energy advice sessions. This project is in the early stages of delivery and we are excited about how it will develop.

Wider Questions for Community Energy 

Once all of the panellists had spoken about their experiences we then had a wider discussion about the community energy sector. We had common problems including lack of capital and difficulty forming relationships with organisations such as local authorities. At the time of Congress, we were in the midst of a general election campaign. We spoke hopefully about how a Labour (and Co-op Government) would be helpful to the community energy sector. Now we’ve had the General Election and the new Labour Government has spoken positively about dramatically increasing community energy. We had a short Q and A and then the panel session ended. We received very positive feedback from those attending, who found our session informative and compelling.

The rest of Congress

Outside of the community energy session there was a lot going at at Co-op Congress. There were sessions on co-operative housing, creative co-ops and other issues. My personal favourite session was a fringe event hosted by Save Birmingham.

Save Birmingham is a campaign to save community assets from building sold by Birmingham City Council. It was great to have a local, Birmingham based campaign highlighted at Co-op Congress. My write up of the Save Birmingham fringe event appeared in Co-op News. It was also fantastic to meet new co-operators and speak with people from Co-ops such as Central Co-op and Co-op Group, who I already work with.

Final thought

To finish this blog, it was fantastic for me on a personal note to talk about my experiences of community energy with CEB. We’ve had successes and failures, and we don’t often talk about them. By talking and learning from others we can hopefully have more successes than failures in the future.

P.S if you live in Birmingham and are interested in a free energy assessment of your property. You can find out more about Community Energy Birmingham’s free energy advice service here. 

Photo credit for photos 1, and 4 go to Jas Sansi Photography/Co-operatives UK. Photo 2 was taken by Vicky Dunn’s son and photo 3 was taken by myself.