Collaboration & commitment at it’s core

Don’t you love it when plans come together? With Innovation, Collaboration & Leadership as the overarching themes of our conferences this year, it’s always good to see it happening in the real world. This post by Speaker Jamie Broderick illustrates what that looks like in practice. He writes:

This £17 million loan from UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) to West Suffolk Council for its net zero programme shows how local councils can support small projects below the UKIB's £5 million transaction minimum by packaging them in an overall programme of work. UKIB lends to local authority projects at gilts + 40 basis points.

Interestingly, one of the projects in West Suffolk's portfolio of decarbonisation projects is its "Solar for Business" solar leasing scheme, which installs rooftop solar for free, reducing carbon emissions while saving the businesses money. Plus, the council makes a small surplus that it uses to support other projects.

These solar leasing arrangements are helpful in overcoming a number of obstacles for property owners considering solar installations: upfront cost, long payback, vendor/product selection, project risk and complexity, ongoing maintenance. They are mostly applied to larger projects, but the residential sector is growing in some global markets.

Could councils be implementing "Solar for Homes" schemes, too?

#retrofit #renewableenergy #localgov Room151 #greenfinance

The devil, as they say, is in the detail so read all about it here.