Community Energy Literature Review

“Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached USD $5.5 trillion in the seven years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement”, according to the report Banking on Climate Chaos (2022). It was published by a group of environmental and campaigning organisations, and its topics include the commitments of banks to fossil fuel finance, their policies, and fossil fuel expansion and trends. The group’s website lists the twelve banks which have done most to finance fossil fuels globally and data are provided for sixty banks with the sums involved for each year from 2016 to 2022. The policies of the banks are summarised in terms of projects, expansion, and phase-out. The funding data can also be searched for each of the several hundred companies supported. A graphic shows the funding flows from ten key banks to twenty top fossil fuel companies. Data on financing are also given for sectors such as tar sands, Artic oil and gas, fracking, and coal mining. An Oil and Gas Poli...

The Green Savings Bonds issued by National Savings and Investments (NS&I) have been newsworthy recently because the interest offered to purchasers reached its highest ever level at 4.2% fixed for three years. Collier (2023) explains that the funds raised from UK savers will be used to help the Government hit its net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050. Writing in This is Money , Magnus (2023) provides some background to current interest in the bonds. “Since the first issue of the green bonds was launched in October 2021 paying just 0.65 per cent, only £300million of a £15billion target has been achieved.” In view of the low initial interest rates the reluctance to invest was perhaps unsurprising. The latest rate rise makes the bonds competitive with a number of other options, and they are seen as a secure investment. According to NS&I (2023), “All money invested in NS&I is passed onto HM Treasury and contributes towards government spending. Money invested in Green Savi...

  The cost of meeting the UK’s net zero greenhouse gas target has been estimated by the Climate Change Committee “on conservative assumptions” at “up to 1-2% of GDP” in the years to 2050, when the annual cost would reach about £50 billion (CCC, 2020). The gross domestic product of the UK has been estimated for 2020 as “1.96 trillion British pounds, a fall of approximately 216 billion pounds compared to 2019” (Statista, 2021).  Fiona Harvey wrote in The Guardian that the “UK pensions sector accounts for about £2.6tn in funds” and noted the potential influence of these funds on investment and business should they invest in “lower-carbon portfolios” (Harvey, 2021). In view of the size of pension funds, it is not surprising that some pressure groups have sought to influence the ways in which they are invested. One such group is Make My Money Matter which describes itself as “a people-powered campaign fighting for a world where we all know where our pension money goes, and whe...

    According to the Corporate Finance Institute, a carbon offset “refers to the units earned by firms that have implemented a greenhouse gases reduction project. It is issued by a board or government authority, and one offset credit is given for every ton of greenhouse gas that is reduced, stored, or avoided.” These offsets may then be sold “to an investor, government, or NGO to offset their emissions or for investment purposes.” The market for such offsets “enables private investors, governments, non-governmental organizations, and businesses to voluntarily purchase carbon offsets to offset their emissions. The largest category of buyers comprises private firms that purchase carbon offsets for resale or investment” (CFI, 2021). Blaufelder et al., (2020) claim that “Natural climate solutions (NCS), a category including project types such as reforestation, avoided deforestation, improved forest management, and agroforestry, have grown faster than any other project catego...

  The subject of this post is the heating and insulation of homes in the UK, with particular regard to the capital cost of reducing carbon emissions. The costs estimated for homes will be compared with those of other ways of achieving carbon reduction. While the calculations which appear below are based as far as possible on realistic figures, they should be regarded as for illustration only. UK Government policies on domestic energy and retrofit A policy paper on the 2020 UK Budget stated that “The heating of our homes will need to be virtually zero carbon by 2050, replacing natural gas and other fossil fuels with low carbon alternatives – likely to be primarily a mix of green gas, heat pumps and heat networks” (Treasury, 2020). As part of an economic statement issued in July, Chancellor Rishi Sunak outlined plans for green home upgrades. Reporting on the details of the plan, Naomi Schraer wrote that vouchers “worth up to £5,000 will be issued to homeowners in England to m...

Many projects undertaken by community energy groups require substantial capital, so that business models and fund raising methods can be of interest. Following their declarations of climate emergencies, some local authorities are discussing cooperative action with community energy groups, making project funding an issue of joint concern. The authors of a report on crowdfunding for the public sector [1] refer to the development of a strong UK alternative finance sector since the 2008 banking crisis, with a significant contribution from regulated investment-based crowdfunding. They note that at the time of writing their report   the only local authority to use this form of financing has been Swindon Borough Council, and ask whether the public sector more generally could benefit from it. Grant funding “enabled a cross-sector research team to work with six public sector organizations to assess the suitability of crowdfunding for socially and/or environmentally beneficial...