The United Kingdom

Similarly to other European countries, the United Kingdom has implemented legislation with renewable energy targets as a policy goals. In the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 20% of the 1990 levels by 2050. To deliver on this commitment, the government sets five- yearly carbon budgets that run up to 2032 (Ofgem, 2017). Despite these commitments, the UK still has a low share of energy coming from renewable energy and ranks among the ‘laggards’ within the EU: whereas the EU average of energy consumption coming from renewable energy was 16.4%, the UK ranked 24th out of 28 EU member states with 8.4% of its energy consumption from renewable energy (European Commission, 2017).

When it comes to describing energy governance arrangement, the UK is characterized as large-scale, centrally-planned or private-sector led and driven sector with a limited citizen involvement in energy planning and development (Kern, Kuzemko and Mitchell, 2014; Walker, Devine-Wright, Evans and Hunter, 2007). According to Mitchell, “a decentralized energy system with a high proportion of renewables, appears to be only envisioned by the UK government if it is linked to large companies” (Mitchell, 2010, p. 134).._However,

from 2000 onwards, there has been increased political interest in community renewables in the UK, evidenced by supportive statements in policy documents issued by successive UK governments, noting the potential of the sector and offering a range of supportive initiatives (Strachan et al., 2015, p. 101). In this context of growing interest for community initiatives, dozens of projects have been developed over the last decade. Among them, several initiatives want to combine energy generation and actions to tackle fuel poverty. These aims were at the origins of Meadows Ozone Energy Services Limited’s (MOZES) creation.

2.1. Meadows Ozone Energy Services Limited (MOZES)

The story of Meadows Ozone Energy Services Limited (MOZES) began with an unsuccessful bid in 2005 for Living Landmarks National Lottery funding with the view to help the Meadows become Nottingham’s first inner-city low-carbon neighbourhood (Hannon, 2012). Following this bid, a steering group was formed with representatives from Meadow Partnership Trust (MPT), Nottingham Energy Partnership (NEP), Nottingham City Council and local Residents Associations, the local MP (Alan Simpson) and National Energy Action (NEA), a national charity undertaking a range of activities to address the causes and treat the symptoms of fuel poverty. The support of the latter was a key element for the development of the project. Indeed, NEA provided funds to conduct a feasibility study for establishing an Energy Service Company ESCo in 2007. At that time, the Meadows was a relatively deprived neighbourhood of England. In 2007, 4.4% of the area’s residents were claiming job seekers benefits, compared to an average of 2.3% for the whole of England (Monstadt, 2007). Furthermore, in 2007/8 the average net household weekly income was approximately £400, compared to £490 for the East Midlands area. In October 2009, MOZES was constituted as a company limited by guarantee. During the same year, members of the steering group in partnership with British Gas won a £615,000 grant from the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) low-carbon communities competition. Following this, the organization installed 67 photovoltaic systems between February and April 2010.

A key success factor was the ability of MOZES to develop several partnerships with both local and national actors. Within the first category, the MPT played an important role for the development of ideas and business plans before the grant received by DECC. Another key actor was the former local MP who shared his experience and practical knowledge of community energy initiatives (he is member of several other energy cooperatives in the United Kingdom). Within the category of national actors, a significant contribution was brought by NEA. This organization shared its expertise with MOZES founding members.

Two elements have played a critical role in the limits met by the MOZES project: the difficulties to get involved with the project inhabitants of the Meadows and the policy modifications with the feed-in tariff (FiT) becoming incompatible with the previously received grant. The difficulties in community mobilization were first experienced when MOZES boards sent a leaflet to inform the 4,000 households of the Meadows that sixty solar installations were going to be offered for free to inhabitants of the area. Whereas members of the board were expecting to get a high number of applications, they only received 17 expressions of interest from the community members. Therefore they had to contact other inhabitants for the remaining solar panels. Another difficulty in community mobilization was encountered when trying to fill all the seats of the board with inhabitants. According to one of the founding members, “every year it is a tough challenge to make sure that we are going to have enough inhabitants of the Meadows within the board.”1

Regarding the policy modification, it has been outlined by one of the board members that when starting the project, the grant and FiT payments were supposed to be compatible. The income stream generated through the payments was planned to be used to install new solar panels and to reduce fuel poverty within

the Meadows. However, in April 2010, the European Commission decided that the FiT constitutes state aid. Following this decision, the DECC determined that any organization that had receive any public funding for their renewable installation above the state aid threshold (when combined with anticipated FiT payments) was prohibited from claiming the FiT (Payne and Steeden, 2012). Whereas this decision might be considered as a simple translation of EU legislation, a member of the Meadows board analysed this policy choice as “a restrictive interpretation of EU rules because it is not about market distortion because the MOZES project is not big enough to be market distorter and it is not a commercial enterprise, it’s a social enterprise.”2 _{Some analysts}

developed similar views about this decision, outlining that “particularly when considered in the context of EC decisions on comparable schemes elsewhere in the EU, it is far from clear that the UK scheme should constitute state aid at the level of FiT generators such as community projects” (Payne and Steeden, 2012). Following this decision, only two out of 57 photovoltaic installations were eligible to FiT payments.