Ideas for change: Decentralising power

Woking, Stoke-on-Trent and Haringey are just three of the local authorities taking charge of their own energy supplies

As fuel prices rocket and climate change sets in, many local areas are taking steps towards energy self-sufficiency. Councils are hoping to reclaim the glory days of the 1870s, when the likes of Joseph Chamberlain, mayor of Birmingham, revived his local economy through the municipalisation of local energy and water.

Woking council – dencentralising power
The original local energy borough, Woking, began decentralising its energy supply back in 1999. It set up an energy services company and now has a number of local power stations providing heat, electricity and cooling, which it sells to commercial and council buildings in the town centre. The profits are used to fund the council’s sustainability plans. It was the first local authority to combine solar technology with combined heat and power systems and in doing so, made a local sheltered housing complex, Brockhill, 100% renewable in energy. The programme has helped the borough reduce its carbon emissions dramatically and it now has no council residents living in fuel poverty.

Stoke-on-Trent council – turning waste into energy
Stoke-on-Trent has ambitions for the town to become energy self-sufficient and take back local control of its energy infrastructure. Its main aim in seeking greater power over its energy supply is to protect its world-famous ceramics industry from fluctuations in global energy prices. One of the council’s key initiatives is to use the town’s waste to produce bio gas through anaerobic digestion, which the ceramic factories can then buy at a fixed price. The city is also using warm water from the its flooded underground coal mines, borrowing a successful idea implemented by the Dutch city of Heerlen, which opened the world’s first mine-water power station in 2008.

Haringey council – enabling green enterprise
Haringey was the first local authority in the UK to sign up to the Friends of the Earth’s pledge to reduce borough-wide carbon emissions by 40% by 2020. It created a Carbon Commission to help make it a reality and is focused on launching local enterprises and skilling up a population of community energy entrepreneurs. It is working at different scales with local groups and neighbouring councils, and plans include a cross-borough co-operative network focused on retrofitting housing, and a low-carbon enterprise district. The council has gone into partnership with Durham University’s Energy Institute, which will help it design new low-carbon approaches and business models.

Berlin and Hamburg – citizens taking back the power
A broad alliance of citizens’ groups in the German capital have been campaigning to reclaim Berlin’s energy systems for the people. They want 100% decentralised, renewable energy for their city, and a publicly owned utility company that will put fuel poverty at its heart. A referendum to turn their proposals into a draft law took place last November, and, though it resulted in 83% saying yes to the initiative, the vote failed. Hamburg, meanwhile, has now voted in favour of municipalising its own grid.

Kirklees council – installing solar panels everywhere
In the Yorkshire borough of Kirklees, the council was responsible for the biggest domestic solar programme in the UK of its time, through the European-funded Sun Cities project. Panels were installed in more than 500 households – in particular social housing and care homes – in Huddersfield. Buildings were refurbished or built from scratch to high environmental standards. On completion in 2006, the borough had installed 4.9% of the total solar electricity in the UK.

Bristol council – owner of a wind farm
Bristol council became the first local authority in the UK to own a wind farm last year when it installed two wind turbines on a former oil tanker site in the city’s Avonmouth Port area. The farm will eventually power around 2,500 households and help the city reduce its carbon footprint as well as generate income of up to £200,000. Bristol has been named European Green Capital in 2015, recognising the city’s green credentials.

• This article first appeared on the Guardian Local Leaders Network