looking for social capital in renewables

Founded by Oxfam GB, Just Energy is a not-for-profit social enterprise that works with low-income communities to maximise community revenues from medium sized renewable energy businesses (25-80 MW). The NGO will jointly develop projects with communities, helping to overcome these barriers by:

• Providing risk capital for feasibility studies and project development.
• Providing capacity building services and technical expertise to support project development.
• Managing an investment fund (in partnership with an established fund manager) to directly invest in community based renewable energy projects on behalf of a range of investors.
• Facilitating equitable partnerships between communities and private sector organisations and investors.

They will be looking at renewable energy projects with good social and financial returns, beginning with wind energy. And they are launching in South Africa.

lessons for councils on financing carbon reductions

All municipalities face bureaucratic hurdles in financing projects in creative ways - and creativity is exactly what is needed to provide incentives to homeowners or businesses to invest in reducing their carbon footprint. Smart finance is about overcoming obstacles and tapping into what really motivates people to make the investment. Some lessons from the UK.

I’ve seen first-hand, whilst working in the European Commission, how creativity can be stifled by hierarchy and procedures. So when we launched Climate Finance at the Corporation of London earlier this year, I was delighted to see that UK public servants have such free-flowing enthusiasm, passion and creativity. After barely an hour of our ‘fantasy finance’ game we had developed new financial models to save carbon. These included a new service company which supplied water, heat and electricity to the NHS and invested in energy savings and generation across its estate, and a trading scheme for waste. The winner was a community-run social enterprise which generated energy locally and used the profits to provide insulation to households.