The North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub has produced new resources to help councils and community groups develop local clean energy projects where they own and install solar panels on the roofs of local businesses and sell them the electricity produced at a discounted rate.
The concept is inspired by the West Suffolk Solar for Business scheme which sees West Suffolk Council designing, funding, installing and maintaining solar photovoltaic installations on the roofs of local businesses with 100% of the electricity generated provided to that business to use at a discounted tariff cheaper than their previous electricity supplier,
The West Suffolk scheme has prevented over 2000 tonnes of carbon being released into the atmosphere each year and saved local businesses over £700,000 in energy costs, unlocking funds for business growth, and similar schemes are being run elsewhere in the country including as community energy schemes like Grimsby Community Energy.
The resources developed by the North East and Yorkshire Net Zero hub are designed to save organisations interested in replicating the scheme a substantial amount of time and effort in developing the initial idea by providing documents that need minimal adaptation to allow for local context and requirements, rather than writing from scratch.
The documents include:
- An Outline Business Case document including executive summary
- An economic/financial model spreadsheet
- A decisions and options matrix
- A template PPA contract (Developed by specialist legal consultants)
- A template roof lease contract (Developed by specialist legal consultants)
- A guidance document for using and amending the legal templates
Contact your regional Hub project manager if you are based in the North East or Yorkshire, or local Hub if you aren’t, for more details about using the templates.
The resources are also available on Net Zero Go.
