As the sector digests the Government’s Local Power Plan and starts to explore different ways to engage, we caught up with Doug Parr, Director of Westmill Wind Co-operative, to find out how he thought this might ignite the renewable energy sector and what this might mean for Westmill.

Westmill Energy (WE) 
Could you give us a bit of a brief introduction of your background and how you’ve come to be involved with Westmill? 

Doug Parr (DP) 
My academic background was in chemistry of the atmosphere, and then when I left this, I became an environmental campaigner. In that time, I got to be extremely enthusiastic about renewable energy, and I was living in Oxford when the opportunity to invest in Westmill Wind came up, so I took a little bit of savings and put it into the co-operative.  

Later, the Board Chair asked if I might be interested in joining the Board. So, as an advisor, I attended a couple of board meetings. Then I decided to get involved, because it’s all very well being a national advocate for renewable energy and pushing government, but there’s a sort of practical reality to making it happen. At Westmill there is not just the opportunity to be a shareholder, but also to be part of something where community is right at its heart. 

Community at the heart

WE
A lot of the people that were involved in the start of Westmill have since moved on, but it’s clear that from the beginning it was always a part of the community and that was the core of its heart. 

DP
I remember, there was a critical meeting in Oxford at one point, where members agreed to go ahead with the project if we could access the turbines that were available. Suddenly it felt like this wasn’t a kind of remote board; it needed a kind of sign off from the membership. And that made it a bit different. 

Local Power Plan

WE  
And then, looking at what’s going on now in policy changes and government focus and public opinions changing: what are the main changes that you see coming up for the sector and how do you think they relate to the future for Westmill? 

DP   
So, the main thing that’s come out is the Local Power Plan, which is potentially a very big thing. We also currently have a government that is quite seriously committed to community energy in a way that the previous ones haven’t been.  

I don’t remember any government putting its money in its mouth, with the rhetoric around community energy at a national level. There has been an extremely positive atmosphere; what’s been missing was anything practical that could help. I think that £400million, which I think is more than has ever gone into renewable energy from Westminster in total, will make quite an impact. 

What we don’t know yet is how that’s going to be spent: how that’s going to be operationalised and how the relationship with local authorities will work. Local authorities are also getting funding for energy projects and community energy needs to be a big part of this. 

Renewable energy with this government is also in a good place, with a big push from the government to make things happen in onshore and offshore wind and solar. However, there is also a lurking concern that all this positive momentum could be scrapped by a new right-of-centre or very right-of-centre government, because the two parties have both said that they will not support climate change activities. Community energy, which has been predominantly focused on renewable energy, could easily get swept up in that, and all of the support that is being currently put in place could be jettisoned.  

So, the immediate future looks bright, but the long-term future looks rather less certain.  

However, the difference about community energy is that a lot of the rhetoric that is used against climate action cannot be used against community energy. Or, community energy projects can be, and very frequently are, designed such that the accusations against climate action are demonstrably false. Whether that would shelter the sector in the event of a right-of-centre government coming in, it’s very hard to say.  

Westmill development

WE  
That’s a good summary of where we are now. How do you think these elements offer opportunities for Westmill and for future development of the site? 

DP
So the opportunities for Westmill Wind could shift, because Westmill is not an obvious site for a wind farm, so it’s competing with other wind farms which have a much better resource. But, there is a site, there is a supportive landowner, and there is support amongst the community, which is where Westmill’s shareholders came from. All of these things together could be very powerful indeed. 

Whether that means it’s possible to repower the site and put new turbines in, I think we don’t really know at this point. It would certainly need some level of support from government, or at least a very supportive policy framework, which might include, for example, a big emphasis on the ability to generate power in the South, where most of the demand is.  

Westmill Solar is extremely well placed for expansion, with South-facing arrays and the ability to generate electricity all year round.

The future for renewable energy

DP
More broadly, the speed with which the price of solar panels and batteries is going down, means that we’re potentially coming across a kind of revolution. You can see this in other countries, like Pakistan, where something like 1/3 of its power is suddenly starting to come from solar, plus battery matchup.  

It’s partly because power prices are very high – and obviously the UK is not Pakistan in terms of the access to solar power – but it illustrates that this is not coming from a centralised utility: it is coming from individuals and businesses who’ve got their own solar panels. It shows how solar is potentially going to turn the economics of generation upside-down.

So, we have a supportive community, and a solar development which may, through some regulatory arrangement, may be able to sell power to local people. This all means that, one way or another, there should be a bright future for solar power because that’s the way the world is going, and in the south of England, you can still get a decent turnout of power. 

I think that Westmill has got some solid assets, in terms of wind and solar generation. But what we’ve also got is a community of activists, who are invested in the co-operative model, and want to see action on clean energy and change in the way we generate power, the way we run our energy systems and who’s in control.

So, I think there’s more that we can do together than just have a few turbines spinning in South Oxfordshire; we have a much bigger resource that it’s possible to do more with, even if we don’t know exactly how yet.