New report shows scores of local schemes will be cancelled if cuts go ahead, painting a gloomy picture for the future of community energy in the UK

Plans by local groups to install £127m worth of solar panels and other renewable power at village halls, community centres and sports clubs will be shelved if government cuts to subsidies go ahead.

Scores of community energy groups, of the sort that have raised cash to fit solar panels at a brewery in Sussex and a windfarm in Morecambe Bay, told a survey that they faced being badly hit by a proposed 87% cut in incentives for solar power.



Of the 80 groups surveyed in the report by Quantum Strategy and Technology for Community Energy England, 55 said they had schemes in development to build small-scale solar, wind and hydro, mainly via share offers. Two-thirds said their projects in development would be put at risk due to the cuts, for which a consultation closes on Friday.

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On Tuesday the energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, faces questioning from MPs over the cuts, which have already led to four solar power companies going into liquidation with the loss of over 1,000 jobs. The UN’s top environment scientist labelled the changes “perverse”, and small businesses have told the Guardian that hundreds more jobs will disappear shortly if the cuts go ahead.



“It’s very hard to see how they [the cuts] can be justified, especially not on the monolithic grounds of saving money for the hard-working consumer, or whatever it is [energy and climate secretary] Amber Rudd keeps saying. It just feels ideologically-driven,” said Dave Prescott, director at New Leaf Solar, which has already raised more than £80,000 from a share offer and a government grant to put solar panels on a landfill site near Hereford.



He added: “The rest of the world is going in a different direction. Especially in our case where you can’t use the land for anything else – you can’t grow food on it, you can’t build houses on it – it’s just sitting there doing nothing. It’s deeply, deeply frustrating. It feels like a real failure of any sort of vision.”



Madeleine Milnes, a board member of Avalon Community Energy, said that she was hopeful the group’s plans to put solar panels on an industrial estate and primary school in Somerset would go ahead because they had already submitted paperwork – but the long-term picture for such projects looked bleak.



“People get solar. They understand what it’s about. They think it should be all over public rooftops. The feedback we get is this should be the way we should be going. People don’t want nuclear, they don’t want fracking,” said Milnes, who was a former NHS HR director before helping the group for the past two years to raise an initial £40,000.



She said that such projects were even more necessary because of the government’s cuts to tax credits, as some of the revenue would go into a community fund to help people in fuel poverty.



Emma Bridge at Community Energy England said: “The government’s proposed changes to the feed-in tariffs will seriously damage this vibrant and growing sector, making it far more difficult for communities to take control of the energy they use and the associated benefits that brings.”



The report, paid for in part by Greenpeace, paints a gloomy picture for community energy’s short-term prospects, which just two years ago ministers were championing as a way to have the ‘Big 60,000’, rather than the Big Six.



“The majority of respondents have said that they are now putting their projects on hold, or cancelling them, as a result of the recent government policy announcements, consultations and generally negative attitude to renewable energy,” it said.



Barbara Stoll, energy campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “Community energy projects contribute hugely to local investment, self-reliance, as well as putting people back in touch with their energy supply, but are being put on the back burner.”

The ethical bank, Triodos Bank, said that while government cuts were “unhelpful”, one “ray of hope” was that some local governments were stepping in to support solar projects, citing action by Bristol and Plymouth councils.