Sussex village gives up plans for community-run project that would have enabled it to run largely on clean energy

A project to generate renewable energy in the village at the centre of the UK’s first fracking protests has become the latest casualty of the shake-up of the government’s green policies.



REPOWERBalcombe, a group of local residents who raised money to install green electricity generation, has cancelled its plans to set up a range of solar panels in the nearby area, citing a series of changes to government policy as the reason.

“It was an incredibly hard decision to come to, but the policy situation simply meant we were haemorrhaging investor confidence,” said Joe Nixon, on behalf of the group. “We’re still incredibly proud of the work we’ve done.”

Julian Fitzsimons, chair of REPOWERBalcombe, said: “Sadly the time constraints forced upon us by the legislative changes have made it impossible to proceed with the solar farm as a community-owned project. We are bitterly disappointed that it has come to this, especially after so much hard work has gone into it.”

Balcombe balks at tax changes for community green-energy projects Read more

Three sites where solar panels have already been installed - two primary schools and a farm - will continue to operate, but plans for a big new installation of 18,500 panels at a farm near East Grinstead have had to be given up.

The villagers are hoping that a commercial developer will carry on with the project instead, taking the operation out of community ownership. Changes to the tax relief for investors in community-owned schemes have made it more difficult for people to set up and run such projects, while a series of policy reversals on renewables, and the slashing of subsidies, have made it no longer viable for the group.

“It’s bitterly disappointing that [the new farm installation] won’t be a community-run project,” said Nixon. “We don’t just need to decarbonise our system – we need to give people more of a say in it.”

Around 40 investors had invested £80,000 in existing projects that have gone ahead. Some money had also been raised for the new solar farm but that will now be returned to those people who had invested it.

REPOWERBalcombe fears that other community energy schemes are likely to be just as hard hit. Two, a hydro-electricity scheme in Oxfordshire and an anaerobic digestion plant in Reading, have recently been forced to reconsider, and others may be at risk.

Balcombe, a pretty village set amid rolling hills in Sussex, became the epicentre of the UK’s first major anti-fracking protests two years ago, when the fracking company Cuadrilla began test drilling for oil exploration at a site just over a mile away. Thousands of people gathered over the course of the summer, camping, marching and trying to disrupt the testing operations, with numerous arrests including that of Caroline Lucas, the UK’s only Green Party MP.

Though the anti-fracking protests moved away, chiefly to the north of England, after Cuadrilla said it would not frack for oil at the site, the legacy for the village has been a surge of interest in green power and environmental issues. REPOWERBalcombe was set up in December 2013, with the help of the 10:10 climate change campaign, with the intention of making the village and surrounding areas largely self-sufficient in green energy generation.

Mike Darling, of 10:10, said: “What the people of Balcombe have done is nothing less than extraordinary. I saw the [oil exploration rigs] drive into the village back in 2013, and this community-led solar project is a million miles from that. Still, I’m not only sad, I’m also incredibly angry that they’ve been put in a position which means it can’t be community-run.”

While backing for the project locally has been strong, with hundreds of people making small investments to raise the money needed, and many volunteering their time and expertise to assist, the wider policy and regulatory environment has become increasingly difficult for small community energy schemes.

REPOWERBalcombe cites numerous recent rule changes: the imminent slashing of feed-in tariffs for solar; continuing uncertainty over the government’s future plans for solar subsidies; changes to the tax system that would have cut the preferential tax arrangements for community schemes; and a redrawing of the legal status of community schemes by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The UK’s solar industry has been in turmoil in recent months, with hundreds of job losses already under way and more threatened as a result of the government’s decreasing support for the technology.

Vanessa Vine, of Frack-Free Sussex, and a local resident, said: “George Osborne’s deliberate sabotage of the British renewable energy sector is both transparent and despicable. The REPOWERBalcombe solar park in my own village of West Hoathly could have been a flagship community-owned energy scheme, generating enough electricity for both villages and inspiring communities everywhere to follow suit. Will enough people now realise that this government is hell-bent on destroying safe renewable community energy schemes, in favour of their own investments in myopic, corporately lucrative, highly dangerous hydrocarbon and nuclear technologies?”

REPOWERBalcombe hopes to go ahead with some smaller projects in the future.

Jan-Willem Bode, chief executive of Mongoose Energy, a community energy investment firm, called on people not to be put off by the rule changes. He said returns on investment of 7%, much higher than current bank rates, were still possible despite the setbacks.