Will Hastings become part of the growing campaign to turn its streets and rooftops into mini renewable power stations? A number of local people have started to circulate news of other projects – particularly in East London – in the hope of generating support here. 

The story of the Community Interest Company Power Station in Walthamstow is a quite extraordinary one. Two artists and activists, Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn, camped out on the roof of their terraced house throughout November and December a couple of years back to raise money and, perhaps more importantly, to raise awareness of their project.

Their goal is to install solar panels on 150 rooftops in their street and to make the electricity available to residents and local subscribers. So far they have raised £115,000 through Crowdfunder alone, enough to complete Phase 1 of the scheme with panels on 25 properties. The plan is to cooperate with other local organisations – schools, businesses, social housing and community buildings. As they say: “We got tired of waiting for the government to take action and responsibility … we’ve seen the energy markets going crazy. 27% of people in our own borough of London – Waltham Forest – are in energy poverty … We decided we would set about building a renewable power station on our street.” 

They calculate that with an average retail price of a 3kW solar system at around £6,000, and with just over 22 million houses in Britain, it would cost £133.56 billion to fit every one with solar panels. But that would meet 100% of all domestic electricity needs in the summer months, and nearly two-thirds in the winter. In comparison, Britain has nine nuclear power stations. The latest one being built is expected to cost more than £30 billion. On that basis, nuclear power stations ‘cost’ £270 billion and provide just 15% of our energy needs.

COMMUNITY SOLAR

The local model is already working in the United States with about 1,600 Community Solar projects up and running. There, it seems to be more industry-led with photovoltaic and renewable energy systems shared by a number of electric customers, including homeowners, renters, businesses and non-profit organisations. Electricity savings and other benefits from the solar project are split among its shareholders and solar subscribers at a rate based on the level of investment. It has required a change in the law, and shared renewables legislation–specifically for community solar–has now been enacted in 22 states, with others soon to follow.

In the UK, a Local Electricity Bill is currently making its slow way through parliament. It’s designed to enable local projects here to generate clean electricity and supply it both to local people and to the National Grid companies at a realistic price or, as the bill puts it: “on fair terms”. It would also require larger energy suppliers to work with community schemes to sell the power they generate to local customers for a ‘reasonable’ fee. The parliamentary bill has cross-party support from nearly half of all MPs (326) including Hastings member Sally-Ann Hart. The campaign group behind the bill, Power For People, has also persuaded the government to provide a £10 million fund to help community power groups to start up and expand. However, until the big companies are forced to work with them, they face an uphill battle and might be left with the situation facing Power Station in Walthamstow. They can finance or help get solar panels onto roofs but can’t sell surplus power back to the grid at a financially viable price, and they face formidable barriers even to share the power within their community.

Part of the attraction of Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn’s vision, though, is the empowerment of the disenfranchised. It’s a cruel irony that the people most affected by fuel poverty are those least likely to be able to afford the £6,000 for a renewable system. And, as they are more likely to be renters rather than homeowners, they have little or no incentive to improve their landlord’s property. Edelstyn admits: “only one private landlord is on board with the scheme so far, and it’s proving difficult to get others interested because – even if the costs are covered – they say there’s not much in it for them. After all, they don’t pay the fuel bill….their tenants do.”

PRINTING MONEY

One intriguing aspect of the Walthamstow scheme is a secondary method of raising funds for the project, and it’s one that might well appeal to the artistic community in Hastings. The concept is simple. Invite artists to design and ‘print’ money and then sell this artwork and donate the proceeds to the project. So if someone created fifty £20 notes and sold them at face value they’d have raised £1,000. Buying a small work of art for £20 isn’t really much of a stretch, especially if you know it’s going to a good cause. And there’s just the possibility that the artist you bought it from will become established, and your banknote might become worth rather more. The antecedents of this idea came in 2018 when Edelstyn and Powell printed their own banknotes, sold them as art works and used the proceeds to buy up second-hand payday-loan debts at heavily discounted prices. This ‘debt’ – worth more than £1m – was stuffed into a van which they blew up near the Canary Wharf Financial Centre in London’s Docklands. Examples of their banknotes have been bought by the galleries and museums including the V&A and the Bank of England Museum, while a documentary about the project raised further revenue and has been nominated for awards.

It may be some time before they realise their ambition of getting solar panels on every house in Britain, but at least Hilary Powell and Daniel Edelstyn have made a start. And with the Local Electricity Bill making its labyrinthine way through parliament, they might just find they’ve hit the zeitgeist. As they say: “If the government really had the interests of the people at its heart and wanted to address the climate crisis and provide energy security, wouldn’t it concentrate on providing renewable, locally produced energy for all at scale and insulating all the housing stock?” 

Since 1996, when the council transferred the whole of its housing stock to 1066 Housing Association (now trading as Optivo), it has not owned any lettable residential property, and has had to rely either on housing associations or on private sector landlords to fulfil its obligations to the homeless. 

Now, backed by a grant from Homes England, it intends to provide six one-bedroom flats in York Buildings (above Millets store in Wellington Place) on affordable rents to tenants selected from its housing register.

CREDIT: Dave Young

Cllr Maya Evans, deputy leader and portfolio holder for Housing and Community Development, described the decision as a “small step closer to our target of delivering 500 affordable rented homes across the borough.”

Harrow Lane to be ‘zero-carbon’

A much larger contribution to Cllr Evans’ target is in the offing from the controversial housing development on the former playing fields of Harrow Lane. Here social housing provider Orbit has teamed up with modular construction firm IIke Homes with the intention of building 140 affordable properties – 70 for rent, the other 70 for shared ownership.

The construction will involve manufacture of units in an off-site factory, which looks like a loss to the local building economy. However, it is claimed that such modular methods will bring much quicker completion – the first houses are aimed to be installed by next summer and the whole estate completed in 2024. Additional claims are made for both quality of finish and for energy efficiency.

Eighty-four of the homes are intended to be ‘zero carbon’. Each will be fitted with an air source heat pump (ASHP) and solar panels which, when combined, will provide clean energy. The entire scheme – which will deliver a mix of apartments and houses ranging in size from one to four bedrooms – will be gas-free, running on renewable power generated from the ASHPs and solar panels.

Cllr Evans is clearly impressed, commenting: “We are absolutely delighted with the progress of this project: we are providing affordable homes for local people, alongside addressing the climate emergency. Ilke Homes have gone above and beyond in ensuring 84 homes are zero carbon, this means the energy they use will be 100% renewable, on top of fabric-first sustainable building materials. Hastings Borough Council are now seeing the fruits of our vision, to provide high quality homes for people on low incomes, while playing an active role in reducing carbon emissions for our town. This is a very proud moment and just the start of more to come.”

Council Officers Overruled

By Rick Dillon

Hastings councillors have approved a plan to site 30 solar panels on the roof of the ‘historic’ 162-year-old Christ Church in Ore – despite the objections of the council’s own conservation and planning officers. They voted by 6 to 4 to support the church’s plan to generate renewable energy from the panels, brushing aside what was claimed would be their detrimental effect on the Victorian Grade II listed building.

Church warden Val Smith addressed the meeting with a passionate plea for the panels, which would “visibly send a message that we are an eco church”. The return on the electricity produced via a feed-in tariff would help the church and its community users with their energy bills and also, via a ‘local hub’, help reduce fuel poverty in the area.

Ore councillor Andrew Battley, not a member of the committee, urged fellow members to bear in mind the council’s decision last year to declare a climate emergency – “If we’re truly going to make an impact on climate change as promised, we will have to consider non-traditional sites for the placement of panels. And we should be welcoming proposals of this nature.”

Planning officer Eleanor Evans said that the installation of solar panels on the church hall had been approved but those on the church itself rejected as they would impact both on the character of the area and on a listed building. Conservation officer Jane Hartnell added that the church was “a beautiful building and one of architectural significance”.

Backing the officers, Cllr Phill Scott argued that the panels on so prominent a building, situated at the junction of several roads, would be a distraction to motorists.

What followed was rare cross-party support when Conservative Cllr Mike Edwards joined Labour’s Warren Davies in backing the solar plan.

Cllr Davies said he wanted to focus on the stonework of the building, not the slate roof, which had anyway been replaced 20 years previously. He said he was a big fan of the noted Victorian art critic and social thinker John Ruskin, who during his day had bemoaned the effect that smoke and pollution was having on historic structures. The result, years later, were regulations designed to reduce the effect of emissions on stonework. “How paradoxical,” he added, “that we are rejecting the very thing that will protect this structure”.

Cllr Edwards reminded councillors of the early days of television, when TV aerials first began to appear on people’s roofs and had drawn complaints from some members of the public. And more recently aerials had been joined on roofs by Sky satellite dishes, even on church roofs. “We needed to meet our commitments to tackle climate change”, he said, adding: “Solar panels are going to be a feature of the street scene, and pretty soon we won’t even notice them.”

A vote was taken and the planning committee approved the scheme by six votes to four. In support were Cllrs Davies, Edwards, Heather Bishop, Ruby Cox, Margi O’Callaghan and Trevor Webb. Against: Cllrs Phil Scott, Sorrell Marlow-Eastwood, Matthew Beaver and Alan Roberts.