Community Renewable Energy (CoRE)

Community Renewable Energy is putting large-scale renewable energy technology projects in the hands of local communities across the north of England.

The social enterprise has already established a waste vegetable oil recycling plant that generates electricity in the community of Alnwick, Northumberland. CoRE is now working on a number of wind energy and anaerobic digestion projects.

Ross Weddle, Managing Director of CoRE, explains the organisation's approach: "Communities come to us with ideas for renewable energy projects that will provide them with sustainable and secure energy supplies. We engage with each community to evaluate their idea and, if we feel it has enough commercial potential, we support it from initial technical development through to planning and implementation."

Community-owned projects

Every renewable energy project delivered by CoRE is owned by the community. CoRE works with local people to develop the project and takes a share in the company set up through CoRE's energy services company (ESCo). The ESCo then manages the energy supply as well as billing and maintenance. Once the ESCo is generating an income, CoRE takes a share of that income to cover its development costs and fund further projects in other communities.

The CoRE team currently has 10 projects at various stages of development. These include wind turbines in Berwick and Glendale and anaerobic digester plants in Berwick, Morpeth and Carlisle Plain - the second largest dairy area in the UK. CoRE is also working with the Centre for Process Innovation on a project to develop rural wood-fuelled gasifiers.

Strengthening communities

As well as generating an income for communities, CoRE's renewable energy technology systems deliver a wide range of social benefits, including local jobs, control of energy costs, a sense of community pride and achievement, and increased local resilience.

"The Big Green Challenge Plus funding has enabled us to increase our capacity by taking on a new project manager and we're using the support from UnLtd to explore potential sources of funding for the future," says Ross.

 "Planning and implementing renewable energy systems is a lengthy process, but by the end of 2010 we hope to have two more fully-commissioned projects up and running. We'll also be expanding the number of projects we have in active development so that we can meet our 2012 goal of saving 20,000 tonnes of carbon a year through the use of renewable energy."