The Meadows Ozone Community Energy Company

The Meadows in Nottingham is an inner city area with multiple deprivation levels and home to a community-owned energy services company called MOZES (Meadows Ozone Energy Services Limited) and the Meadows Partnership Trust (MPT), a local regeneration organisation.

MOZES became an incorporated company in October 2009 at the end of the BGC year, and the group meet bi-monthly to discuss future projects and integration in the community. The board members include representatives from: MPT; Nottingham City Council; Nottingham City Homes; Nottingham Energy Partnership; and Nottingham University. New members who are local residents also joined the board in the last year. The organisation had been seeking a utility company to work with, and after inviting all major utility companies to come and visit them, they are now in partnership with British Gas. Planning permission for a wind turbine in the area was granted in 2007, but there have been no further developments in securing funding.

The most significant development in the area was the award of £600,000 from DECC’s Low Carbon Communities Challenge. This has funded the installation of 55 1.4kWp solar photovoltaic units on houses in the area, as well as three 7kWp units on schools and one on a community building.

Forty-six of these installations went to low-income households and the residents of these homes receive the electricity generated. All Feed-in Tariff (FiT) payments go to MOZES for reinvestment in future installations. The three schools and the community building receive the FiT payments so they benefit from a steady income. Nine of the units were given out on a 50% grant to householders who now own the systems. MPT managed the overall scheme in partnership with British Gas (who were responsible for
managing the installations by Solarcentury).

The Meadows area was also awarded £100,000 to be one of the British Gas Green Streets towards the end of 2009. This involves 30 households in the Old Meadows hosting regular meetings on energy efficiency. Most of the funding has been spent on new boiler systems and solid wall insulation into houses in the Meadows (including seven Victorian houses) which will provide a good example of what can be done with old housing stock. The Meadows Partnership Trust has also used some of the money to lease a building from the city council that they are hoping to turn into a social enterprise café.

A further grant was awarded by the Scottish Power Energy Peoples Trust to do a Meadows Fuel Savers Project. This is, in effect, a repeat of the work done in the BGC, and the project is managed and run by the BGC project manager who is trained as an energy assessor.

The project aims to give practical help and advice to all residents in the Meadows to heat their homes and pay their energy bills, and much of the practical side is done through referrals to Nottingham WarmZone and direction to the Green Loans scheme in the same way as the BGC year. This is not packaged as a carbon-saving project, with the emphasis heavily on money saving and debt relief, with many people facing a ‘heat or eat’ decision.

Despite funding received and the number of achievements over the last year, future funding is precarious. The bulk of the DECC and British Gas funding has been spent, and the Scottish Power project is drawing to an end, so several key employees in the Meadows are currently looking at other sources of funding for future work and their own roles.