Community Energy Preston
While many will see Lancashire Day on the 27th of November as an important day for Lancashire, there is a small group of volunteers around Preston who will see 30th of November as just as important, maybe even more! This was the day that Community Energy Preston (CEP) incorporated as a Community Benefit Society (9191). This will allow us to access funding more easily and reach our goals of installing over 1MW of solar PV panels by 2025 (that’s around a million pounds’ worth). We’ll do this by raising a community share offer and raising capital though community investors.
A big thank you goes out to Preston Cooperative Development Network, Cooperative & Mutual Solutions, Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council for their help in getting us to this point.
Community Energy Preston was created to install more solar around Preston, to cut carbon emissions and to reduce fuel poverty in the area.
Although we’ve only just been “born” as a company we have been incubating this particular baby for a couple of years now and we aren’t crawling, we’re already on a confident stroll.
We have recently won £15,000 of funding from ENWL from their “Powering Our Communities” Fund. This is allowing us to do some initial feasibility and business case analysis on the two main sites we have been working with.
We are also advertising for a part time, hybrid/remote, Project Coordinator. Please do share on your networks and if you know somebody suitable please do send them the link to the job on the PCDN website.
Please follow our journey on LinkedIn and X/Twitter and share the good news. We’ll be looking to do more in-person open events and webinars throughout 2024 for those who want to join in, invest or just learn more.