January and February have been tough all round but after a bit of a slow-ish start to 2021, it is now fair to say that the Big Solar Co-op is picking up some serious momentum! Building on the success of our Finding community solar sites event we have another webinar next month, are starting up a regular call for people to come and ask us (almost) anything about the Big Solar Co-op, and have been busy getting to know our new Solar Projects Lead. Chris Rigby joined us last week and has hit the ground running, with new ideas and insights to help us to take our Pioneer programme to the next level. The Pioneer programme is filling out nicely and we are watching with great interest as our notion of ‘who’ would be the frontrunners to join up to the Big Solar Co-op gets blown apart! We are finding that there are indeed some local energy co-ops who want to deliver solar projects that the loss of FiTs had stymied – as we anticipated – and a good number of climate action or broader environmental collectives who had not yet formed active energy group, that want our support to get installs going. But the interest from corporates looking to secure long term lower cost power, councils who have declared climate emergencies (and now need to start coming good on them) and individuals on a mission with great skills to offer but little or no activist network in their area – are pleasant surprises! We are seeing people and organisations come to us from all sectors with a wide range of motivating factors which bodes well for building and scaling this ambitious national project.
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