Community Energy Fortnight - The Power of Co-operation
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Published 3 Jul 2025 in Raising Awareness
This week is the start of Community Energy Fortnight, a national celebration of the local people and communities who have taken matters into their own hands to generate clean, green power and encourage households to save energy and money.
Nearly all community energy groups are formed as cooperatives or community benefit societies (a form of cooperative), which means any profits must be used to support their communities directly. This keeps the benefits local and ensures they’re directed to where they’re most needed. In doing so, they help create a fairer, more equitable future for all.
To mark Community Energy Fortnight, we’re taking the opportunity to reflect on Midcounties’ contribution to community and people-powered energy, which has seen us become one of the leading supporters of the movement.
Through our Your Co-op Energy Community Power Tariff, we are the only energy provider offering 100% community-generated electricity which, in itself, we consider to be a significant step in the right direction.
And we haven’t stopped there. Back in 2019, we joined forces with Octopus Energy to establish Younity, a joint venture with a sole focus of supporting community energy groups up and down the UK.
Through Younity, we are now supporting over 400 community energy projects which equates to more than a third of the sector as a whole. Delivered through 120 energy generators, their projects produce enough power for more than 65,000 homes.
Younity provides invaluable help and guidance to community energy groups in lots of guises, here’s just a few examples:
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Community Energy Kickstart – provides loans to support the installation of the infrastructure required for community energy projects. Through this funding, Bristol Energy Co-operative were able to install the UK’s biggest community-owned solar rooftop project.
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Powering Communities Fund – provides financial support to over 20 projects, used for everything from clean energy education to skills training for green jobs.
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Community Energy Connect – an online platform which has brought together hundreds of people to share expertise and grow the people-powered energy sector. The platform has received over 250 registrations from community energy groups and volunteers to date.
Community energy really does show the power of co-operation in action, hence it’s so close to our hearts as a co-operative ourselves.
Community Energy Fortnight is the chance to reflect on the great work being done, and we’d like to thank all of our colleagues and members for being a part of the journey as together we strive for a fairer, ethical and more sustainable future through the practice of people-powered energy.
