Communities for Renewables - Jake Burnyeat

Communities for Renewables (CfR) is a mission-led community interest company which helps communities, public sector bodies and not for profits to develop, finance and manage their own renewable energy generation. Since setting up in 2012, CfR has worked in over 40 localities from villages to cities to help deliver locally-owned energy generation ranging from solar panels on school roofs to some of the largest community solar farms in the UK. We have supported the financing of community solar projects with a capital value of over £70million and our company and asset management team looks after 50MWp of community solar across 7 localities. These community energy schemes are projected to generate over £20million of surplus income (after operating and finance costs) over their lifetimes to support net zero transition, fuel poverty and other community projects in their localities.

CfR’s contribution to the community energy sector has been recognised through CfR winning a number of industry awards and, in 2020, CfR was listed in the Natwest SE100 index of top UK social enterprises. CfR seeks to think big, innovate and collaborate to grow the local energy sector to a scale where it is making a material contribution to the low carbon transition. CfR has an open source culture and we encourage all team members, regardless of their role and experience, to contribute ideas towards the effective running of the company and furthering CfR’s mission. We nurture a working environment which supports the aspirations, health and economic needs of our staff and have a progressive employee-centric ownership model.