Power for People have thanked Milton Keynes Council for supporting a Bill that will increase locally generated clean energy.
Milton Keynes Council now joins the group of 102 local authorities across the UK who have resolved to support the Bill, alongside local MP, Ben Everitt.
If made law, it would create a new ‘Right to Local Supply’ of energy that would empower communities to sell locally generated electricity directly to local households, businesses and local public services.
This is a key recommendation of the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, who called on the Government to remove the significant barriers to community-scale renewable energy after their 2021 inquiry found no significant growth in the sector since 2017.
Leader of Milton Keynes Council, Councillor Peter Marland, said: “The Local Electricity Bill will empower and enable new community energy companies to sell energy that they generate directly to local people. The revenues received by these new local renewable energy providers would be used to help improve the local economy and local services and facilities.”
Councillor Robin Bradburn, who proposed the successful motion, said: “The Local Electricity Bill opens the door for opportunities for local communities to venture into an area of energy provision for the benefit of all within the local area.
Such an opportunity fits so well into the aspirations of Milton Keynes to be a Greener, Cleaner and safer City along with the possibility of extra income for the authority through a local energy company.”
Currently local people can only purchase electricity from nationally licensed utilities.
The Bill’s supporters say this means money people use to pay their energy bills is not helping to strengthen local economies or build new local clean energy infrastructure.
Power for People’s Director, Steve Shaw, said: “The biggest threat to human civilisation and the natural world is climate breakdown. Global emissions have increased by over 400% since 1950, with levels of CO2 at their highest concentration in the past 2 million years. It is not too late to turn things around - I know the power of campaigns like this.
The enormous emissions reductions the Local Electricity Bill aims to bring must be a key pillar in our mission to avert climate catastrophe whilst making our energy system more robust and boosting local jobs and the economies of communities across the country. We thank Milton Keynes Council for supporting the Bill, and Councillor Robin Bradburn for proposing the successful motion”
Power for People are encouraging local people in Milton Keynes to get involved with the campaign.
