Change often becomes possible not because one thing shifts, but because several things finally align.
The UK’s clean energy transition is at one of those moments. The urgency of net zero is widely understood. The scale of infrastructure we need to build is becoming unavoidable. And there is a growing public conversation about who owns, shapes, and benefits from the systems we all depend on.
At the launch of GB Energy’s strategy this month, its Chair, Juergen Maier, put it plainly:
“The British people should have a right to own and benefit from our natural resources.”
Juergen Maier CBE, Chair of GB Energy
For many, this is a bold statement in a system long dominated by distant and concentrated ownership. Yet it resonates because it reconnects energy with shared benefit and public purpose. For those of us working in community energy, it is also familiar. For years, local projects have been putting this principle into practice.
Community Energy Has Been Ready for a Long Time
Across the UK, hundreds of community energy organisations are already showing what local ownership can achieve. They generate clean power, reinvest surpluses locally, build skills, strengthen local economies, and earn trust by putting people at the heart of decision-making.
For many people, a local solar or wind project is their first experience of having a genuine stake in the energy system. These projects make ownership tangible and accessible, widening participation and demonstrating that alternatives to distant, extractive models of infrastructure are possible.
What has held community energy back has never been a lack of ambition or capability. It has been an unsupportive policy environment, and a lack of opportunity to operate at the scale of the challenges we now face.
Too often, community energy has been expected to stay small, while nationally significant infrastructure is developed and owned elsewhere. Communities are asked to support the transition, but are rarely invited to shape it.
When policy, purpose, and community begin to align, new possibilities open up.
Why Ambition at Scale Now Makes Sense
Several things have shifted, creating a new moment.
The clean energy transition cannot succeed through technical delivery alone. People need to be involved. They need to see benefits flowing back into their places. And they need to feel that this transition is happening with them, not to them.
At the same time, the language of public purpose has returned to energy policy. GB Energy is an explicit acknowledgement that ownership matters, and that public and community participation are central to delivering a fair and resilient system.
“Communities are at the heart of this. We’re supporting at least 1,000 local and community energy projects.”
Dan McGrail, CEO, GB Energy
This opens space for a more ambitious conversation — not just about how quickly infrastructure is built, but about how it is owned, governed, and stewarded over the long term.
Community energy is well placed to respond. It already understands how to balance financial discipline with social purpose, and how to work with democratic governance and long-term stewardship. What it has rarely been allowed to do is apply those strengths at national scale.
Widening the Reach – Raising the Ceiling
Community energy must continue to grow in every town, city, and rural area, shaped by local needs. Smaller, place-based projects remain essential for widening participation and building confidence.
At the same time, we need to raise the ceiling on what community ownership is allowed to look like. Too often, communities are invited into major projects late, through modest share offers or community benefit funds, rather than through integrated governance and ownership.
These approaches deliver some value, but they limit long-term influence and the ability to shape outcomes.
Raising ambitions does not mean abandoning grassroots community energy. It means ensuring that the same principles of local ownership, democratic influence, and stewardship can operate at the scale the future demands.
Project Collette: A New Model
Project Collette demonstrates that major energy infrastructure can be designed differently. Communities are involved from the outset, with meaningful stakes in the project’s financial, governance, and decision-making structures. These principles shape proposals from day one, influencing ownership, governance, and value creation.
What excites me most about Project Collette is its scale of ambition. It shows that offshore wind can do much more than generate clean power. It can build trust, create opportunity, and give people real ownership of the energy system.
Complexity and risk are not reasons to exclude communities. They are reasons to design carefully, be transparent about trade-offs, and embed safeguards that protect purpose over time.
Raising Expectations, Not Just Delivering a Project
If Project Collette succeeds, its impact will extend far beyond a single wind farm off the Cumbrian coast.
It can help raise expectations about how major projects are delivered. It can show that communities do not have to choose between local ownership and national ambition. And it can demonstrate that participation and collective ownership can be designed in from day one, even at scale.
The transition to net zero will reshape our economy and landscapes for generations. Our communities deserve big ambitions within that transition – projects that leave them stronger, more resilient, and more empowered than before.
This feels like the right moment to widen the reach of community energy into every place that wants it. Let’s be bold enough to take community ownership to the scale the future demands.
By Saskya Huggins, Director, Make It Count
