About us
Kennet Community Energy Limited (KCEL) was established in 2013 from an initiative of the Transition Marlborough Energy Group and has been set up as a practical response to the challenges that we face with our future energy supplies and climate change.
Successive parliamentary energy bills in recent years make it clear that energy prices generally will increase significantly in the UK over the next 10 to 20 years as a result of many factors, including the rising global demand for energy, the higher cost of exploiting dwindling reserves of oil and natural gas, together with the need to replace many of our aging power stations.
The UK Government has set ambitious targets for electricity generation from renewable energy and community energy companies are being encouraged to make a significant contribution.
We believe that developing local, decentralised, electricity generation and heating/cooling from renewable energy technologies such as solar and biomass, offers a positive and practical solution to the coming energy crisis for the benefit of local communities and the Members of KCEL.
Providing significant local community benefits is central to KCEL’s purpose and we have prioritised this by:
- Creating opportunities for local people to invest in and make a reasonable and realistic financial return from local projects;
- Building local energy infrastructure that will make local communities more resilient in the face of predicted increasing energy costs;
- Developing demand for local services that can offer new opportunities for local businesses; and
- Making donations to a Community Fund that is given to local charitable causes.
The Society was formally incorporated in January 2013, commenced operations with the deployment of a solar photovoltaic installation in Devizes in May 2013 and has now developed a small portfolio of projects.