Miliband plots "local energy revolution"

Energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband will this week outline plans to kick-start a "local energy revolution" that will make it simpler for local councils to generate and sell energy back to the grid.

The proposed legislation, which would be enacted if Labour wins the forthcoming election, would build on the imminent feed-in tariff incentive scheme by allowing councils to individually or jointly form renewable energy companies.

Under the plan, a dedicated support service would also be formed to help councils, co-operatives, social enterprises and community groups to invest in local renewable energy schemes.

According to Guardian reports, the London Borough of Lewisham and a number of Labour councillors in the North East have already signalled their interest in trialling the scheme and beginning to generate and sell power.

"It's a great idea – it takes us back to the days of Joseph Chamberlain's municipal society," Sir Jeremy Beecham, chairman of the Local Government Association Labour Group, told the paper. "Councils own a lot of buildings including schools – and have to bring down emissions… One way is to let them have the power, like local communities now have, to make energy and if they have any left over, they feed it back to the grid."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change confirmed that a formal announcement about the scheme is expected early this week.

Environmental groups have repeatedly criticised the government for failing to adequately support so-called community-scale renewable energy projects such as small wind farms or biomass power plants. They were also angered by the recent decision to lower the proposed feed-in tariff for some wind farms and exclude biomass plants from the scheme altogether.

The move comes just days after the government launched a £17m project to trial low-carbon technologies at 87 social housing units across the country.

The scheme, which will be run by the Technology Strategy Board and the Energy Saving Trust, will install different packages of energy efficient and low-carbon technologies in order to assess which is most effective.