If you are a private landowner or a business, sharenergy can also work for you.

For example, you might have a site which would be ideal for a renewable energy project: a hilltop with high winds and no near neighbours perhaps. With sharenergy you could work with local people to develop a community-owned facility on your land. The co-operative would pay you a regular rent or royalty payment for the use of your site. A public share offer can raise a lot more capital than you might be able to consider raising on your own.

This model could also apply to businesses. If you have a small business which needs heat, for example, you might consider providing some land for a combined heat and power facility: the co-operative gets the revenue from the electricity produced and you get heat at a lower cost than your current gas bill.

In some cases it makes sense for a community co-operative to own part of a project which is led by a private developer: a number of our wind co-operatives work on this model. So it’s always worth asking: if you decide to go it alone in the end that’s great (and we can probably point you to other organisations who can help you where we can’t).

See this presentation made to a RICS seminar for more context and examples.

You might also be interested in this interview with Scottish farmer and ice cream mogul Maitland Mackie conducted by ex- Energy4All man Mark Jennison