'Our energy bills went up 400% but one change reduced them from £10k to £2k '
Youngsters at Westminster House Youth Club have a lot to teach Westminster. They've already slashed their energy bills from £10k to £2k after starting solar revolution
Nunhead Youth Club saves money by installing solar panels
"There's 96 photovoltaic solar panels on the top of the roof here," says Jayden Ntiamoah, our guide to Westminster House Youth Club's solar revolution. "Before they came in, bills for the club were quite high at £10,000, but now they've been reduced to £2,000. So, it's just a great thing not only environmentally, but also economically for the club and socially for us, the kids who can go on more trips."
He laughs. "I hope I've said that right – photovoltaic." Jayden is 14-years-old. He's been at the youth club in Nunhead in SE London – which he describes as a 'safe haven' – since he was nine. "We're aiming to achieve reaching zero on the bills by adding batteries and enhancers and optimisers to maximise the energy we get," he explains. "Saving the club money that can go towards things we wouldn't be able to experience otherwise."
Listening intently is the MP for Peckham, Miatta Fahnbulleh, whose constituency encompasses Nunhead. The 45-year-old is also a minister in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which has put clean power and low prices at the heart of Labour's energy revolution. So, she's proud to see a tiny charity in a deprived corner of her constituency leading the way.
"This is the future," Fahnbulleh tells me. "It's giving me a lot of inspiration being here. It gives me a bit of fire in my belly seeing it in action like this. It's amazing hearing the young people talking about it because they get it. It's tangible. We talk about a solar panel rooftop revolution – and here it is, and it has been really quickly cost-effective. It's an actual, visible symbol of both helping people with the cost of living and helping us with the challenges of the future. The things I'm really passionate about."
Next week sees the first anniversary of the first Labour government in 14 years, and Fahnbulleh's first year as an MP. "Government is hard, policy is hard, change is hard," she says. "But when people tell you, you can't do this – the social capital isn't there to move this – somewhere like this shows you what it looks like when you get it right. Look at what they have done here despite a Tory Austerity government. What more could a place like this achieve with arms around it – a rocket booster from government?"
The government is putting £12 million into local authorities and community-led energy groups in the UK and £9.3m to power schemes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland via the Great British Energy Local Power Plan. Fahnbulleh says that for constituencies like hers, that could be transformational.
Nunhead's rapid gentrification stands in stark contrast to the deep poverty in which many local kids still grow up. As Ace Gordon, 15, explains: "As a young black boy, growing up in this type of environment, where most black boys are labelled, this club has helped me. I don't want to say that I would have gone down the wrong path – but if I'd never come to this youth club, it could have led me to a bad place."
Westminster House charges just £35 a year for an incredible array of opportunities more befitting of Westminster School, the elite public school which founded the charity in 1888. The club moved to Nunhead in 1949, where as well as a daily after school club, they provide everything from homework support to Vitamin D, food, Duke of Edinburgh schemes and arts, beach and nature trips.
"During the cost-of-living crisis our energy bills went up 400 per cent," says the charity's director, Katie Worthington. "But we couldn't increase the price to the young people. So, we had to think of innovative ways to tackle that. At the same time, we had done a survey of all our young members, and what came out of that was that among their other worries – things about school, or will I get a girlfriend – they were really worried about the environment.
"So in all honesty, my motivation was financial, the young people's motivation was the environment. But we've all learnt and grown and changed. For example, we now plant things. We never did that. We collect rainwater, we never did that. You plug your phone in, you go to get it, and it's not charged because someone's already switched it off at the wall. Because we think now – all the time."
Katie admits she's now become obsessed with getting the bills down to zero and into profit. With the panels funded by the Southwark Community Energy Fund and generous private donors, Westminster House has now applied for funding for a 51-kilowatt battery, and optimisers. "We're only really beginning," she says.
Up on the roof admiring the solar panels with Fahnbulleh is Joe Fortune, General Secretary of the Co-operative Party. The party of the UK's co-operative movement – a sister party to Labour – has just released a new joint report with the Labour Climate and Environment Forum, 'Power in our Communities', as part of its Community Britain campaign.
"Projects like this show what is possible when clean energy is rooted in the community," Fortune says. "Community-owned energy puts power, literally, in the hands of people, giving them a stake in our clean energy future. Every community should have the opportunity to benefit from the power of ownership."
Speaking at the launch of the report Energy Secretary Ed Miliband spoke of "a new vision of community wealth and power". "The case for climate action won't come from Westminster," he says. "It will come from communities across our country, who know clean power means lower bills and wider benefits to regenerate their local area. This is what taking back control really looks like."
Westminster House youth club is full of young ambassadors for the solar revolution. As Jayden and Ace, Grace Haynes, 14, and Turvane Douglas, 15 speak about the difference made by the panels. Peckham has always shaped Fahnbulleh through her family's deep links into the Sierra Leonean community that supported her family when they arrived as refugees. Today, she finds herself inspired by the passion and determination of some of her youngest constituents.
"All across Peckham I see things like this happening," she says. "There has been a lack of investment – yet across the constituency I see a lot of hope. Great British Energy will support the solar revolution in public places and community buildings, helping with funding and working in partnership with local people. The thing we hear in place after place, whether it's hospitals or people's homes is that it's possible to do this – to go on this journey. It really sells itself – we just need to get the word out."
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