Architect Lee Barker founded Community Energy Investors Club on LinkedIn in 2024. The aim of the group is to advocate for and build awareness around UK community renewable energy investment opportunities. We spoke to Lee to get his thoughts on the benefits of community share offers, plus opportunities and challenges for the sector at large:

In a sentence, how would you explain a community energy share offer to someone with no knowledge of them?

A medium to long term investment, with a good, stable return, into an organisation that delivers clean energy generation projects in a community and shares the proceeds with the community and investors.

Why are community energy share offers a good investment, and how are they different from other, similar ones?

They’re a good investment if you want to know what your money is doing, and you want it to be tackling climate change, reducing energy costs for a community, and addressing fuel poverty.

Who are community energy investors in general would you say? Do you generally see a specific type of person, or is it more a case of the only thing they have in common is caring for climate?

I don’t think investors are quite as diverse as the community originating the investment opportunity but I do think they are broader than only having climate concerns. At the lowest investment level we know people almost consider their investment a donation to local energy as a “good cause”.

The investors putting in larger amounts we know are seeing it as relatively safe, stable, and a good rate of return compared to other “impact” and “ordinary” investment options.

Are there any specific recent share offers from groups you would highlight as being particularly notable or innovative?

SELCE’s LED lighting project share offers are an interesting innovation, with the option of shorter (1-5) year fixed investment terms. In fact, we are seeing more share offers structured like bonds, with a defined capital payback period.

Power Up North London’s 2024 share offer was an example of this, where they intend to “redeem members’ share capital over 20 years at 5% a year”, subject to the usual caveats on financial performance and available funds.

Actual Bonds are also being pushed by some organisations and platforms, as they can be held within an Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) wrapper (community shares can’t be).

Would you highlight anything upcoming, in the wider economy or political landscape you think will impact community energy, and how?

The rise of Reform. Will Nigel Farage move the political dial against net zero as effectively as he moved it regarding the UK relationship with the EU?

How in your opinion can CE grow faster, and have a greater impact on fighting energy inequality and in leading a just transition?

The great hope is GB Energy provides a serious amount of start up funding, alongside support from the national community energy associations and the other support/service organisations in the sector, to achieve a community energy organisation in every town, parish, etc that wants one – and that means going out and offering that, no longer waiting for it to happen.

In tandem, community energy needs a huge “public awareness” boost to draw in investment from local people. Co-investment by councils and impact investors, ideally alongside some form of investment security (like FSCS compensation scheme for savers), would help validate the investment opportunities.

What’s your background and why did you set up Community Energy Investors Club?

I’ve been concerned about environmental issues all my life. I’m an architect by profession and have been involved in site-based clean energy production since the “Merton Rule” in the early 2000s required property developers to generate 10% of a building’s electricity needs from on site renewable energy.

I’ve also been involved in crowdfunding almost since it was created (in its modern form) in the mid-2000s, and invested via a crowdfunding platform into a solar farm back in 2012.

More recently, I discovered community energy as an investment, again initially through an ethical crowdfunding platform. At the end of 2023 I was getting increasingly concerned about climate change and determined to do more; that led me to a People Planet Pint meet up where I met the founder of a local community energy group.

I started with them as a volunteer and as they progressed towards a share issue I realised there was a lack of voice either advocating for investors or raising awareness of community energy as an “asset class” generally.

I launched the Club during Community Energy fortnight 2024. It was intended to be website based but I started on LinkedIn and then found that the website was probably less effective for getting content out and seen than social media, and now have a following of 800+.

The aims of the Club are:

1. Advocating for community renewable energy projects
2. Providing information about UK community renewable energy projects and investment into them
3. Making people aware of UK community renewable energy investment opportunities
4. Sharing experiences of investing in community energy
5. Allowing members and community energy organisations to alert the Club to community energy investment opportunities – live and pre-funding – for the Club to help raise awareness
6. Track the scale & growth of the community energy investment market
7. Advocating for innovations that make investing in UK community renewable energy projects a better experience for investors and community energy organisations