LCG members 2016 |
Low Carbon Gordano membership survey 2016
You will all be aware of the many changes that have been made by the government in the months since out last share offer. These, combined with other background factors mean that we need to adapt if Low Carbon Gordano is going to continue to grow and prosper. These include:
- a huge reduction in the Feed-in-Tariff support for solar projects, especially ground-mounted ones like Moorhouse and Ham Farm. (Note: these schemes are not affected by this as the changes are not retrospective.)
- the removal of EIS (or its successor SITR) tax relief from community owned energy projects.
- The world-wide collapse in energy prices, which has reduced the price we can sell our electricity for.
- An ongoing period of low inflation which has affected our expectations of future income.
Fortunately, none of these changes threaten the basic soundness of our existing projects, although continued low inflation and electricity prices may mean we need to consider the level of interest paid to investors.
All of this means that we are currently engaged in a thorough going review of our approach to the further growth of the society and are looking at a range of investment possibilities for the next 1-3 years. We believe that it is important to us to continue to grow at a sensible rate both to bring more renewable energy into community ownership, to make more money available for community benefit, and to be more sustainable in the long term. It would also make more electricity available for domestic users through Mongoose Energy Ltd.
It would be extremely helpful to this process if you would complete the survey of members' views – it should take no more than 10 or so minutes. We apologise that a few of the questions cover the same issues that were included in the survey many of you helpfully completed for Bath University recently but these are needed for completeness and will help us build on the information provided by the earlier survey.
We are offering a prize of £50 to one lucky person who completes the survey – we will choose the name randomly at our board meeting on 26 May so make sure you respond before then.