Dave Darby of Lowimpact.org and Stroud Commons talking with Lowri Hedd-Vaughan and Phil McGrath of DEG, a group (CIC) in north Wales, who are doing interesting, commons-related things around energy and more.

Dave: I’d like to find out more about what you’re doing, your ambitions, the barriers you face. You contacted us, so you know that we’re working to build commons in Stroud – to bring assets into community ownership without debt or giving away equity, but with a reasonable return for investors, strong asset locks, and the ability to federate with other projects around the country, and eventually the world. So after this initial interview, I’d like to bring you together with specialists to see where we might collaborate.

So first, before we ask about what you’re doing – why are you doing it? What’s your motivation?

Lowri: there’s a strong sense of wanting social justice in this part of the world. There’s a legacy of extraction of Wales’s natural resources, along with the highest levels of poverty in the UK. Plus the rising social, financial and ecological costs of fossil fuels.

Dave: tell us about some of the things you’re doing.

Lowri: DEG as a CIC has been operating for 11 years. It started out as a consultancy / facilitator for community ownership – especially community pubs and community energy. My project (GwyrddNi – pronounced ‘Gwithny’) started about 4 years ago – a community climate action movement. We started by delivering climate assemblies, to build a critical mass of engaged, informed local residents and build social networks to share knowledge and build on existing assets – the asset-based community development (ABCD) approach. We’re now delivering action plans across food-growing, energy generation, retrofitting, circular economy, and bringing arts & culture into the mix as well. I’ll let Phil tell you about Cyd Ynni (pronounced, roughly ‘ceedenny’).

Phil: Growing up here, there was a sense that you had to move away to succeed. And when you do move away, you realise that the area you grew up in is pretty special, and you’d prefer to stay and strengthen it. I think community development is the way to do that. Cyd Ynni was established in 2016, by 3 hydro-electricity schemes who wanted to share knowledge and skills. Since then those 3 hydros have given hundreds of thousands of pounds back into communities. All 3 needed community shares to finance them. 2 of them raised 250k in a couple of months. So the ideas, the natural resource and the finances are all local, and it’s a way of regenerating local towns (Bethesda, Llanberis, Abergwyngregyn).

Dave: who owns the hydro-electric schemes?

Phil: they’re CICs – community-owned. There was a second iteration of Cyd Ynni then – in 2021, when funding for the original project was coming to an end. There was an energy crisis. In lots of towns and villages in Gwynedd, the community hall was the only community asset. So we wanted to focus on community halls – to try to get them decarbonised and help them save money, to make sure they stayed open – they’re such valuable community assets. And the second element was to produce more community energy projects. One example of that is in a place called Pen y Groes. We put 311kW of solar panels on the roof of an old factory, that is now a decarbonisation hub. We approached the 3 companies there – we knew there was high energy usage on site. So we thought it would be perfect for a smart local energy system, where you can use the energy where it’s generated. We’ve done feasibility studies, installed the panels, and they now need to be connected. And that’s going to bring in income for the community energy group, via sales of electricity. They can then buy assets in the community, if they’re at risk.

Dave: I want to visualise a map of DEG – what projects you’re involved with, and the relationships between them.

Lowri: it would be a complicated map! There’s such a rich history of community organising here, going back 60 years for the Welsh language movement, 100 years for eisteddfods and cultural events – that’s the beauty of it. There’s lots of volunteer-led community organising happening. All across NW Wales, from the mountains to the Llyn Peninsula, there are 12 community-owned pubs. On small village high streets, there’s social housing subsidised by holiday accommodation properties. My project is working in 5 valleys. And as Phil mentioned, lots of community halls are being brought into community ownership and decarbonised. In Blaenau Ffestiniog there’s a youth centre, co-working spaces and a community-owned hardware store, and a community-owned cinema and theatre in Caenarfon. And we’re part of a national retrofit service – domestic and non-domestic energy efficiency. Then there’ community energy and the climate assemblies and action plans.

Phil: it all ebbs and flows. New projects are started, and others close as funding ends. It’s constantly changing, and there’s lots of cross-over and collaboration between projects.

Lowri: we’re probably a seed-bed / accelerator / broker type of organisation. There are a lot of tentacles, and a lot of hand-holding and facilitation.

Dave: how did DEG get started?

Lowri: the director, Grant Peisley, seeded a few projects (he’s now also working for the Welsh government, developing their national energy service). There were 3 employees (there are 11 of us now).

Dave: what are your ambitions – what would you like to see happen.

Lowri: we’re having a meeting soon, to refine the vision. It’s not a huge vision – our success has come from growing organically, being able to respond quickly to local needs. We have the flexibility to be able to follow where the energy emerges in local communities. We want to seed more local action groups, to have more energy generation and self-sustaining communities in terms of food, energy and social resilience – especially circular economy. There’s a lot of interest in sharing, repair cafes, libraries of things, school uniform swaps etc.

Dave: and you were saying that there’s strong social bonds in your area anyway. That’s not the case in a lot of places nowadays.

Phil – yes. We went to school with people who are named after local rivers or mountains and other natural features. There’s a strong connection with place. There’s a long history of connection and language – and it goes deep. People from the outside wouldn’t realise, because they don’t know the history. When you’re named after places, you tend to want to stick around, and almost be guardians of the land. I think that’s pretty cool.

Lowri: I think there’s definitely an ambition to have more community ownership – especially around housing. We have a new micro-community area partnership, looking at local housing needs assessment. We’re looking at co-ops, asset transfers from the local authority, including land, forests, housing, commercial properties etc.

Dave: you know that we’re building a housing commons in Stroud. It’s early days, but we hope to build toolkits to help people in other communities do the same. We want to do it without mortgages, without going into debt with the banking sector, and with very strong asset locks so that they never go back onto the market again – they’re owned by the community in perpetuity. We’d be very happy to talk with you about that.

Lowri: it was that slogan, when I first saw the Stroud Commons website, that drew me in. It’s such a simple message: ‘Own it together, make it affordable, keep it forever’. That was a bit of a ‘Eureka’ moment for me. In our networks, we have deep roots, long branches, and it’s really fruitful. But sometimes there are so many layers of interaction, that it can be difficult to convey that message, to bring new people into the conversation.

Dave: it’s early days in Stroud (and Liverpool), but we think we’ve got some very interesting tools, and we want to talk to other, existing groups, about whether those tools might be useful to them. You said you have paid roles – how many, and how do you generate your money.

Lowri: DEG is predominantly grant-funded. Welsh government, Wales & West Utilities, and the Lottery Climate Action Fund.

Phil: the Welsh government energy service has funded my role for a couple of years. That’s come to an end now, but through managing projects, we’ve raised enough to prolong the projects for a few months.

Dave: do you employ fundraisers, or have you worked out how to do it yourselves?

Lowri: ourselves. Lottery fund was a collaboration between 5 social enterprises, led by the director of DEG, in 2019-20. Most of our bids have been collaborative efforts, and we’re lucky to have plenty of expertise in the area.

Phil: because the hydro schemes have been so successful, high energy prices have been good for them. It’s brought in money that allowed them to fund other local projects, that can be self-financing, but needed a little bit of help to get going. That situation is ideal. To generate money for the community, you need some sort of scale, so instead of community energy for each household, we’re looking to combine a lot of buildings in a larger scheme, to get some capital, to help develop new ideas. Parts of our area have become a new world heritage site, due to the history of slate, so planning permission for solar panels has become much more difficult. We’re talking with politicians – asking why it should become more difficult and expensive to install renewable energy generation because you’re near a World Heritage site, and once exported slate. It reduces the financial viability of solar panels, in an area with high poverty, which doesn’t seem right. But the initiative is there – we just have to work out those issues.

Dave: how many full-time equivalent staff do you have, and how many volunteers?

Lowri: 6 f/t equivalent staff, and all the people we work with, across all the local groups, are volunteers.

Dave: how do you attract volunteers, and keep them and maintain relationships with them?

Lowri: a lot of them emerge organically – they find us. I also undertake community engagement / host events, talks, local walks – to provide interesting things to draw people in, and we can then have conversations around place, history, belonging and ecology. We’re constantly engaging with people. There’s a core of local people with a strong sense of civic duty. Having relationships with these core people (‘super-connectors’) is very important, and I ask them who we might invite into the conversation. I go to WI meetings, football matches, anywhere to talk with people. We’re decarbonisation evangelists.

Dave: do you ask if people want to volunteer, up front?

Lowri: no – it’s rarely that direct. We listen, and try to meet people where they’re at, and try to understand what their motivations are. Relationship building first and foremost. I hope that doesn’t come across as manipulative – but everything builds from relationships. Many of the projects, including the 3 original hydro schemes, developed from church committees – people who know each other from church groups and local community events. But we do sometimes send out open invitations to volunteer on various projects.

Dave: what do you think are the biggest barriers you face when it comes to expanding community ownership?

Lowri: local authority and planning causes delays. There’s an explicit commitment to community ownership from the local authority, but when it comes to developing sites, it’s more difficult. The reasons / excuses are constantly changing. It’s quite frustrating. There can also be public opposition to larger-scale energy projects.

Phil: in more rural locations, there are problems with grid connection. We ask for permission for a renewable energy scheme to be connected, and they might say that that’s only possible several years in the future, which makes the project unviable. So we’ve had to move to a smart local energy system, where local energy generation can supply local consumers directly, rather than having to go through the grid. And there’s a lot of preparatory work, which needs funding. Also, public opposition can change when we talk about local community ownership, and directing profits to the community.

Dave: I’ll show this video to people building commons models in Stroud, and we can communicate via email, and then we can organise another interview together, and we can talk about possibilities for collaboration and shared tools.

Lowri: great. We’re particularly interested in new finance models. I saw on the Lowimpact site a page about how people can invest by purchasing future energy vouchers – ‘use-credit obligations’. That could be an interesting angle. We’re also interested in tools for mapping complicated community networks would be great as well.

Dave: Great. We can focus on those things. I’ll talk with people working on those things and we can talk again soon about potential collaboration.

Highlights

1. DEG is involved with community groups in north-west Wales, establishing community-owned pubs, community energy (hydro and solar), retrofitting, social networks, assemblies and action plans for food production, energy generation and circular economy. They’re a networking/accelerator/broker organisation.
2. There’s a very strong sense of community and connection to place in NW Wales, and a large network of projects. They want to increase community resilience with more food production, energy generation, sharing and repairing.
3. They’d like to provide community-owned housing, and are interested in talking about use-credit obligations as a way of funding that, and other projects.

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