This London Neighborhood Is Showing the U.K. How to Bring Solar Power to Low-Income Homes

When Hackney Council made the goal of decarbonizing the London borough in 2019, a key part involved looking at ways to make council-owned buildings—known as council estates—more energy efficient.  But for the borough, and across Britain, installing solar-powered microgrids that could help increase energy efficiency and reduce costs was a task easier said than done. While microgrids were in operation in commercial and industrial settings, regulation meant that tenants living in apartments were restricted in their ability to switch energy suppliers. That meant that solar power could only be used for communal spaces—and any discounts would only benefit the building’s landlord.  Reg Platt, CEO of Emergent Energy, an energy service company, had spent decades working in energy policy and regulation and understood the problem well. “My motivation has always been around how you deploy these technologies as fast as possible,” he says. “We need to create a model financing solar PV and other in-household energy technologies that doesn’t rely on any government backing.”  He founded Emergent in 2016 as a way to connect apartments and low-income housing projects to the benefits of solar—and lobbied for a change in regulation that would allow his company to supply electricity directly to customers from locally installed solar panels—allowing them to reap the rewards of cheaper, cleaner energy.  At the end of 2024, Emergent signed a contract with the Hackney Council to launch a first-of-its-kind pilot program for the U.K. that is providing solar to 10% of the estate’s residents. It hopes to reach as many as 60% as it continues outreach to sign up new tenants. Residents enrolled in the program have already saved 15% on their energy bills, says Sarah Young, the borough’s cabinet member for climate change, environment, and transport.  It’s a big move in the U.K., where energy costs remain about a third higher than before Russia’s Ukraine invasion triggered an energy crisis in Europe. Microgrids allow consumers to receive energy directly, lowering the cost. “A microgrid is like a mini version of the electricity networks that we have across a nation or a state,” says Ronan Bolton, professor of sustainable energy at the University of Edinburgh. “Rather than having the supplier contracting directly with the producer and the consumer, the producer and the consumer are more directly connected. That creates more economic value because they’re offsetting the retail cost of purchasing electricity.” The idea of community-led clean energy is becoming increasingly appealing. In 2024, there were 614 community energy organizations operating in the U.K., according to Community Energy England—up 24% since 2021. In Bristol, for example, a grassroot, resident-led group in a low-income neighborhood secured £4m in 2022 to build a wind turbine. The project, which also launched without government funding, was spurred on in part by residents’ frustration with rising energy prices.  The Hackney project, meanwhile, is owned by the council, which means that it doesn’t risk being at the mercy of electricity rates set by private companies. “All the benefit goes to the residents,” says Young, who notes that the council expects to fully recover their £2 million ($2.6 million) investment. She hopes that as the project expands, they might be able to repurpose leftover energy into other projects that help the borough go green, like battery storage or electric vehicle charging.    The Hackney Council solar project stretches across 27 buildings that contain 750 apartments. But there’s potential to expand across four and a half million social housing properties in the U.K., along with the millions of other residential apartments, Platt says.  In January, Edward Miliband, Britain’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, unveiled the Warm Homes Plan, a £15 billion ($20 billion) investment to cut energy bills and emissions by upgrading millions of homes with insulation, heat pumps, and solar panels. The program was unveiled at the site of the Hackney project. The government also announced £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in funding last month to invest in community clean energy projects on buildings like libraries and recreational centers. Platt hopes that this funding can be used to help the project expand. “We think that what we’re doing is directly aligned with what the government wants to achieve,” he says. “And we provide them a means to scale up solar extremely fast, supporting social housing, low income residents with bill savings at the same time as bringing assets, and aspects of the energy industry into national and municipal ownership.” Moreover, widespread implementation would mean cheaper, cleaner energy for everyone—not just those that can afford it. “We strongly believe in a just transition to net zero,” says Young. “So for us, it’s absolutely essential that it’s not just those who are able to pay for the energy transition who benefit from it.” This article was presented by DBT, a sponsor of the TIME Earth Awards, which will be held in London on March 26.