The Green Energy Awards 2023 Shortlist
Thank you to all who entered for the Green Energy Awards this year! We had a wide range of brilliant and worthy nominations from across the UK, so the shortlist was a tough decision for our panel of internal judges.
The final winners will be decided by our panel of external judges and will be announced at the awards ceremony and dinner at Bristol Harbour Hotel on 29 March 2023.
We are pleased to announce the final shortlist across the six award categories for the Green Energy Awards 2023, in no particular order:
Clean Energy Scheme Award Shortlist
The clean energy scheme award commends projects that are spearheading the clean energy industry and delivering significant carbon savings.
Amp Clean Energy (Distell International – Bunnahabhain Energy Centre, Islay)
The Bunnahabhain Energy Centre (owned and funded by Amp Clean Energy) supplies clean heat to the Bunnahabhain whisky distillery through a clean-burn boiler fuelled with local biomass and unused malt. It will supply 18 million kWh, equivalent to approximately 1.8 million litres of fuel oil, whilst minimising demand on the island’s stretched grid.
Bristol Energy Cooperative (solar PV installation at Bottle Yard Studios extension facility, TBY2)
BEC helped Bristol City Council to develop a 2,380-panel solar array on the roof of The Bottle Yard 2 studios (TBY2). It will generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 250 homes a year, and is one of the UK’s largest community-owned rooftop solar projects.
Finn Geotherm UK Ltd
Finn Geotherm worked with Panasonic as part of a heat decarbonisation project. They used a crane to install the first three 210 kW air source heat pumps in Europe onto the roof of Paragon House, an 11-storey central London university building. This has an estimated energy saving of 1.1 million kWh annually.
Keele University – Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) and Low Carbon Energy Generation Park (LCEGP)
Keele University’s project incorporates 12,300 solar panels (4.4 MW), two wind turbines (1.7 MW), and an industrial-sized battery, linked to an advanced smart energy system. It includes two of the few onshore wind turbines approved in England in recent years and is the first site in the UK to combine solar, wind and battery assets.
Oxford Brookes University (Geo-exchange project)
The state-of-the-art Geo-Exchange heating system on the university’s Headington site will provide around 1.2 GWh of clean heat annually. The geothermal system can extract and store energy from its fourteen 220m boreholes, enabling both heating and cooling via two heat pumps connected to the university’s existing heating system.
Community Energy Initiative Award Shortlist
The community energy initiative award recognises the role of inspiring community energy groups across the UK supporting the transition to a more democratic and decentralised energy system.
Ray Valley Solar Ltd (owned by Low Carbon Hub)
Connecting to the grid in August 2022, Ray Valley Solar is the UK’s largest community-owned solar park. It will generate 19.5 GWh annually, enough to power over 6,000 homes. The project will keep £2.6m of annual energy spend in the local economy and provide £13m community-benefit funding over its lifetime.
Energise Sussex Coast
Energise Sussex Coast has worked to tackle fuel poverty for 11 years. Last year, their energy advice service helped 860 struggling households to save an average of £409 on energy costs per household. The group has also helped local communities and businesses deliver a wide range of community-owned solar projects.
Plymouth Energy Community
PEC has delivered a wide spectrum of projects over the last ten years, from an ambitious solar farm at Chelson Meadow, to net zero affordable housing and energy support work for households. PEC is working with the local council and SMEs to deliver £6m of investment into energy efficiency home improvements.
Grimsby Community Energy Ltd
GCE is working towards 1 MW of community-owned solar PV for their area in the next few years. The group has raised funds and delivered solar projects for local social enterprises, and has helped deliver grant-funded energy upgrades for local small businesses, saving £400,000 and 84 tonnes of CO2 annually.
Net Zero Energy Developer Award Shortlist
The net-zero energy developer award recognises the achievements of developers bringing forward the renewable electricity, heat and/or transport projects required to achieve net-zero energy.
Thrive Renewables
Thrive has funded and/or built 32 projects, including hydro, solar, battery storage, geothermal, tidal, renewable heat and England’s largest onshore wind turbine. These projects have generated over two million MWh – enough to power over 508,000 average UK homes, reducing emissions by 917,517 tCO2e, and providing annual community-benefit funding of £30,000.
ILI Group Plc
ILI Group is a leading energy storage developer. It has 4.5 GW of energy storage projects in its pipeline, with over 1 GW of projects consented. These projects include 2 GW of battery storage and 2.5 GW of pumped hydro storage(the ‘Red John’ project at Loch Ness will offset 45m tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime).
Voltalia
Voltalia is an Independent Power Producer that has closed £19m in project finance on its first operational, subsidy-free 50 MW solar farm and is in the process of closing finance on its 2023-2024 portfolio. Voltalia’s strategy involves working to ensure contracts go to local companies, engaging with communities and providing community-benefit payments.
RWE Pembroke Net Zero Centre (PNZC)
RWE is developing investable projects to decarbonise its existing Pembroke Power Station via its overarching Pembroke Net Zero Centre (PNZC). Projects include floating offshore wind, a battery storage plant in development, green hydrogen and a synchronous compensator. PNZC is a key member of the South Wales Industrial Cluster.
SP Energy Networks
SP Energy Networks is the only Distribution Network Operator serving communities across Scotland, England and Wales. It also delivers key net zero infrastructure projects, including the Western Link, which brings renewables from Scotland to homes and businesses in Wales and England and utilises the highest subsea cable voltage worldwide.
Net Zero Energy Pioneer Award Shortlist
The net-zero energy pioneer award recognises the achievements of the inspiring individuals making a real difference to the development of a net zero energy system.
Monika Paplaczyk
Monika is Investment Director at Thrive Renewables. During her 16 years at Thrive, she has driven the funding and development of 19 clean energy projects and led Thrive’s ‘community funding bridge’ supporting local ownership. Monika is an Advisory Group member for Innovate UK and regularly shares her insight at industry events.
Tara Bowers
As project manager for Exeter Community Energy’s Healthy Homes for Wellbeing project, Tara transformed the fuel poverty project by raising awareness and helping exceed funding targets. Beyond this, Tara gave 282 voluntary hours last year, including as a speaker at industry events and delivering food bank parcels to local residents.
Roger Hollies
Roger has spent the last 15 years working on innovative sustainable-energy engineering systems. As CTO and founding employee of ARENKO he helps lead an industry transforming global electricity grids towards zero carbon. He regularly engages with working groups and steering committees in academia and industry to share knowledge and accelerate innovation.
Irene Di Martino
Irene is the co-founder and leader of Amp X, a disruptive digital energy platform pioneering artificial intelligence and autonomy to unlock grid-edge flexibility. Irene started her career working on coal power stations, so her development into a net zero energy pioneer with over 20 years of experience epitomises the industry’s decarbonisation journey.
Charles Bradshaw-Smith
Charles left a successful corporate career with E.ON to establish SmartKlub in 2015. He believes the energy industry’s business models need disrupting for the full social and environmental benefit of local and community energy to have mainstream impact. Charles supports research at the University of Nottingham and has served on UKGBC task groups.
Public Sector Local Leadership Award Shortlist
The public sector local leadership award recognises the crucial role the public sector plays in transforming the UKs energy system for a zero-carbon future, both through ambitious policy frameworks and inspiring projects.
University of Plymouth
As well as working towards its net zero goals, the university is a leading player in the clean maritime industry, leading the Supergen ORE Hub, hosting the UK’s test facility for floating offshore wind, and collaborating on new research. It also helped to create the UK’s first electric passenger ferry and the first e-maritime hub of shore-side charging for electric vessels.
Bath & North East Somerset Council
To combat emissions from the built environment, Bath and North East Somerset Council became the first local authority in the UK to have successfully implemented a net zero new housing policy that specifically limits total energy use and space heating and requires sufficient on-site renewable energy to match total energy use.
Hampshire County Council
HCC has established a new department devoted to strategic progress towards its goal to be net zero by 2050. Its strategic, evidence-based approach to developing a net zero local energy system has residents at its heart and brings a partnership approach that amplifies the benefits of community action while encouraging peer-to-peer learning.
SSEN (Project RESOP) – Regional Energy System Optimisation Planning
The RESOP project is working with Dundee City Council to become one of the first Scottish local authorities to have both their Local Area Energy Plan (LAEP) and Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy (LHEES) digitised on the collaboration platform ‘LAEP+’. The project will assist not only long-term planning, but projects ready to be implemented now.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority
Greater Manchester was the first city region to set a science-based target, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2038. GMCA has developed, secured and delivered programmes with a value of c. £204m to date, bringing in £140m of competitive grant funding to deliver programmes retrofitting social, public and domestic buildings, installing renewable energy capacity and developing innovative technologies.
Whole Energy System Innovation Award Shortlist
The whole energy system innovation award recognises the role of innovative technology, products and services in the development of the whole energy system for a zero-carbon future.
National Grid ESO (Demand Flexibility Service)
The DFS allows the ESO to access additional flexibility when the national demand is at its highest – during peak winter days – which is not currently accessible in real-time. This new innovative service allows consumers, as well as some industrial and commercial users (through suppliers/aggregators), to be incentivised for voluntarily ‘flexing’ when they use their electricity.
RheEnergise Ltd
RheEnergise has developed a globally scalable, long-duration energy storage solution called High-Density-Hydro® (HD Hydro). HD Hydro builds on the mature, proven technology of pumped hydro and makes it better, by removing many of the barriers to deployment and making it vastly more scalable. Typical projects generate 5-50 MW of power for 4-16 hours.
GRIDSERVE
GRIDSERVE’s Electric Forecourt in Norwich is one of the most advanced EV charging facilities in the world, hosting 36 EV chargers, including 22 high-power chargers with up to 350 kW of power. These are the fastest chargers commercially available today, capable of adding up to 100 miles of range in five minutes. All power is supplied by 100% renewable energy.
Love my EV
Lovemyev.com is a free consumer website helping individuals find the right electric vehicle and home charger. Love my EV introduced the UK’s first dynamic energy tariff comparison in 2019, giving realistic comparisons of half-hourly tariffs. Overall, the site receives 15,000 unique, organic visitors per month. Each user that completes the site’s energy assessment could save 1,200 kg of CO2 each year.
Octopus Energy (Winder – Tinder for Wind)
Octopus has researched, developed, and launched an innovative new digital platform that matches communities seeking wind generation with willing landowners with space available for turbines. It is using data and a tech-led approach to show where we can build more wind turbines quickly for communities that want them – and deliver cheaper energy bills as a result.
For more information on the awards and further opportunities, please contact Emma Madray at emadray@regen.co.uk and Hannah Stanley at hstanley@regen.co.uk
Find out more here.