Grimsby Community Energy (GCE) aims to cut bills and carbon emissions for local community organisations. Since 2016 GCE has installed 534kW of solar PV over 10 community buildings which has saved 295 tonnes CO2. These include the E Factor small business centre and YMCA Humber, with 70 bedrooms for young people in housing need. In 2023, they also added 308kW of solar PV at the CATCH engineering apprentice training centre.
£7,830 of donations to onboard.earth’s Energy Revolution programme in 2023 were invested in GCE’s community share offer. This helped GCE add 57 and 106kW of solar PV to two more buildings at CATCH – providing clean green electricity and savings to their work of training the engineers, pipefitters and welders of the future, essential skills for the offshore wind industry, industrial scale hydrogen and carbon capture and storage which part of the plan to support the UK’s transition from fossil fuel energy.
GCE also works to upskill young people giving them a range of skills and knowledge on how to run community energy schemes. In the past few years they have hosted 17 young people from local colleges on work placements.
Callum Hough, Account Manager at GCE, comments: “We’re incredibly grateful for onboard.earth’s support, which has directly contributed to our solar panel project at CATCH. Their investment is a testament to the power of collaboration in driving renewable energy forward for our community. Partnerships like this highlight what can be achieved when organisations share a vision. Onboard.earth’s support has not only funded solar panels but also brought attention to the critical role community energy plays in combating climate change.”
Vicky Dunn, Managing Director GCE said “We’ve saved £79,000 on energy bills for our solar customers, meaning they can spend that on supporting and training young people or helping local small businesses and entrepreneurs – all community building which makes lives better in our patch.”
To find out more about GCE and their upcoming plans for solar PV on the St Andrew’s Hospice and more buildings, see www.grimsbycommunityenergy.coop