Renewable Community Energy request for european contacts

Subject: Renewable Community Energy – request from George Hay in the US.

Claverton:   Are there any European “leaders” in community energy/sustainable energy concepts in England/Europe you could put me in contact with?   I’m seeing in CA: the RESCO project by Gerry Braun, methodology for municipalities to plan for distributed resouces, attract critical mass of investment locally to their benefit, technically integrate them and leverage alot of allies and funding resouces they bring to table.   They just gave their 9 awards of different types, and I’m explorinig model in NJ and getting a workshop going in Atlantic City with a university, and like to bring in some European Communities.   Avedore is bit on big side in Denmark, but is nice example to point to in conjunction with offshore wind development.   Regards, George Hay From:  GEOHAY3 attt  aol  dot  com

Further note from George:

Thanks Dave.     I’ll get my information into system, when I understand it and website better.   Sorry for any disturbance on website.   Here’s desciption of what is going on in US, and my background.   I ran a series of workshops on future markets for gas turbines in 1990’s with DOE, EPRI, GRI and manufacturers that Chris was involved in 1990’s that inolved thru my research collaborative the Collaborative Advanced Gas Turbine Program that involved a number of US, Canadian and European utilities.   

CAGT grew out of a greenhouse gas initiative on “supply efficiency” at Pacific Gas and Electric in early 1990’s that was cut short by deregulation and lack of interest in subject at time in CA and US.   In any case, the distributed resouces effort that PG&E spear headed back then was originally intended as a “buyers” led  initiative amongst electric/gas utilities for serving customers.   Over time it seemed to become more of a “manufacturer” led initiative in policy community and incentives.  

CA RESCO and some of my efforts in NJ, are to get the concept of “integrated resouce planning” implemented by municipal/county level governments collaborative via pilot demonstrations.    Attached is list of recent awards in CA.   I’m working on subject in NJ, and getting a workshop going amongst stakeholders, but focused on needs of municipal/community decision markets and procurement.  

NJ has been a leading state in US on solar PV, and efficiency/CHP programs but most of 566 municipalities and 23 counties (and parallel school systems and water/sewage authorities) have never done procurment of “energy systems” outside of sewage treatment and electricity/gas procurement for their building needs.   Unlike CA, there are very few “public electric municipal utilities”.   Sacramento Municipal Utilities District in CA (SMUD) and Elkraft in Copenhagen were amongst CAGT members that had very aggressive integration strategies of natural gas CHP, hybridization of fuels and duty cycle and purchasing intermittent renewables from regional hydro and wind farm wholesale markets.  

Only California and New York have “public interest energy research” like utilities use to fund in California when I work for them, and it’s bringing up issue of how better fund such research to bridge the gap between DOE/National Laboratory and manfuacturer oriented research, and sub-critical mass of aggregated “buyers” in smaller States and municipalities in larger ISO power pools (like PJM).   In any case, I’m just a volunteer putting this together at moment but I think is an important aspect of achieving greenhouse gas reduction, energy and economic growth goals of State and emerging US energy policy in legislation.   George A. Hay IIII 505 East Atlantic Ave Ocean City, NJ  08226 856-979-2734Note1:  George was leader of an advanced gas turbine project in California in 1993-97, and is an influential thinker/publicist in US on “Distributed Generation” concepts.

Note2:– to find contacts, look through the two members lists located off the main site menu bar – that is what it is there for.   http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/news-subscriptions/view-members – most people have described themselves, if not they should.