By Jamie Baxter
While completing a Masters in Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment at UCL, Jamie,
Arran, Ali and Pauls, alongside Ben, Luisa and Gianluca from other courses, decided to set up the
Clean Energy Society (CES). The society had two main aims: to increase the share of UCL’s energy
supplied by renewable energy through the installation of solar panels, and to promote student
engagement in clean energy and collaboration between UCL students and staff.
I met Hannah from UniSolar at an Urban Community Energy Fund event at London City Hall and then
later at SOAS. She was extremely helpful in not only informing us how the project at SOAS had
worked but also taking us through the possibilities of how such a project could work in our case. It
was great to learn about the possible funding and ownership structures that could be used for
community energy projects.
We spoke to UCL’s Sustainability Team to understand their appetite for this proposal and establish
how we might be able to work together. We quickly found that there was plenty of appetite for
green energy at UCL and we set out how we would work with them on a learning-by-doing basis to
deliver a new solar PV installation at Langton Close, a UCL accommodation block. However, unlike
other community energy projects, the society would not own the installation after completion but
focus on learning how to deliver such a project.
As a student team we delivered much of the documentation needed to progress the project, such as
business cases and design & access statements. We held a workshop for other interested students,
to enable their involvement in certain aspects of the project, but also to receive their feedback and
ideas. Through site visits and discussions with contractors we were able to gain a better
understanding of the practicalities involved in delivering such a project. We handed our work back to
UCL’s Sustainability Team so they could submit the planning and install the solar PV system, and
passed the Clean Energy Society to a new cohort of students with plenty more ideas for low-carbon
energy projects.
It was nice coincidence then, two weeks into his new job at Syzygy Renewables after finishing the
masters, that Jamie received a call from UCL looking for a company to deliver a system with
SolarEdge solar inverters to meet UCL’s important fire regulations. Jamie then worked alongside the
UCL Estates team, solar and electrical contractors to deliver a 29.7kWp solar PV system at Langton
Close before the Feed-in Tariff deadline at the end of March 2019.
Solar array on UCL building Langton Close!