What the Local Power Plan means for public sector organisations

Published in February this year, the Local Power Plan claims to be the most significant commitment to community and local energy this country has ever seen. It’s backed by up to £1 billion from Great British Energy (GBE) and built around a target of supporting over 1,000 local and community energy projects by 2030. It represents a genuine attempt to put local government, public sector organisations and community energy groups at the centre of the clean energy transition, not just as observers, but as owners.

What is the LLP?

The vision of the plan is undoubtedly compelling; that by 2030, every community in the UK should have the opportunity to own a local energy project. The plan sets out a framework of the direct funding, expert support, scalable business models, and policy reform that are needed to get there, while acknowledging what has held the sector back, including difficulty accessing finance, capability and capacity gaps, grid connection barriers, and the absence of standardised, repeatable project models. It also commits to addressing all issues head on.

What it doesn’t do, yet, is tell us exactly how. The GBE Capital Toolkit, which promises to contain the full details of funding products and investment allocation, is due in Summer 2026. Shared ownership mechanisms are out for consultation, and code modifications (to make it easier for community energy projects to access energy markets) are progressing, but not yet resolved. And the plan in its current form describes a product portfolio that’s still being developed in collaboration with the sector, finance providers and customers.

That gap between ambition and operational detail reflects the complexity of what GBE is trying to build. But for public sector organisations, from local councils, NHS trusts, education bodies and housing providers, it creates a practical question. If the tools are coming, what should we be doing to prepare?

How do I get LPP ready?

There is a real risk that when the Toolkit does arrive, organisation risk being left behind in the goldrush, if they haven’t done the groundwork. The plan explicitly aims to reach underserved communities and organisations new to the energy sector. But, and here’s the most crucial point, the capacity to act, which the plan identifies as a barrier for nearly 60% of community energy groups, won’t suddenly appear because funding becomes available. It needs to be built in advance.

Grid connection is perhaps the most obvious demonstration of this. The plan recognises that securing a grid connection remains one of the most significant barriers for community and local energy projects; cited by more than half of respondents in the government’s own research. At the same time, Ofgem and NESO’s move to a ‘first ready, first connected’ connection model means the queue now prioritises projects that can demonstrate land, planning consent, and financing are in place. For public sector organisations looking to develop on-site generation or wider local energy projects, that process still has long lead times. So much so that starting the process after the Toolkit launches could easily be a case of starting too late.

The same thinking applies to estate planning and energy baselining. The data and analysis needed to understand where you have viable generation capacity, how your demand profile works, and what grid infrastructure already exists near your sites won’t happen overnight. Yet without it, it’ll be near on impossible to make a credible case for investment, whether to GBE or to any other funder.

Only around a quarter of local authorities have developed or committed to a Local Area Energy Plan as of mid-2024. For district authorities in particular, which lack the resources of combined authorities and metro mayors, the risk of being left behind is very real.

An uneven playing field?

The plan has already channelled £16 million through Mayoral Strategic Authorities, the combined authority tier that includes the likes of Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the West of England. These are organisations with dedicated energy teams, established relationships with GBE, and the institutional capacity to identify viable projects and put credible bids together quickly. They were ready when early funding became available and have benefited accordingly.

But district and borough councils are not starting from the same place, with many lacking specialist energy expertise in-house, with limited capacity to absorb the upfront development costs that originating a project requires. They’ll also have had less visibility of, and engagement with, the frameworks being put in place.

The plan explicitly aims to reach underserved communities and organisations new to the sector, and that intention seems genuine. But good intentions and available funding are not the same thing as accessible funding. Smaller authorities should start to build their capability and groundwork now, ready for the arrival of the toolkit and the opportunities it promises.

The Local Power Plan offers something genuinely important: a route for public sector organisations to become active participants in the energy system, not just users of it. But that opportunity isn’t going to wait for organisations to be ready. Now is the time to understand your position, assess your estate, engage with grid connection processes, and build the internal case.

Is your organisation ready for the Local Power Plan? We’ve created a checklist for public sector organisations in advance of Great British Energy’s Local Power Plan initiative.

By Andrew Donald, Business Development Manager, Equity Energies