Local Energy Accelerator
Background
Our grants support the development of projects, and we’re looking to fund projects requiring grants between £25,000 and £250,000, for use in 2024-25.
For capital funding for heat networks, please consider applying to the UK Government’s Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF). This GHNF is a capital grant fund that supports the development of low carbon heat networks and is eligible to organisations in the public, private, and third sectors in England. The Mayor’s Green Finance Fund is now open for applications for low cost loans to finance capital works.
Heating and powering London’s buildings accounts for around two thirds of the city's carbon emissions. As part of his work to make London a net zero carbon city by 2030, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wants the capital to use clean, flexible and locally generated energy. This is critical to decarbonising London’s energy system and delivering net zero carbon by 2030.
The Mayor's Local Energy Accelerator (LEA) provides funded expertise and support to organisations to develop clean and locally generated energy projects and reduce their carbon emissions. LEA projects already underway are intended to complete by the end of June 2024. Projects funded through the new £2m grant funding will be supported by the GLA’s upcoming Zero Carbon Accelerator, details of which shall be published in due course. We also manage the London Heat Map, an online tool that is regularly updated to help inform decentralised energy projects.
Projects supported to date include district energy networks that use renewable heat sources (including heat from the ground and waste/recoverable heat), and low carbon energy technologies such as heat pumps, solar panels, and energy storage.
Find out more in the LEA information brochure.
Aims
- Increase renewable energy generation capacity.
- Increase the number of local jobs in the clean energy sector.
- Work with stakeholders to raise the skills, capacity and capability needed to develop and implement projects.
- Reduce fuel poverty through increasing flexibility of energy demand to cut energy costs.
- Identify strategically important distributed energy projects using clean secondary heat sources and renewable energy and bring them to market.
- Facilitate the development of area-wide district energy and smart grid networks.
- Enable expansion of district energy networks by facilitating the planning for and integration of cleaner locally available secondary heat sources and renewable energy.
- Support work that will develop district energy network opportunities within the context of heat network zoning
- Build confidence in commercial markets and generate market efficiencies with common practices and standards.
- Inform and influence local and national Government policy and funding to accelerate achievement of net zero.
Funded expertise and support available
We support projects that are strategically important for London’s good and fair growth, development and infrastructure needs. For example, district energy networks using renewable and recovered heat sources (like Bunhill 2 Energy Centre and North London District Energy), in heat network priority zones; renewable energy generation (like Old Oak and Park Royal Solar PV), storage and demand flexibility including in areas of electricity grid constraint; and priority areas for transport electric charging infrastructure.
Read more about the projects we've supported to date:
- Case study from the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
- Case study from the Royal Borough of Greenwich
- Case study from Citigen
- Case Study from NHS England - London Region
The additional £2m funding will be used to provide expertise for public sector organisations (including housing associations and educational establishments) to help them develop clean and flexible energy projects that reduce carbon emissions and to bring them into operation across London.
We will fund technical, legal, commercial and financial, project management and multidisciplinary expertise to support work involved in the following stages of energy project development:
- strategic development and master-planning
- feasibility studies and techno-economic modelling
- outline and detailed business cases
- detailed project design/development
- procurement support
- commercialisation support
- day-to-day intensive project management support can be provided during all stages, including installation and delivery.
Support for more than one stage of the project can be applied for at the same time, for example outline business case and commercialisation. We are keen to prioritise projects that deliver significant carbon savings, unlock opportunities for future carbon savings and move projects towards or into commercialisation and delivery.
There is a Local Energy Framework of consultancies available to procure the above expertise from to help organisations develop low carbon heat networks, solar PV and flexibility projects.
A list of these consultancies on the Local Energy Framework (in alphabetical order) is as below:
- 1Energy Group (subcontractor on sublot 2.2)
- AECOM
- Amberside
- Asteros
- Atkins
- Buro Happold Ltd
- Carbon Trust Advisory Ltd
- Centre for Sustainable Energy
- Emergent.Energy
- Energy Direction (with Teno Energy)
- FairHeat
- GEP Environmental
- Greenfield Nordic Ltd
- HermeticaBlack
- Inner Circle
- Ove Arup & Partners Ltd
- Ramboll UK Ltd
- Scene
- Sustainable Energy Ltd
- Sweco UK Ltd
- Turner and Townsend
- UK Power Networks
- Woodward Energy Consulting
- WSP UK Limited
The framework can be used free-of-charge by eligible organisations who are not using LEA funding, to procure the expertise they need to deliver projects across the UK. For a framework briefing pack please email [email protected].
How to apply
Please contact [email protected] if you would like to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI), which will remain open until Monday 13 May 2024. We will then discuss with applying organisations to determine their needs for support and whether they will be invited to progress to a full application for grant funding.
FAQs
The Local Energy Accelerator (LEA) provides fully-funded expertise (across technical, commercial, strategic and project management services) to support the development of low carbon, decentralised energy projects in London. The support is provided by a team of pre-approved consultants who are part of the Local Energy Framework of Consultants.
LEA supports the development of projects including district or estate energy networks using renewable heat sources; renewable generation of electricity; demand flexibility project development and others.
LEA can support projects that will deliver high carbon savings of around 250 tonnes CO2e per year as a minimum threshold. The minimum size and scale depends on the type of project – for example, for a solar PV installation, the minimum size of installation is likely to be around 700kW but for a heat pump it would be around 350 kW if the plant was used as baseload supply.
An applicant could combine different types of projects, for example a smaller heat pump and a PV array, so long as they are connected to the same system. It is also possible to aggregate more than one project under the same framework procurement.
There is no minimum or maximum level of funding – we look at the resulting carbon savings or the megawatt capacity of renewable energy you are looking to install and consider this in line with overall objectives of the programme.
No, LEA does not provide capital funding – LEA funds expertise to support the development and delivery of low carbon, decentralised energy projects and this covers revenue only. However, LEA can assist projects in gaining capital funding to accelerate and unlock projects that will reduce carbon emissions and increase renewable energy capacity in London.
We are working to meet the programme’s decarbonisation targets by end July 2023, so at present we are prioritising projects which can be completed in a shorter timescale.
However, we are happy to have a conversation with you about your specific project and can then advise on whether you should pursue an application for LEA funding.
LEA has supported some early-stage strategic work, including initial masterplanning and scoping, but we are currently focused on supporting later-stage projects which will deliver in the next year or two. However, get in touch with us as more funding may be available in future to fund more strategic work.
LEA has an established framework of consultants which provide the expertise. Beneficiaries of LEA funding must carry out a mini competition from the framework and procure a consultant from this framework.
It is not a stipulation that you have capital funding in place when you apply for support through the LEA. However, you do need to know where that capital funding might come from, and this is one of the questions covered in the application process. The LEA Programme Delivery Unit (an expert team of consultants providing free and bespoke project management support) can also help you by advising on suitable external funding streams and help secure capital funding. The Mayor of London’s Energy Efficiency Fund (MEEF) is also available to secure capital funding.
LEA provides revenue-only funded expertise to support all London public and private sector organisations in the development of low carbon, decentralised energy projects. RA-W is focused on assisting beneficiary organisations to onboard delivery partners who will deliver renewable generation and energy efficiency interventions to decarbonise buildings. The two programmes can be used together when the projects are eligible for both LEA and RA-W support.
No, LEA only supports the development of projects which help generate energy from renewable sources, such as heat pumps and solar panels, or waste heat sources. It does not fund projects which only increase energy efficiency in existing buildings or heat networks. Another accelerator programme by the Mayor of London, the Retrofit Accelerator for Workplaces, can provide support for this if the support is needed for public sector buildings.
Yes, LEA always promotes the highest technical standards in the design of heat networks. In promoting best practice and efficient heat networks, the GLA has a heat network manual which includes the CP1 technical standards.
LEA can also fund a client engineer for projects to ensure specification standards are being met.
LEA funding can support alongside other sources of funding but work done by LEA must be clearly identified for audit purposes – i.e. the same overall piece of work cannot use LEA funding as match but it can fund bespoke tasks in their entirety.
LEA can support organisations in gaining capital funding, like the Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF) or Heat Network Efficiency Scheme (HNES) and Mayor of London’s Energy Efficiency Fund (MEEF) e.g. in preparing a project for applications.
LEA has supported organisations in the development of Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) applications as long as the key outcome is to increase renewable energy capacity.
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