Kayla Ente MBE
Founder & CEO
When I talk to friends and family about how difficult it is to advance BHESCo’s ambition of creating clean, local energy systems, they are surprised. They don’t understand why it is so hard. A part of me wilts in shame for my own lack of ability to overcome the resistance we often face from potential customers.
What’s not to like about having more control over energy prices? Or owning a part of your own energy supply? Or not paying anything upfront and saving money immediately? Or doing your bit to save the planet? They all sound so appealing. A no brainer, one might think. That was my intention when I established BHESCo, let’s create an offer too good to refuse.
Now, 11 years later, with more than 60 renewable energy and efficiency projects up and running and a track record of consistently saving our customers money, reducing carbon emissions and creating value for money for the taxpayer while generating benefit for the communities we serve, we face more resistance than ever.
A value system that prioritises financial gain while ignoring the impacts on the environment and society means that people are expecting even higher savings than BHESCo can offer, even at our low profit margins. On average, BHESCo offers a 25% discount on an electricity supplier’s price, while matching their price if this is lower than our price over the contract term.
This means that our customers are never at financial risk of loss. The carbon emission savings are guaranteed, while our customers spend no time designing the installation themselves, arranging the grid connection, the planning permission or the pricing.
They don’t have to be concerned with the maintenance or interacting at all with the installer to get the system up and running. Still, people are fussy, sometimes choosing not to proceed with our offer, or even worse, becoming aggressive in their opposition to our service.
When I set up BHESCo, 11 years ago, I expected to move with the trends that were happening at the time, the government had announced their community energy strategy in 2014. People would get their heads around the idea that they could be empowered to take more control over their energy supply. They are already enslaved to energy suppliers, forced to buy electricity from the existing network at exorbitant prices.
This was one way to escape that enslavement, by agreeing to buy their energy from a social enterprise with the intention of directing any profits towards community benefit, like eradicating fuel poverty, rejecting the inequity of the current energy system. In a way, regaining the power that was lost when the energy system was privatised in an act of desperation to save the British economy from hitting the floor in the 1980s.
It seems like a vision of empowered communities and saving the planet is a step too far for people who can’t see beyond the current exploitive establishment who are perfectly happy to continue to burn fossil fuels and build expensive, dangerous, and toxic nuclear power plants that all serve their personal interests.
Joining a movement with the ability to change that paradigm in creating self-sustaining, clean energy is just not enough. People want more. They cannot see the woods through the trees. They are offered a discount and a way to reduce their carbon emissions, and this is still not enough to influence their decision to be a part of the movement towards change.
Human beings are causing climate change.
We all know that.
We are also doing nothing to stop it when the opportunity is handed to us on a silver platter. This is what makes it so difficult to be a change maker. However, despite the obstacles and the opposition to our aims for a socialised, clean energy system, BHESCo will not stop working to build a better future for our children and grandchildren.
Whilst we sometimes find it difficult to understand why someone would not want to work with us when they can save money and reduce their environmental impact for no effort on their part, we acknowledge that change is difficult, and that people are accustomed to the status quo.
The UK energy system is broken, and it is clear that we cannot leave it to Governments to fix it. We remain hopeful that a paradigm shift to clean community owned energy will result from our herculean efforts to change the status quo.
If you wish to partner with BHESCo to transform the way that you source and use your energy then please contact our Projects Team.
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