 So local is something I get keep getting called over and over again, and I'm not from Brighton and I don't live here I was born in Uruguay, and I grew up in New York, and I've been in London for 19 years But I did launch the Brighton energy the best go is anybody here from Besco Brighton energy Hove Collective and then also will control who set up Brighton energy, and I'm a I'm a community energy person and I Think that we won't change the subject Because I am standing here in front of you, and I want to tell you I've been to the promised land I grew up on self-sustaining communities with Solar panels printing press we've re bakery We you know we had sheep we made wool We had cottage industry 300 acres, and it was all workers cooperative up outside of New York State and Everybody knew what you did and everybody talked about you and your family and what you're doing and in many ways It was you know, it's what everybody wanted when they said I'm gonna go off and be in a collective I'm gonna be in a community and I think it's important to say That's not the answer so if you're thinking about running off to Setting up a collective outside and getting a couple 20 You can buy like a whole 20 acres of land in in Spain right now or in Italy or Portugal pause just pause You can do it right here right now, and it's infinitely better both for you and for all the collective people who've been working On this project, and it's so funny that you there are last speaker brought up Nick from the Pine Ridge because my life is taking me all over the world, but as a native I was born in Uruguay my grandmother was native Uruguayan Indian and I came to New York and grew up with Lakota and have spent a lot of time in With Winona LaDuke in the White Earth Reservation and that's actually Where I'd like to start the journey so I I That's a rooftop in Loughborough With young people who have grew up and lived there and we put into employment and have solar panels on their rooftop And what my organization has been doing is saying I've been to the mountaintop. I've been to the promised land. I I was eaten Grain bread that I had baked with grain that I had grown With a will jumper that had been knitted for me from from sheep that I had carted the wool from I mean, I've been there and I'm telling you right now right here right now is it and And building systems that work in this system here or can be done And it's been a fight of mine for years. I've I've worked so I come to you today I was yelling at Lord Willets yesterday in Westminster Abbey about how he was full of shit and Because he was the one who would raise the the the taking the cap off of school University goers and then he was there telling all the most deprived young people 400 young people that were in there from all over London that he really believed in their education and their opportunity And I just had to pull out my phone and be like you said this at this state And you said this and there needs to be accountability And that's the same thing that the fellow speakers have been saying we need accountability We need to be rethinking how the financial model works, but like It's fiduciary responsibility having the highest amount of Return in the shortest amount of time which has been screwing everything and you can have reasonable turns over a reasonable amount of time Right here and right now and really what we've been trying to do at re-powering and we have a you know Half of us are women half of us are men. We have equal pay grades. It's a cooperative You it's all the the share capital is locked. It all exists. It's working You can we've won the renewable energy awards inside housing awards new Top 100 projects by a KPMG like all these things, but it's all about how do you build in the communities where you are? I am not going to be the director of your co-op It doesn't matter if it's energy co-op or housing co-op whatever all we do is we come in and support you to be the managers and Directors of that and the delivery agencies, but let's go back to to Pine Ridge This was the this every year. We're known to do because the head of the White Earth Reservation the jibway people she rides Against the dapple the total access pipeline and there was this whole movement I went with them over a thousand miles riding and it was it's been this sort of movement of peoples across the world that I Wanted to to share with you that we're all trying to do this and I've been working around the world with groups like this And that person in the front there That is Quinton leading fighter that is the great great-grandson of black elk and He was there in tears with me and we were talking about how do you use local currencies to buy? Energy assets and to do things because we did the first community owned Renewalogy project in the world and used local currency the bricks and pound to build a buy that asset and And he would we were working through it and he said I've talked to my parents about this How do we make this happen? Yeah, and this in I was in the mountains in Bolivia Having spent six six months traveling around working with different communities Talking about how the indigenous communities themselves need to not leave and go to the city not learn Spanish Fuck Spanish. You want I'm a raw you want catch you and you want to eat You know we all talk about these amazing things that people have but actually What consistently happens is we talk about the fact that somewhere else There's something that you guys aren't in the right place at the right time that there's a better idea somewhere else You are in the right place at the right time and she was in the right place at the right time And she helped me to paint with her and her whole school This piece that was about how you that you are the father sky and mother earth and you are there And you need to speak the language and eat the food and rejoice in that and not leave your village And so what does community energy look like I could talk to you about solar panels I have been on the energy market reform policy bills for the UK I've set up community England community London EU energy consumer group, but it all means nothing Communities coming together to generate a revenue stream and cut out the big energy supply companies looks like this Right People coming together like yourselves to make food Celebrate that and put them on to all the buildings in their local area But every single time it needs a woman it needs a matriarch for all the men in the room I am deeply deeply honoring the male energy in the room, but I would just like to say We have nothing compared to the energy of the women that run these co-ops It's always a woman and I have been to hundreds of communities across the world And I work directly with the Rockefeller 100 resilient cities program And I can tell you that it's about matriarchs and matriarchs are the ones that help facilitate that give yourself that And and and as a man, I can say that we have a very important role to play It's fantastic to be a man, you know They can make all these jokes about about men always trying to thrust their way into things and leading and all this But but and we have an important role to play and I want to honor that because many of the men in here I'm sure have had no guidance where a generation have not grown up with any sort of meal later leadership and we need it and we're trying to work through being sensitive and being Clear and direct and I'm I want you to understand that that's important discussion to have but we're not having it today We're talking about the fact that energy co-ops are facilitated Consistently by incredible women like and can I and can I is the lynchpin she was she ran the pub on that estate She's lived on that state for 40 years And she knows through and through what it takes to make things happen And if you fuck with and then and we'll fuck with you the story goes with it consistently that her husband her law her third husband Cheated on her and he somehow jumped off the top of a building but everybody is consistently believes that actually and help facilitate him leaving the situation and This is and I say that I say that is a joke because she jokes about it But in the real in the reality fact is that she has always been there and every young person she when there's when the funding stop for young Young people they live in this isn't Brixton I'm sorry This is in Hackney in the banister house estate on the Hummerton high road Which was coined the Hummer side because it had the highest levels of stabbings And I have personally had three young people that I've worked with in our paid accredited training who passed away And she has seen over 15 young people killed that she's worked with in through gang violence and through other things But she knows the young people she also knows the people who are in need and because she did Working with her around food We were able to build an energy cooperative that was able to reach both the people who were most in need Whether they were elderly or infirmed and the young people who have no way into society They don't need a way off of their estates. They don't need to go somewhere else They don't need to get a chance to go to Oxford They don't want to they want to go and live in their communities and be there and be respected for who they are And that is something that I had to learn about as well And so I mean from my perspective That's my grandmother and my great-grandmother and that's where they lived in that mud hut and that Che Guevara and Fidel Castro came To that hut because they were part of the Socialist Party in Uruguay all those years ago And so matriarchs run through and through and in me But all I can say is what I do on a day-to-day basis is tell you is bring this narrative both to them to say you don't have to go anywhere and I'm gonna bear to you and say you don't have to go anywhere because the people in your communities are there already They're usually between the age of 40 and 74. They're usually a woman And they are if you look at most forests They're like they're they're the big mother tree and they hold the ability to push Chemistry around they can take carbon or water and they use the mycology the mushrooms in the ground to do that If you cut down 90% of the forest and you leave these trees It will come back and it will seed it and it will know where to push the nitrogen and nutrients that it needs And these incredible women have been able to do that in nine cooperatives that I've built across London with an incredible team Which I am proud to know that it's a cooperative model So how does that work? We do paid accredited youth training programs for young people So they're a QA to credit they're paid of the London living wage and because they lived on that estate They're able to to talk to people in a way that the council can't and in the way that a private company cannot we run schools programs For young people around how do you get engaged with things? How do you dance? How do you dance energy? How do you draw it? How do you paint it? How do you live a reality that you want to see art music and dance is not some piddly thing on the side It is the crux of what we're trying to do our civilization our society has we talked about Finance and energy and the sort of mass allowing and both based fundamentals when actually it's about art music and dance And how can we then creatively talk to one another in family? And so the only way to do that is to be local to where you are It's great to think about esoteric great ideas But to be clear that if you are working on a project and it's important to you Then you can come up and you can draw using play dough using painting You can come up with the ideas and the vision that you want to see in the world and when you cook the food Don't I'm not saying this the catering wasn't fantastic here. I'm just saying if you're doing Something in your local area don't go to these caterers because they were fantastic go to your group or even say We're gonna kick together and make that happen and that's what we've done in any one of the cops We've worked on we say who loves cooking Okay, you do it. How can we much can be put in I can put in five or I can put in ten and each time we come together For that week we made the food and for any bigger events We would try to to double down on that and say are you able to cook? Should we all come together to cook so that even the way in which the food is presented doesn't exclude people it includes people When we installed solar panels, it's about the paid accredited training includes finance IT Technical legal media and marketing. They learn that every business regardless of energy or whatever Has all the necessary parts that they need to learn about to to become Successful in whatever they go on to do so they help this is Habiba Hujo who was actually born in this building I grew up there and is now studying engineering at University of cause London Kamal Khaldir who whose mother it was the building behind this On the on the Rupa Park estate whose little brother was Lane and his mom is unwell and he really didn't have many many options to do things But by giving him this opportunity He loved it. He said I don't want to install solar panels I really love car clubs and doing the videos and the advertising for the the project He has gone on to make a very successful company doing that So I guess where what I wanted to give you is tangible examples We've set up bricks and energy solar one two three North Kensington community energy right around Grenfell. We did a whole community energy project on social housing Voxel energy is on the whole Voxel estate Banister house in homerton Mambath community solar is open right now it's just I think raised about a hundred and forty thousand to do solar on schools and energy garden is The new is is the new version of community energy, which I'll talk to a little bit about now But I guess the tangible thing is that While winning all these awards over the last few years, I've come to say that I really feel we that the journey is difficult and And it promises many struggles The the idea that we can make it and there's all these really fantastic new models of communicating is is real and As someone who's worked on policy inside Whitehall as well as Trying to deliver stuff. I've had three legal injunctions put on me One was not allowed to go on any more rooftops in Lambeth One was not allowed to plant vegetables on the overground And the third one I hadn't even talked about but effectively because I basically I've been trying to gorilla garden or gorilla solar Like and I actually set it out and someone came back to me from from who runs a security outfit for the national government and they said in 2011 When there was those first Not extinction rebellion pre-extinction rebellion there was the they were trying to come out and sort of Get everyone to stop and to go against the banks Was the 99% thing and I went to and I gave a talk and I said forget all the talking Don't be don't be in these these little tents over in bank. Go into the street Rip up the paving stones and plant a garden in the middle of the road Literally just get a jackhammer You can rent them for the day from hs hire and put in a bunch of potatoes And then put some solar panels across it and power your hide that will get you going I got phone call and they said you have now been put on the special list that we have to surveil and see you guys Now that is what I'm saying to you is that that is true aren't anarchy is true revolution because talking about saying stop And and and I deeply respect everybody right now who's willing to put themselves on the line But if you want to put yourself on the line literally get the jackhammer out because that is a whole other way Of starting to talk about things and I have just done this to the banking sector I've spent the last four years working on a new financial instrument Which we had quadruple checked by all these lawyers and it cost me hundreds of thousands of pounds to do it And I don't I you know It was it was a pumpkin It was it was about how do you communicate to the financial sectors that these Community owned renewable energy projects are investable that if that a reasonable return over a reasonable amount of time is acceptable That that that having social well-being is financially viable and has gains for those communities that growing home In our communities is has a financial instrument So I said all right let's build a hundred million pound bond because all these community energy projects the The the investment community does not feel that they can look at because these guys to Assess whether they can give you their money can't get out of bed for less than 70 grand I can get out of bed for less than 70 grand but I had to explain to them why and so in this case With the idea was that we would come together. We won. I Submitted this idea to the people's postcode lottery. We won about 700 000 pounds to start a massive co-op. So where we put in hundreds of square meters of Green space and grow a different reality And the idea has started and we bought all these people together from bank from america to 100 rockerfellows 100 resident cities ethics metro bank co-op bank everyone to get said look I need a new system. How can we do it? I said look if what we're going to do is we're going to have like The largest emitter of emissions in the uk the sector is transport if we can directly Address that then we can have a huge impact. There's 2.4 billion passenger journeys a day on the london overground And they're and it and it's the biggest single energy consumer if we can generate the energy that we need For them so by putting solar on top of their rooftops And then do youth training programs schools programs put in bat hust swiftness beehives Then we can have a financial return and said if I can do this right if I can commodify social and environmental outcomes for you guys will you invest and Uh, they said they said yes Um, but then we went back and forth for three four years And um, and I said well you can get involved. You can give us assets. You can give us energy You can we can allow you to do a uh, you can help to pay for these youth training programs. Whatever it is. Um, But Uh The one slide that I was thinking was right there Um said It was a social return on investment. Um, which basically they couldn't understand that a four percent return would be applicable And that would be enough So we did a social return on investment by three different universities One of them was imperial college and they found that for every one pound Invested into this project. There's 11 pounds 37 that come out From what sense of well-being sense of place sense of belonging And inclusion and one of the biggest problems that we've found consistently with urban areas is that people feel excluded from society I know that most young people are feeling excluded from their own future And most of you are feeling excluded from the present So if we can come together on this and show that our community projects have straight tangible benefits, then we can then Share that with the investment community and it does exist. So I would I would encourage you guys all to check out um To get involved Uh with with both energy garden, which is which is open for you guys to look at But then also to check out repowering for all the opportunities that are there because the future is here It's now you are exactly in the right place at the right time And you don't need to go anywhere else start in your local community and we'd love to help you do it