Our new State of the Sector data portal is now open for submissions of data.
Click here to access the new data portal
We ask all community energy organisations to provide their data, and will help them do this - every community energy organisation’s data is an important contribution to understanding and quantifying the sector.
Our intention with the portal is to make it easier and much quicker for community energy organisations to provide data for the research, leading to an increase in respondents and improving the quality of the data we hold on the sector. We know having access to data on the sector is vital for community energy organisations, stakeholders and policy makers to understand and communicate about the sector, encourage investment and bring about supportive policies, so we are committed to serving the community energy sector by carrying out the annual research.
We are pleased to announce that State of the Sector 2024 is sponsored by SP Energy Networks. This support is vital for enabling us to conduct the research.
Login information
- If your organisation has responded to State of the Sector before: Organisations who have provided data previously are already set up – we have emailed the people associated with these responses separately. These people can gain access to the portal immediately and add other users associated with their organisation(s).
- If your organisation has not responded to State of the Sector before: The first user from a community energy organisation will need to email sots@communityenergyengland.org and we will grant appropriate access. Once you have access, users can add other people associated with their organisation by inviting them via their email address – click on your organisation, then “Members”, then “+ Invite Members”. These users can also add subsequent users.
- If you do not know whether your organisation has or has not provided data previously, please email sots@communityenergyengland.org and we will give appropriate next steps.
Next steps
If you are part of a community energy organisation, please proceed to add your organisation’s data to the portal. The window for submissions for 2022 and 2023 will close on 22 April. The portal will remain open for users to view/update data and add new sites throughout the year.
If you are not part of a community energy organisation, please spread the word so everyone in the sector hears about this year's survey and research.
Main survey
We have removed some questions from the survey that were no longer relevant or useful. We have also added some new questions; we know the survey is long, but the sector is getting increasingly varied and complex and we have more and more uses for the data for advocating on behalf of the sector and helping us design support mechanisms for the sector. We ask organisations to provide as much information as possible.
Where it was provided, users can view previous data from the last SOTS survey online and download in PDF or CSV spreadsheet. In the live survey, answers to undated questions, e.g. “how many employees does your organisation have?” are pre-filled with 2021 data so users can view and update. All the questions in the live survey are available to browse so users can gather information from across their organisation.
Sites of community energy
We have also created an area in the portal for sites of community energy. Mostly these will be sites of renewable energy generation, e.g. a hydro facility or a building with solar on the roof, but could also include locations of energy advice cafes and locations from which retrofit services are provided. All site data from previous SOTS and our national map has been pre-loaded into an organisation’s account. For new sites, users can easily pinpoint the exact location of a site on a map.
Sites are important because our national map with this data proved extremely popular and useful to organisations within and outside the sector, so we want to improve the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the map’s data.
What will the research outputs be in 2024?
We are currently working with our partners at Community Energy Wales and Community Energy Scotland to plan the research outputs this year, which may include a report, a summary, infographics and other visualisations to help convey sector statistics clearly to a range of audiences. We will start publishing our outputs in late Q2 2024 once we've had time to process and analyse the data provided to us. If you have ideas of SOTS outputs that would help your community energy activity or advocacy, please get in touch with us at sots@communityenergyengland.org.
Thank you to our members and other providers of data for your ongoing support, and to the SP Energy Networks for sponsoring State of the Sector 2024.
State of the Sector 2022
The 2022 report focuses on progress made in 2021, describes how and why the sector is changing, highlights its potential, and provides a strong evidence base to encourage policy-makers and other stakeholders to create a more supportive policy landscape for community energy at local, regional and national level.
Thank you to everyone who took part in this important sector-wide project