main aim in this case isn't maximising the number of kilowatts installed but finding a way to give huge numbers of parents, friends, family members and neighbours a positive first experience with low-carbon energy, at the same time as kick-starting a broader environment effort in the schools and their communities -- something that worked brilliantly in the pilot scheme . (Full disclosure: I developed this project in its early days .) But community-owned energy isn't only about the small-scale. Also bubbling up are projects such as Trillion Fund , which expects to launch soon and plans to create "new source of funding for renewable energy projects worldwide". Its name hints at its level of ambition. Then there's Oxford-based EnergyBank , brainchild of Tim Helweg-Larsen, who has been working away behind the scenes for a couple of years on a project that could eventually drive huge sources of cash into offshore wind -- the vast but largely untapped energy resource that Helweg-Larsen mapped out in the Offshore Valuation Report . His vision is a world in which large-scale energy installations such as offshore windfarms are "owned by the people and businesses that use them". None of this, in itself, is going to solve climate change. But community energy definitely has a role to play. For example, in the case of onshore wind, it can help build local support for planning applications -- which will be crucial if the technology is ever going to gain a real foothold in the UK. A