Adriano Figueiredo on the work of the Low Carbon Hub

For the last year I have been working for the Low Carbon Hub, an Oxford-based social enterprise that is scaling up renewable energy to put local power in the hands of local people. Before I was offered this job, my life was quite different… Since I left Brazil in 1998, I have travelled round the world for big multi-national companies: one day I’d be in Spain, the next in Brazil. It was fun and demanding but I’ve always been concerned about climate change and had a nagging feeling that I’d rather be putting my energies into doing something about it.

After two years in Mexico, we moved back to Oxford in 2009 and I finally got the chance to make a small difference in the fight against climate change by volunteering with Oxford North Community Renewables (Oncore) to develop community-owned renewables.

I am an entrepreneur at heart and have worked setting up, developing and managing new businesses, so it was great to be able to use this experience to help get Oncore off the ground.

But what was even better was to be working with local people and to feel their passion and enthusiasm. Oncore has now installed its third solar installation on a local school and is now making an income to fund further carbon reduction projects, like our local car club.

Then a year ago everything fell into place when I was offered the job of operations director at the Low Carbon Hub.

The hub supports local low carbon groups like Oncore, but is also working on its own larger projects to scale up renewable energy generation across Oxfordshire.

This year we are installing solar panels on 18 schools and a number of local businesses. We have just launched a £1.5m community share offer to fund the installation of these projects. This is the first step in creating a collectively-owned renewable energy system for the county.

My role as operations director is similar to what I do at Oxford North Community Renewables, but on a much larger scale. I help evaluate and develop potential projects, carry out the financial modelling and then work with the team to oversee the project’s ongoing operation and maintenance.

All of a sudden I am doing what I love and doing it for my day job!

As someone who has worked in the corporate world, I understand that the most successful business deals are those that benefit everyone involved.

And that’s what I love most about the work of the Low Carbon Hub. It’s a win-win. Not only will our new projects reduce CO2 emissions and put local power into the hands of local people, they will also cut energy bills for the host school or business.

Additionally, they will provide an income via the Government’s feed-in tariff and the sale of surplus electricity meaning that we can give our investors an average return of five per cent per year, or up to 8.2 per cent with tax reliefs via the Enterprise Investment Scheme (or EIS).

This return is much better than anything offered by a building society. And, what’s more, it is all about making your money do good — bringing renewable energy to Oxfordshire, making a difference locally to an important global issue.

For the Low Carbon Hub, the 2014 share offer is just the beginning. Through this offer we are installing 1MW of renewable energy projects, but we already have another 7MW in the pipeline, including three hydro schemes along the Thames, solar PV on more schools and businesses and we hope to have some biomass projects too.

The work of the Low Carbon Hub is at such an exciting stage and we really believe that people power is starting to transform the way that energy is produced.

Anyone interested in investing in the Low Carbon Hub share offer should go to lowcarbonhub.org/invest