South East London Community Energy (Selce) is working hard to create a clean transition to a low‑carbon future across Greenwich, Lewisham, Bromley and surrounding areas.
CEO and founding member Giovanna Speciale has been at the forefront of the community co-op for over 11 years, and long before that was a dedicated environmental activist.
Since 2014, Selce has been helping communities save money, use energy more efficiently, and alleviate fuel poverty while increasing access to renewables for everyone – not just those who can afford it.
Speciale recalls: “For years I was involved in lots of campaigning and things like Non Violent Direct Action, at one point in time I was glued to various government departmental offices! But there came a point when I realised if I wanted to change things I had to be working more locally and getting on with it, working collectively rather than be shouted at and ignored. So I decided to focus on doing stuff in the community and pivot away from wider environmental activism.
“I needed more knowledge, so I did a masters in energy policy at Sussex University and came across community energy as a really good model for doing something. The then coalition government had just published a strategy around it and although that strategy did not endure beyond the coalition, it allowed us to get set up and gave us an impetus.”
In 2014, Selce had just 10 founder members with a wide range of skills – and shared commitment to tackling climate change.
“I lived on a solar-powered boat and was lucky not to be a wage slave,” says Speciale, “so I was able to volunteer unpaid for two years to get the whole thing set up until we had a funding stream. There was somebody involved in financial modelling, solar experts, fuel poverty experts and journalists good at communicating, all coming together.”
In November 2025, Speciale was presented with an award by Community Energy England for her work as a community energy champion.
Selce is now one of the most respected community energy initiatives in the country – offering solar power, home energy support, and retrofit advice to homes and community buildings. As a community benefit society, it raises money via community share offers to install renewable energy and sell clean energy at reduced rates. Over £600,000 has been raised in share offers to date.
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Any surplus goes to fuel poverty alleviation, offering free one-to-one advice to thousands of households. Members are paid a dividend of 3-4% on their investment.
The co-op has half a megawatt of solar energy across 12 sites, including schools, libraries, two leisure centres and a hotel in Bromley. LED lighting has been installed at 11 community buildings with more projects in the pipeline.
When it comes to engaging people at the sharp end of rising energy costs, the statistics are impressive. Last year, almost 5,000 households were supported by Selce with over 1,000 outreach events, partnerships, and referrals.
Some 194 homes were retrofitted with insulation, draught‑proofing, and other energy‑saving measures and over 1,880 LED bulbs installed in homes to cut bills and carbon. Homes, schools and other public buildings across south-east London see projected savings over the next three years of £2.84m.
“The whole process starts with schools or other community organisations getting in touch with us to say they would like help,” says Speciale. “We do feasibility studies and technical surveys, looking at the business case, and once we know it is feasible we raise community shares to sell them solar energy at a reduced rate, lower than a normal provider. We look after the installation for 20 years, making sure it’s at peak capacity.
“For LEDs there is a similar business model. We retrofit the lighting to access lower energy costs and charge an annual fee less than half of the cost of incandescent lighting.”
Selce works with hundreds of community groups, targeting vulnerable demographics like pensioners and migrants and helping individual households explore energy‑efficiency improvements. All the advice offered is free and the average saving is around £350 a year.
“We have 10 multi-lingual advisers who are experts in domestic energy. We offer all kinds of support with energy bills including looking at suppliers and making sure people are getting the best deal, i.e. Warm Homes Discount. We also go into homes to install draught proofing and we can act as advocates with landlords or suppliers with billing errors.
“Then there are things like white goods grants, funding to get washing machines, every aspect of energy usage is looked at to bring bills down.”
In the past few years the world has seen unprecedented rises in energy prices impacting massively on requests for help.
“We have been doing energy advice work ever since our formation, but it’s just been an ever-growing concern. During lockdown, people were struggling with bills because they were suddenly at home all day and since 2022 there has been constant demand for help from people, not just those on benefits but those who are in work but with very low wages.”
The cost of living crisis means the co-op prioritises workshops on understanding energy bills, hosting energy cafés on improving home efficiency, and training community energy champions to spread knowledge, introducing opportunities for street‑wide retrofit training in places like Southwark. In the past year, Selce has secured Ofgem Energy Redress funding to develop new solar sites.
Despite the inevitable setbacks along the way Speciale is optimistic. “2025 was a tough year for us. Funding dried up, and we had to make the difficult decision to reduce our staff. But our energy advice team continued to go the extra mile, supporting vulnerable households across south east London. We kept delivering award-winning retrofit advice and developed new ways of working with Lewisham Council to support the retrofit of council homes.
“We need to grow our solar and LED retrofit work and a new LED share offer is coming very soon, helping to dramatically cut the carbon footprint of a Lewisham school. Later this year, we hope to announce our largest ever community solar share offer. We also want to use more art and creativity to increase our community reach, working in partnership with local arts based charities and people who are usually excluded to talk about climate change and finding ways to respond in a meaningful way.
“Last year was a big year for us, blasting on all cylinders. We reduced costs for vulnerable people in all kinds of different ways to create a sustainable energy community. It’s about all the areas working together, leaving no-one behind on our journey. We try and be as embedded in the community as we can.”
