Business plan – a formal statement of your organisation’s goals and the plan for reaching them. It is used by the management team to guide the organisation and to inform investors and funders. It may also contain background information about the organisation aiming to reach those goals.
Capacity building – enabling individuals, groups and communities to develop the confidence, understanding and skills required to influence decision making and service delivery.
Community benefit – benefits from renewables projects can take the form of cash income, job creation, training opportunities, energy.
Feasibility study – a study to determine the practicality, strengths and weaknesses of a project and give an illustration of costs.
Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) – The Feed-in-Tariff is a UK Government incentive available to renewables projects under 5MW generating renewable electricity. The incentive is given per kWh produced over and above the selling price and income from the electricity.
Originally, rates for the FiT started quite high and made renewables projects more lucrative. This incentivised many more smaller community renewable projects as they could get a high return for a smaller project. As a result more projects were feasible which increased the number of communities coming forward.
Financial forecast – a best guess of what will happen to an organisation in financial terms over a given time period.
Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) – are green certificates issued by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to operators of accredited renewable generating stations for the eligible renewable electricity they generate. Operators can then trade the ROCs with other parties, with the ROCs ultimately being used by suppliers to demonstrate that they have met their obligation. ROCs are effectively a form of government subsidy for larger renewable projects.
Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) – a payment for generating heat from renewable sources – the equivalent of FiTs for biomass, solar heat panels etc.
Revenue – income generated from the sale of goods or services.