From the first garden to 500 members and growing…

• Energy Garden was founded as a grassroots effort by Agamemnon Otero, MBE, who worked with his neighbours to install a garden at Brondesbury Park station in 2012.

• In 2014, the London Sustainable Development Commission recognised Energy Garden as a ‘London Leader Project.’

• In 2015, Energy Garden won the People’s Postcode Lottery Dream Fund, receiving funding to expand the initiative of trackside gardens to more stations across London. As of today, there are 17 thriving gardens in our network.

• In July 2015, Energy Garden ran its first paid, certified Youth Training Programme. Since then, we have run eight cohorts, providing training and career mentoring to 94 young people in London. We are now running three cohorts per year, and are accepting applications on a rolling basis.

• In 2016, we ran our first schools programme, and have since delivered 173 workshops to 5,125 children. Through these sessions, children between the ages of 7 and 13 learn about solar power, electricity, plants and urban gardening.

• In 2020, Energy Garden was awarded funding from the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund, enabling it to focus on establishing a self-sustaining funding stream from the sale of community-owned renewable energy.

• In 2021, our first community share offer raised £177,000 with 165 investors to support the installation of a 231 kWp solar on a train depot in Streatham. This became the UK’s first community-owned energy project on the railway.

• In 2022, our second share offer raised £862,134 with 383 investors. This allowed us to begin work on two new 400kWp systems on rooftops in and around London.

• In 2023, we agreed contracts with train operator Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) to install solar panels at three of its main depots, totalling 2.5MWp of new community-owned rooftop solar. Work has now finished on the installation of our second community-owned solar project at GTR Bedford Cauldwell.

Gardens and groups backed by 100% Community-owned renewable energy

As of 2024, we are a fully-fledged team supporting over one hundred active volunteers to maintain and improve the 17 garden spaces in our network. We are working with new groups and adding new gardens each year. Importantly, the gardens, engagement and youth training programmes are now backed by a funding vehicle in which over 500 people have invested to raise over £1.2 million for the development of community-owned renewable energy.

Can you help us reach our target of 2.5 MW by the end of 2025? We’re opening a new share offer soon and would love to have you on board!