Agamemnon Otero can lay claim to many firsts. Repowering London, the sustainable energy non-profit he co-founded in 2012, was behind the first community energy project to install solar panels on social housing. It was also the first organisation to trade carbon as a community group, and it’s currently pioneering energy trade through blockchain.
Living in Brixton, Otero’s passion for such projects began by observing the way inequality and gentrification can fragment a community. Lambeth is London’s eighth most deprived borough (pdf) with 49,000 people – 15% of the population – living in poverty, and almost 10% of households in fuel poverty (pdf).
“I looked into the fundamental pillars of what keeps society together,” says Otero. “If you reduce it down to monetary transactions, it’s really just about making sure you and your family are OK.” And so, Otero set about designing a programme to help reduce the cost of living in London by generating energy and growing food locally.
The result was Repowering London, which works with local authorities, housing associations, companies and local residents to deliver community-owned renewable energy projects, social works programmes and training initiatives. To date, Repowering London has provided the back-end support for 30 “energy gardens” at overground stations across the capital, as well as four solar energy projects on social housing developments – three in Lambeth and one in Hackney.
And in another first for Repowering, some of the residents living below these solar arrays are starting to see a reduction in their energy bills. In an energy trade pilot in partnership with Verv, residents of Banister House in Hackney have had smart hubs installed in their homes, which uses an algorithm to calculate energy demand, the supply in each storage battery, and then allocate power based on need.
And as the number of solar projects have grown, so too have the number of young people involved in Repowering London’s social works training. The organisation has trained about 70 local people in the financial, technical, legal, and media and marketing aspects of setting up and running a community energy project. The programme also runs alongside the energy gardens, with added components in horticulture, biodiversity and air quality.
“For every one of the modules, the trainees have an opportunity to meet someone in the local area who does that job – architects, engineers, lawyers,” says Otero. “We take them to the Houses of Parliament and they meet MPs. Some of them have never been to Southbank and they live two miles away, so it’s really about widening their horizons.”
Off-grid upbringing
Born in Uruguay, Otero moved with his mother to her home state of New York, US, when he was six months old. His mother, a teacher, was so obsessed with learning and meeting new people that they moved 14 times before Otero was 13, finally settling in an off-grid house they built themselves in upstate New York. Foraging, catching fish, growing vegetables, and shooting deer, pheasants and grouse was the order of Otero’s teenage years. “We had eight freezers, one just for wild mushrooms. I had to pull the water out of a well – it would freeze in the winter – and shower at school.”
Otero’s stepfather – a great outdoorsman – instilled in him a “make anything, do anything” attitude. “I had to make everything from scratch,” he says. “I’ve built, re-built or renovated all the houses I’ve lived in.” His current home is a converted North Sea trawler on the Thames.
Social activism runs in the family, too. His mother’s father – “the real dude of my upbringing” – was a New York City police officer who set up workers’ unions, and in Uruguay his father’s stepfather was the head of the Workers’ Party of Montevideo. “Che Guevara and Fidel Castro would all come there and talk,” he says.
Understandably, Otero is scathing of the big six energy suppliers. It’s “fundamentally flawed”, he says, that four of the UK’s biggest six energy providers are foreign-owned. “The average household in Brixton spends £1,473 a year on energy. That doesn’t come to Lambeth or London or the UK. The majority of the revenue leaves to foreign investors.” But nationalising the UK’s energy would not solve the crisis, he says. The sector needs huge investment, which large companies can provide, but there is a need to guide them and create a level playing field.
The future, says Otero, is local and publicly owned energy – such as Bristol Energy, which is owned by Bristol city council – which is “the most powerful intermediary between the big six and community energy”. While elected representatives can work across a large locality, connecting and delivering on a scale that is crucial to the success of smaller initiatives, it is community energy that adds the often unheard voices.
Supporting the community
At Repowering’s energy gardens, vegetables, fruit and herbs are shared between local people and food banks, while any honey and hops are distributed among volunteers and supporters. Some of the gardens have solar panels, providing a collective capacity of 1KW across 30 London overground station gardens and which is soon set to increase to 12KW. The impacts on community wellbeing are already being seen. Govia Thameslink Railway has reported to Repowering that it has seen people arriving at stations earlier to do some gardening before they get on a train. They’ve also seen less violence and disorderly behaviour, less waste, less graffiti, less congestion and better passenger-staff relationships.
Evidently, forming such positive relationships is Otero’s true passion, but he is clear that Repowering London’s role is to simply facilitate and support communities – not to be them. “Communities don’t want to be bound up with red tape, to deal with TfL, Network Rail or lease agreements. They want to come down for an afternoon to do some gardening with other people,” says Otero. “But they understand that you need to have management, health and safety, and insurance. So if that’s all taken care of then they can get in and do what they want.”
Otero has previously been described as a polymath – and for good reason. He studied pre-medicine, literature and fine arts at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and has a master’s degree in architecture. He worked in finance before entering the world of community energy. Since then he’s been named a London Leader, was awarded an MBE, and won an Ashden Award as part of Repowering London.
He’s also survived cancer, twice, and is an artist.
But Otero is now looking forward to living life at a slower pace. “I’ve been so excited about being alive that I’ve been running so fast,” he says. “It’s really fascinating that now I’m slowing down, I’m getting way more done. It’s been so exciting to get here [that] I’ve missed actually tasting the work – I think doing that will bring a lot of benefit, both to the work and to myself.”
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