The UK needs a “user-led” policy which gives consumers control over their energy.

Jonathan Graham, Head of Policy at the Association for Decentralised Energy (ADE) said the nation still has a “centralised mind-set”.

He added: “We have to overcome a historical bias in the UK which is we’re used to electricity being generated very far away from us.”

Speaking at the New Energy Market conference in Manchester this week, he told ELN the nation needs to “stop thinking about electricity and heat as something that is done to people and start putting them in the driving seat”.

Mr Graham added: “I think when you start giving control and ownership to the local areas and control and ownership to businesses, they have a much better awareness of local energy resources and what those resources can achieve and how to best deploy them.

“When you look at it from a national level, the most obvious thing is it looks like large centralised power plants through wires transferred to passive consumers but when you start to look at the opportunities at the local level, business and user level, then that understanding of energy changes.”

When asked about what the new energy market means to him, he said: “[It] is a more decentralised and more flexible market where anyone is able to participate of any size and the barriers to entry fall away.

“It’s an idea that anyone can take control of their energy and also participate and integrate in the wider market.”

• ADE, decentralised energy, NEM, New Energy Market, UK