To approve a request for £53,500 in additional grant funding from Project LEO (Innovate UK) and, if successful, to use the funding to commission consultancy work (£50,000), and to join Oxfordshire Greentech (£3,500). Oxfordshire Greentech membership is £5,000. The remaining £1,500 will be covered by the Council’s existing Project LEO grant funding.

To enter into contracts with project partners to enable the Council’s involvement in Trial Period 1 of Project Leo.

No income or expenditure is anticipated (if this becomes the case the City Council will withdraw from the associated trial activities).

Project LEO is a multi-partner innovation project funded through Innovate UK, which Oxford City Council is a partner in.  Preliminary work by the project has developed an energy flexibility trading system/platform, with an objective for this to be functional and open to non-partner organisations in March 2023.  Testing and further development of the system/platform to enable this is broken down in to three Trial Periods.  Trial period 1 (November 2021 – February 2022) will conduct alpha testing (concept trialling) of the system between project partner organisations.  There is the possibility of some beta testing of the system towards the end of the trial period with non-project organisations.

This Decision relates to contracts for Oxford City Council’s involvement in Trial Period 1, to support alpha testing only.  To facilitate this, the Council will need to enter in to sub-contracts with other project partners about energy capacity trading activities, and to sign up to the trading platform terms and conditions.  No income or expenditure is anticipated as a result of alpha testing trading activity.