Unincorporated area
In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not governed by a local municipal corporation; similarly an unincorporated community is a settlement that is not governed by its own local municipal corporation, but rather is administered as part of larger administrative divisions, such as a township, parish, borough, county, city, canton, state, province or country. Occasionally, municipalities dissolve or disincorporate, which may happen if they become fiscally insolvent, and services become the responsibility of a higher administration. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. In most other countries of the world, there are either no unincorporated areas at all, or these are very rare; typically remote, outlying, sparsely populated or uninhabited areas.
The Co-operative Group
The Co-operative Group has been a vocal supporter of community-owned renewable projects for a number of years as a way to combat climate change and fuel poverty. In 2012, the Co-op launched its "Community Energy Manifesto" in association with Co-operatives UK which contained research into the possibility for significant growth in the UK's community renewable sector and it provided a number of case studies. The Co-operative Group, notably through The Co-operative Bank and The Co-operative Enterprise Hub, has provided almost £100m in loans and grants to community-run energy efficiency and renewable energy generation co-operatives (including the Baywind Energy Co-operative and Torrs Hydro). In 2014 the Co-op launched its Community Energy Challenge which worked to encourage community energy schemes across the UK by actively supporting the groups for 18 months to raise awareness of community renewables and to create co-operatively and community-owned and schemes of over 500 kW in size that could be replicated across the country. However, since the problems at The Co-operative Bank the funding for new projects has largely been discontinued.