Promoting the development of sustainable energy at the local level: the role of community participation

Panel: Panel 1. Strategies and integrated policies

Authors:
Bryony Mathie, Impetus Consulting
Joanne Wade, Impetus Consulting

Abstract

Local authorities in England and Wales have a duty to produce a Community Strategy to promote the social, economic and environmental well-being of their area. This paper will examine how a Community Planning framework, developed to enable the production of these strategies, can facilitate greater uptake of sustainable energy by local communities.

This paper will first examine a series of case studies. These describe how individual local authorities have integrated targets into their Community Strategies for improving the energy efficiency of dwellings occupied by low-income households, as a contributor to the social well-being of their area. Energy efficiency and, more broadly, sustainable energy rarely emerge as priority concerns at a local level despite significant policy focus from national government. Nonetheless the case study local authorities have overcome the barriers this presents, and their experience offers pointers to how this situation can be changed.

Having identified how the case study local authorities have been able to integrate relevant aims and targets into their Community Strategies, the paper will then examine how this integration assists the achievement of targets by increasing both community grass-roots and strategic local government engagement with the issue through improved community participation.

Drawing on the case study findings the paper will then consider how the experience gathered in this narrow field can be applied to the wider sustainable energy agenda, and will explore where Community Planning may therefore fit within the present local (and national) sustainable energy policy framework in the UK.