Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement

Faced by global challenges brought on by climate-change and over-reliance on fossil fuels, more people are looking towards developing energy systems characterised by renewables. Community energy groups have been identified as key stakeholders who could play a strategic role in enabling the transitio...

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Main Authors: Kiamba, Lorna, Rodrigues, Lucélia Taranto, Marsh, Julian
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/44788/
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author Kiamba, Lorna
Rodrigues, Lucélia Taranto
Marsh, Julian
author_facet Kiamba, Lorna
Rodrigues, Lucélia Taranto
Marsh, Julian
author_sort Kiamba, Lorna
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Faced by global challenges brought on by climate-change and over-reliance on fossil fuels, more people are looking towards developing energy systems characterised by renewables. Community energy groups have been identified as key stakeholders who could play a strategic role in enabling the transition to a clean and affordable energy supply. Acting as a contact for local energy consumers they can help residents engage with energy matters by harnessing local natural resources to build social capital, creating revenue to address community needs and combating fuel poverty. As these groups are defined by the communities in which they exist, public participation and engagement is vital to their success. The extent of community involvement could include identifying needs, generating solutions, seeking funding and managing assets to enable positive socio-economic impacts. In this paper, the authors examine how a community energy group in Nottingham adopted a model of local energy generation and storage to improve their energy security and to reduce fuel poverty. Results indicate that the use of various engagement strategies provides opportunities to encourage active discussions, explain processes and gather feedback. The regular planning of these sessions helps to maintain momentum, enthusiasm and commitment and encourage wider participation as the project progresses.
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format Conference or Workshop Item
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institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T19:56:52Z
publishDate 2017
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spelling nottingham-447882020-05-04T18:56:14Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/44788/ Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement Kiamba, Lorna Rodrigues, Lucélia Taranto Marsh, Julian Faced by global challenges brought on by climate-change and over-reliance on fossil fuels, more people are looking towards developing energy systems characterised by renewables. Community energy groups have been identified as key stakeholders who could play a strategic role in enabling the transition to a clean and affordable energy supply. Acting as a contact for local energy consumers they can help residents engage with energy matters by harnessing local natural resources to build social capital, creating revenue to address community needs and combating fuel poverty. As these groups are defined by the communities in which they exist, public participation and engagement is vital to their success. The extent of community involvement could include identifying needs, generating solutions, seeking funding and managing assets to enable positive socio-economic impacts. In this paper, the authors examine how a community energy group in Nottingham adopted a model of local energy generation and storage to improve their energy security and to reduce fuel poverty. Results indicate that the use of various engagement strategies provides opportunities to encourage active discussions, explain processes and gather feedback. The regular planning of these sessions helps to maintain momentum, enthusiasm and commitment and encourage wider participation as the project progresses. 2017-07-21 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Kiamba, Lorna, Rodrigues, Lucélia Taranto and Marsh, Julian (2017) Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement. In: Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA) 2017, 3-5 July 2017, Edinburgh, UK. Community energy community engagement fuel poverty
spellingShingle Community energy
community engagement
fuel poverty
Kiamba, Lorna
Rodrigues, Lucélia Taranto
Marsh, Julian
Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
title Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
title_full Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
title_fullStr Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
title_full_unstemmed Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
title_short Community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
title_sort community energy schemes: the role of public participation and engagement
topic Community energy
community engagement
fuel poverty
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/44788/