Leveraging community and local energy for a just transition: a review of current and future opportunities for Scotland

Context – a just transition for Scotland:

As Scotland embarks on a just transition to net zero in a time of multiple overlapping crises, community and local energy could have a significant role to play. Community and local energy approaches can bring significant benefits into towns, cities and regions. Community-owned generation assets such as wind and solar PV can create new revenue streams for local areas, while local energy systems and services led by local authorities and wider local stakeholder partnerships can help to:

The project:

Innovations in technology, financial models, policy, participation and ownership in the local and community energy spaces offer new opportunities for a just transition.

This project will thus explore the current and future opportunities for community and local energy to directly support Scotland’s National Just Transition Outcomes and a just energy transition more broadly.

Using a mixed methods approach including systematic literature review, interviews, distributional analysis and a small-scale citizens’ jury, we will:

Analyse the current state of community and local energy in Scotland and beyond, to understand new models, innovations and opportunities
Develop a set of up-to-date community and local energy models and approaches
Outline the barriers and opportunities of these community and local energy models and approaches for low-income, marginalised and typically excluded groups and places
Evaluate how these models can support Scotland’s eight National Just Transition Outcomes
Co-design a set of high-level principles with citizens for making community and local energy work for a just transition more broadly

Project outputs:

The key output of this project is to develop a set of tangible proposals for supporting community and local energy in Scotland as part of the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan, due to be updated in summer 2023. This will be also published in a final report.