Commissioned by Innovate UK, Regen have been leading work developing insights and impacts from the Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme, to help share learnings around the opportunities and potential of smart local energy systems in the UK.
Project manager: Fraser Stewart; Project director: Merlin Hyman
A smart local energy system brings together energy generation, storage, heat, transport, and buildings in a local area and connects them in a smart way using data and digital technologies. Such systems can help local areas to meet their net zero energy ambitions in a holistic way that reflects the needs of local citizens, communities, and businesses. They also have the potential to deliver much wider social and economic benefits, including regional economic growth, improved health and fuel poverty outcomes, better connected places, and new opportunities for jobs and business models.
Funded by UK Research and Innovation and delivered by Innovate UK, the Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme set out to demonstrate the viability, impact, and future prospects of these smart local energy systems. Over £104m has been awarded to the programme, with match-funding taking this up to over £170m in total.
This funding supported three live demonstrator projects, 10 detailed design projects and a host of other initiatives, to explore the feasibility of smart local energy systems, understand the opportunities they present, and demonstrate the value they can offer in practice to the UK’s energy transition.
To help understand key learnings and opportunities from this diverse portfolio of projects, Regen conducted extensive research and stakeholder engagement around three key themes: Finance and Investment, Policy and Regulation, and Skills and Capabilities.
This work was then turned into a series of short, sharp, “insight briefs” which spotlight high-level findings and provide tangible recommendations to enable the value on offer from these systems going forward.
The final project report pulls together findings from three insight papers along with findings on citizens and communities and data and digitalisation, to give a comprehensive overview of what smart local energy systems are, the value they offer, how they are developed, how they impact different stakeholders and communities, and how to ultimately enable them as part of a cleaner, smarter energy system.
The published insight briefs can be found here:
For more information, please reach out to Regen’s Just Transition Lead, Fraser Stewart at fstewart@regen.co.uk
