A Bridge over Troubled Waters: a new integrated assessment tool for enhanced social, energy and eco-systems
This programme will engage four community organisations, four commercial partners, two non-profit organisations and researchers from four universities to envisage and remodel the local assessment of renewable energy potential and collectively identify the related ecological and social benefits arising from sustainable land and water use at a community scale.
The aim of the programme is to produce, for the first time, a standardised assessment toolkit that from the outset involves local stakeholders in: (a) identifying and mapping potential uses of local resources for renewable energy production and conservation; (b) making visible existing conflicts and power inequalities regarding natural resource use, access, ownership and quality; (c) making qualified recommendations for enhancing the localised environmental and economic benefits of renewable energy production and; (d) making qualified intervention on local, regional and national community energy policy; impacting on the assessment and installation practice of new projects; and on the governance structures for new energy technologies at a community level.
This unique assessment tool kit will establish a new Community of Practice (CoP) between local residents, universities, practitioners in the third and private sector who share a strategic interest in realising the environmental and socio-economic benefits from localised renewable energy potential through changes to existing policy and practice.