A consultation tool that aims to enable towns, villages and neighbourhoods to "shape" their own sustainable local energy plans has been launched.
The "consultation tool" will utilise workshops with visual tool and consumption calculations to allow communities to develop their understanding of the landscape and plan for their energy needs.
The tool has been trialled in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, and Congresbury, Somerset.
Rachel Coxcoon, head of local and community empowerment at the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE), who led the research, said: "Our aim was to develop a new approach to energy planning that would reduce local opposition to new energy infrastructure, by putting local people at the heart of the process of choosing what's appropriate for their area. Communities who trialled this approach developed plans for future energy developments that were ambitious in scope, but grounded in local realities."
