Award winner: The role of local planning authority plan-making in rural renewable energy production

Lead researcher and institution:

Louise Brace, University of Brighton*

• RTPI-accredited planning school

This research project was a Student Award winner at the RTPI Awards for Research Excellence 2024.

This award is for students who are working towards or have recently completed a non-research university degree. It highlights the methodological rigour of the research, as well as the ability to link research and practice. 

Each year the RTPI Awards for Research Excellence recognise and celebrate leading spatial planning research from RTPI-accredited planning schools and RTPI members. 

Key takeaways

• This research investigates how planners can better balance the need to meet net zero targets against demands to protect rural landscapes and provides a useful toolkit.
• The study compared the policies of Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) responsible for rural areas within South East England to determine the extent to which they enable the acceleration of renewable energy (RE) development that mitigates climate change and promotes energy resilience.
• It developed and ratified a criteria-based policy evaluation framework that applies positive weightings to help LPAs support RE delivery more quickly and on a larger scale.
• The framework could be used as a tool to considerably improve how LPAs support RE development in future.
• It has the potential to contribute to widescale policy improvement and standardisation and so help reach national net zero targets.

Louise said:  

"Receiving the Student Research award was a significant honour at this early stage of my planning career, as well as recognition of the importance of rural planning matters and related local planning policies, and their relevance to the national decarbonisation agenda. Since the award and through my employer (LSTC Group) I have been fortunate enough to be involved in nationally significant infrastructure projects to facilitate renewable generation connections to the electricity transmission and distribution networks. I remain passionate about the opportunity for planning to enable proposals, both large and small, to collectively enable ambitious net zero and energy security targets to be realised."

What our judges thought:

“Louise’s research is extremely relevant to the current debate around LPAs and how they can contribute to mitigating climate change via renewable energy.”

“Her work offers a clear route to impact through its recommendation of an evaluation tool for LPA policy – next steps are how this can be replicated on a wider level.”

Full reference: Brace, L. (2024) “The Role of Local Planning Authority Plan Making in Rural Renewable Energy Production.”

Note:  Findings and recommendations reflect the views of the researchers at the time of writing and are not necessarily the views of the RTPI.