Decarbonising the UK’s energy grid is central to securing greater energy security and achieving its net zero ambitions. The government’s goal for Great Britain is that clean sources will produce as least as much power as Great Britain consumes by 2030. Beyond this, the UK’s legally-binding ‘net zero by 2050’ target remains.
Local authority town planners have a crucial role to play in this transition. Indeed, it is the local level at which practical challenges concerning delivery, infrastructure and competing development priorities become ‘real’. The delivery of energy infrastructure has to be considered in the context of the wider built environment and sometimes conflicting social, environmental and economic needs. Town planning enables this.
The resources in this Spatial Approaches to Local Energy Planning (SALEP) suite build on one another to provide a comprehensive overview of the energy planning landscape in the UK, reference materials for town planners, and a series of recommendations for central and local government.
