Over the past couple of years, CSE has been scaling up a new approach to community engagement on renewables. The Future Energy Landscapes (FEL) approach has generated community support for local renewable energy projects or plans, allowing local planning authorities to develop ambitious energy plans.

This is because the approach explores local interest in renewable energy, encourages discussions around different possibilities and provides resources and information to understand what’s possible within a local area. Because people have gone through this thought process, they’re more likely to support local plans born out of these conversations.

Anyone working with communities, in planning or in community energy is invited attend our online or in person workshops to learn more about the FEL approach.

Introductory workshops to the FEL approach

In these workshops, you’ll learn about:

• How this approach can be used by local planning authorities, neighbourhood planning, community energy and civil society groups.
• CSE’s open-source resources, which you can use or adapt to run the approach for yourself, to nurture and demonstrate support for renewable energy.
• CSE’s insights and learning from undertaking this approach.

In-depth training on using the FEL approach in your own community engagement workshops

This training will take you step by step through how to plan and run a FEL workshop yourself using CSE’s free resource pack. You’ll learn how to:

• Choose an area to run your workshop
• Engage your community
• Prepare and run the workshop
• Consult the wider community
• Report on findings.

Catch up on a previous webinar

Unfortunately, our current series of workshops has run out. But you can watch a recent recording.

The shift to more renewable energy is as much a people problem as a technical one and if we’re to boost renewable energy deployment, we need everyone to buy in, accepting and understanding the changes to our landscapes it requires and critically, being able to meaningfully influence what happens where.

Our approach is proven to be effective in supporting local planning authorities and others to develop ambitious planning policies for renewable deployment in their areas, while maintaining community support. Read our latest blog to see the approach in action.