Developing a local area energy plan for Lancaster District

Susanna Dart, Principal Climate Policy Officer, Lancaster City Council, details the authority’s journey to being one of the first in England to create their roadmap to a cleaner energy future.

In 2019, Lancaster City Council declared a climate emergency, with the ambition of reaching a corporate net-zero target of 2030. As the Government’s 2021 Net Zero Strategy outlined, an estimated 82% of the UK’s carbon emissions are “within the scope of influence of local authorities”. The threat posed by the climate crisis means that reaching net zero within the council is not enough. At Lancaster City Council we consider it critical to lead the way in setting a long-term vision for energy decarbonisation across the district to secure best outcomes for communities, local organisations, businesses and industry and critically the planet. 

Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs) were first conceived in 2018 by Energy Systems Catapult as a way for local authorities to understand and plan their local energy system’s transition to net zero, identify the changes needed to the built environment and set out a master plan for the transition. Energy Systems Catapult began working with our council in June 2023. As well as setting out the changes required to transition our local energy system to net zero, they also identified several ‘priority projects’ that could deliver immediate progress and catalyse decarbonisation efforts. 

Working approach
Our LAEP was led by members of both the Council’s Energy and Sustainability, and Climate Change teams, and was created with input from many different departments including planning, housing, property, engineers, and sustainable travel. From the start, there was a lot of focus on getting the right people around the table. We worked extremely hard to integrate the diverse needs of our services, representing views and needs from everything from planning policy to home improvements for vulnerable residents, to teams delivering major capital projects. We did this to ensure that the LAEP we created was practical, workable and aligned with the Council’s priorities and plans, and to avoid a siloed environment which could result in something less practical in the real world. 

We sought to foster joint working between teams, ensuring that people were aware of what others were doing, which created a feedback loop of engagement, encouraging staff to discuss and showcase their work. A relatively flat management structure in our organisation allowed for more joined-up strategic thinking and effective cross-service engagement. Because the LAEP is designed for the whole district we also brought together a large stakeholder group representing the diversity of players in the net zero transition including district network operators, skills providers, the NHS, retrofit suppliers, local businesses, community energy and more.

Our six priorities for the LAEP were: 
1. Provide the base for a just net-zero transition.
2. Deliver an ambitious, data-driven net zero target for Lancaster District’s energy-associated emissions.
3. Build on existing workstreams and suggest new ones.
4. Support funding, projects, and policy.
5. Provide data in a usable and interrogatable format.
6. Deliver a LAEP which anyone across the district could use.

Focus Zones 
Lancaster’s LAEP is divided into 12 separate ‘focus zones’. Dividing Lancaster District into Zones for the LAEP was a key step, not only in terms of basing them around substations for practical reasons, but also in recognising and matching the hyper-local priorities of urban, peri urban and rural areas. As a district, Lancaster has a diverse, unique and varied landscape, with settlements reflecting distinct local identities and needs. 

Focus zones provide an outline of the solutions required at scale to meet the challenges and deliver the co-benefits of net zero. These solutions include everything from domestic fabric upgrades to renewable deployment and account for local characteristics such as socio-economic factors, environmental constraints, network capacity, population density and building stock – all of which can bring specific advantages, learning opportunities and challenges to delivery in that location.

Importance of a local and just transition
We sought to ensure that the LAEP was not dependent on major external factors outside of the local authority influence, which is why, for example, we chose heat pumps as the primary heat source, rather than Hydrogen, whose roll out and viability depends greatly on large infrastructure projects controlled by central government. This meant that the roadmap was united to the needs and realities of the district. 

The future cost of energy bills was also a significant consideration, with additional modelling conducted to look at how to ensure a just net zero transition, mitigate potential impacts on fuel poverty, as well as identify the impact of electrification of heat on various housing types. The LAEP has identified fuel poverty focus zones, which prioritise the transition to low carbon heating coupled with reducing energy demand, aimed at helping inform priorities for future decarbonisation action and ensuring no one is left behind on the journey to net zero. 

The plan
The LAEP was adopted by cabinet in October of 2024, setting out an ambitious roadmap to net zero by 2040 for the local energy system. It identified the most cost-effective plan for the district to contribute to timebound national and local net zero targets whilst maximising co-benefits to society. It identified around 60,000 dwellings that require interventions such as new heating systems and about 38,500 homes needing building fabric improvements, which amounts to a £1.7 billion investment required by 2040. 

To meet trajectories for transport decarbonisation, 1,250 public electric vehicle charging points will need to be installed. It also identified approximately £400 million in investment potential in local renewable energy generation and projected multiple benefits, including supporting more than 500 jobs in the local area and saving 3,000 ktCO2e relative to not taking action. The plan is available for anyone to use, with maps and datasets soon to be available on the website.

Tips for other councils
Allow enough time for stakeholder engagement and the data review. You need a good group of stakeholders around you to make sure the LAEP really represents your local area and has the information your stakeholders need to help drive net zero.  Data was particularly important for us, and having time assigned across staff in different services to look at the data and outputs in detail allowed us to spot where we had not provided enough information to support modelling. This enabled us to refine the draft LAEP and ensure that it matched the policies and priorities of the local area. Also make sure to take the time to build a collaborative relationship with the consultant team. This will help everyone gain a deep understanding of what a local area energy plan can do, what the potential for your local area is and together create a plan that reflects your area’s unique circumstances.

Thanks to the effort put into making the Lancaster LAEP a dynamic and actionable plan, we’re now seeing real progress across projects, policies, and priorities. Work is already underway on an exciting EV charging hub with a solar canopy for residents - one of the flagship projects identified in the LAEP. Our Local Plan review is embedding LAEP principles across policy areas, ensuring alignment with our net zero ambitions. And, with our strong commitment to energy justice, the upcoming regional retrofit event in our District will spotlight the communities needing the most support, driving an inclusive transition to net zero.

To learn more about Lancaster District’s Local Area Energy Plan visit: https://www.lancaster.gov.uk/LAEP