LAEPs 10 Years On: And why they’re more important than ever

On this day 10 years ago, I was introduced to the concept of Local Area Energy Planning at Energy Systems Catapult. We had an aim for local areas: 80% reduction in carbon, 34 years from now. The question wasn’t about eliminating emissions, but working out what sectors were worthy of using the remaining 20%. But with such a distant target, local authorities had bigger fish to fry. 

3 years later, it’s the summer of 2019, and Theresa May makes a genuinely surprising policy announcement as she leaves office: net zero emissions for the UK by 2050. No longer could everything be pushed into the remaining 20%, and radical thinking would be necessary. What we saw was a flurry of climate emergency declarations. And the realisation that we had hit upon something with LAEPs that was ready for the challenges local authorities were now facing. 

2022 saw the publication of the LAEP Guidance, which, by our own analysis, over 110 local authorities have now followed. But four years on, the planning policy landscape has changed, and new names are emerging – RESPs, HNZ, SDS to name a few. I’d like to explain why LAEPs are the perfect tool to supplement all three. 

Three bits of statutory policy, one stone 

Today, local authorities are being asked to feed evidence into three separate, newly created processes at once: 

• Regional Energy Strategic Plans, or RESPs for short. NESO, the National Energy System Operator, is about to publish the methodology that will underlie its 11 regional plans, in one of the biggest local energy policy reforms ever undertaken. 
• Heat Network Zoning. In January, HNZ became confirmed government policy, with the regulatory mechanisms for designating zones now taking shape. 
• Spatial Development Strategies. New strategic planning authorities have an obligation to provide growth and infrastructure strategies, with regulation and guidance again due imminently. 

These three frameworks each have their own timelines, geographies, aims, and specific purposes. And what we are seeing is that the most forward-thinking authorities are commissioning LAEPs right now with all three in mind. 

The LAEP guidance details a repeatable 7-stage process, and a natural by-product of a properly-run Stage 1-4 is most of what each of the other three actually need: 

• A whole-system demand and generation baseline for RESP 
• Heat density, anchor loads and existing infrastructure mapping for HNZ 
• Growth-linked spatial and infrastructure capacity evidence for SDS 

And the areas getting ahead aren’t treating these in isolation; they’re running one LAEP built with all three pieces of policy in mind from the outset. 

It might be for a different reason, but an LAEP is still the answer 

Let’s dive into the specifics of where it helps: 

• RESP: The current-day baseline of stage 3 of a LAEP, and the pathways to 2050 of stage 4, are both exactly the information NESO is likely to want to know. Disaggregated to a common resolution like LSOA or using substation level from open data portals, a LAEP can provide this data in a way that can be immediately used. Tools like UKPN’s Local Authority Common Ask already allow DNOs to ingest this information, something City Science is proud to have helped trial, and offers an early indication of what feeding evidence to NESO might look like. 

• HNZ: The designation process itself is confirmed, but the detailed evidence requirements for a Zone Opportunity Report are still being finalised by DESNZ. From what’s emerging, heat density mapping, anchor load identification, upgrading of existing networks and utilisation of existing surveys are all likely to be core requirements – and all happen to be parts of a good LAEP. This means an authority commissioning a LAEP now is likely to enter a conversation with DESNZ with the vast majority of its initial evidence already in place.

• SDS: While SDS regulations and guidance are not yet fixed, what we do know is that growth is central to both SDSs and LAEPs – not just how much extra energy will be needed, but where, when and what that demand will be. This overlap means the technical evidence base a LAEP builds is likely to double up as much of what an SDS will require.

While there is no expectation that a LAEP will do the whole job of any of these, the parallels and shared processes cannot be ignored. The outputs are aligned, performed once, and ultimately provide the best possible value-for-money for any authority. 

What are our key recommendations? 

Create dynamic, open outputs 

Thankfully, the days of static outputs and tracing documents in PDFs are mostly behind us. Local authorities, network operators and other stakeholders now have their own open data portals, and it has never been more vital that the outputs of a LAEP can be ingested into these. However, with this being a more technical offering, it is also important that outputs remain accessible and impactful, something that web-based platforms like our very own Cadence provide – blurring the lines between a map in a report, and providing a dynamic and interrogable way for the LAEP to provide further benefit. 

Engage thoroughly on growth 

With Local Plans, NPPF, and simply varying individual priorities in growth, alignment is crucial. This is especially important for a multi-district LAEP, where there will be multiple views on what is happening where and when across the area. This is why we engage early on this with our LAEPs and, in the process, allow the LAEP to support growth alignment across an area.

Heat zoning candidates as modelling outputs 

With the primary question for heating now being individual electrification vs heat networks, as a key output of a LAEP, it makes absolute sense to align this with candidate heat zones. Not only does it remove a duplicate piece of work from a LAEP, but it allows teams involved in Heat Zoning to receive additional evidence to support decisions they have to make. 

Looking back to look forward 

For most of the last decade, the case for commissioning a LAEP rested almost entirely on an authority’s own ambition. For the first time, three national frameworks are effectively asking for what a good LAEP already delivers, and the councils that commission one now get to shape RESP, HNZ and SDS locally, rather than have those frameworks arrive and find nothing ready to meet them. Ten years in, this may well be the very best time to get or refresh one. 

About the author

Ben, Principal Energy Consultant at City Science, has spent the last ten years working in local area energy planning, helping author Energy Systems Catapult’s national LAEP guidance and delivering more than a dozen LAEPs against it.