Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES): phase 1 pilots - social evaluation

1. Introduction 

Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) are currently being piloted under the Energy Efficient Scotland programme. LHEES aim to establish area-based plans and priorities for systematically improving the energy efficiency of buildings, and decarbonising heat. The Scottish Government have outlined LHEES as including the following components^[1]:

1. An assessment of existing local and national strategies and data availability
2. Authority-wide assessment of the existing building stock’s energy performance and heat supply
3. Authority-wide setting of aggregate targets for heat demand reduction and decarbonisation of buildings – short and long term
4. Socio-economic assessment of potential energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation solutions
5. Selection of areas/ prioritisation of opportunities leading to the designation of zones
6. Costing and phasing of delivery programmes.

Under Phase 1 of the LHEES pilot programme, 12 local authorities around Scotland were awarded £50-70K to trial the development of an LHEES (see Figure 1). The funding was used to provide resource in the form of staff time, to procure consultancy services to carry out aspects of the work, and to conduct stakeholder engagement. The pilots ran from September 2017 to March 2019.

The primary aims of the LHEES pilots were to test and develop methods for creating an LHEES, identify relevant sources of data (and any data gaps), and gain a fuller understanding of the resources and capabilities required to deliver an LHEES.  Each of the 12 local authorities involved also had their own specific aims for their pilot. A summary of the initial aims and scope of each LHEES pilot is included in Table 1.

Table 1: Summary of LHEES activities for each local authority.

Figure 1: Map illustrating the 12 local authorities that took part in the first round of LHEES pilots