As the UK pushes toward a clean energy transition, one thing has become increasingly clear: the technical and policy pieces of the puzzle are not enough on their own. Real progress - on heat networks, retrofit programmes, local energy strategies - depends on communities being meaningfully involved. Not consulted after decisions are made, but genuinely engaged in shaping them.
Public engagement is often treated as a communications problem, a question of how to explain a decision that has already been made. We at Involve know that it is much more than that. Our work, for example on the Innovate UK Net Zero Living programme is a clear example of what happens when public engagement is approached with the right mindset. This project starts from this premise: that how communities are involved is as important as what they are being asked about, and that getting this right is a precondition for the kind of buy-in that the clean energy transition genuinely needs.
Across England, local Net Zero Hubs and local authorities are taking this approach, but often in isolation, without a shared language, shared resources, or easy ways to learn from one another. This project exists because that kind of support: practical, grounded, and connecting people across regions, hasn't been easy to find.
This is the gap the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) set out to address, with our help.
We designed and delivered a fully funded training programme for local authority officers across England, creating a cohort of ‘Energy Champions’ equipped to lead better public engagement on clean energy.
The programme brought together officers from energy, planning, housing, and community engagement teams - people whose work already intersects with energy decisions, even if they don't always see themselves as energy specialists. Through regional workshops in Birmingham, London, Bristol, and Manchester, participants built practical skills in deliberative engagement. That meant focusing not only on how to communicate policy, but how to design processes that genuinely listen, that handle scepticism well, and that ensure community input can meaningfully shape decisions.
The training we provided was grounded in Involve's long track record of designing and delivering deliberative processes, including the UKRI Net Zero Living Programme, our largest deliberative engagement programme to date, which worked with 28 councils and reached over 1,400 people across the UK. To complement the public engagement training, participants also heard from Stronger Stories, who brought their expertise in how to communicate climate and net zero in ways that resonate and focus on values, equipping the Champions with a shared language and way of framing net zero and clean energy within their future engagement.
Between workshops, participants applied their learning to real, manageable pieces of work in their own councils. They tested what they'd learned against the realities of their context, with our facilitated peer learning sessions, one-to-one mentoring, peer support through Net Zero Go*, and practical tools to support them.
*(Net Zero Go supports local authorities to accelerate their Net Zero projects by providing the knowledge, tools, and connections needed for success. They help officers who are long on ambition but short on resources and give them the skills and tools to decarbonise buildings, sites and local generation.)
The insights gathered across each cohort have fed directly into the development of guidance on energy engagement, shared through Net Zero Go. This publication offers on-the-ground evidence about what local authorities actually need to build community support for clean energy, informed by the real-world experience of those doing the work.
Local authorities, often the closest point of contact between government and communities, are being asked to lead on complex, sensitive issues without always having the skills or support to do so. Misinformation about clean energy and net zero is spreading and trust in institutions is fragile.
This programme gave officers a shared language and a practical framework for doing engagement differently. Not tick-box consultation, but dialogue that builds shared ownership. Not managing opposition, but focusing on values and creating the conditions for genuine participation. The 45 officers who came through this programme are contributors to a national understanding of what good energy engagement looks like and what needs to change to make it the norm. This is crucial for our current moment, to ensure that communities are directly involved in shaping a clean energy future for us all.
This programme has been designed to ensure the guidance, peer networks formed through the training, and DESNZ-supported local hubs continue to grow and endure beyond its lifetime.
Next steps
This programme was delivered by Involve on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and Great British Energy (GBE) as part of the Net Zero Living Programme.