The Rural Energy Hubs project builds upon decades of experience, joint working and delivering innovative low-carbon projects in Orkney and Shetland. It embraces a place-based demonstration approach to overcoming non-technical barriers to accelerate decarbonisation. Seven work packages integrated across the energy system demonstrate how decarbonisation can be developed, embedded and accelerated by establishing locally-led coordinated action in Rural Energy Hubs, providing innovative and practical focal-points to drive decarbonisation for individuals, businesses and local authorities, maximising social, economic and environmental benefits. This project brings together work and partners from the Net Zero Living Orkney and Shetland Rural Energy Hubs projects in Phase 1 of the Net Zero Living: Pathfinder Places programme. Both studies built on learning and challenges from the IUK PFER demonstration project ReFLEX Orkney, an ambitious programme of innovative integrated consumer-facing community-led services that encountered significant non-technical barriers. This Phase 2 project seeks innovative solutions to key non-technical barriers: finance, regulation, grid capacity, resource, behavioural change and lack of data. High-impact outputs have been developed to encompass all modalities of the energy system: * Transport -- innovative electric and hydrogen solutions for local authority fleets including large mobility vehicles, integrating demand-led community-managed services, a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platform and distributed charging infrastructure, financially sustainable car club models for rural areas, maritime and aviation decarbonisation trials for passenger vessel and heavy-lift drones, plus holistic, system-wide planning for decarbonisation of transport across communities. * Heat -- district heating solutions for rural communities, smarter monitoring in domestic and community premises to drive behaviour change, development of the Building Renovation Passport programme to support users through all aspects of decarbonising homes and offices. * Power -- developing affordable models of supporting individuals, communities and businesses with renewable generation and battery solutions; including incorporating energy generation and storage into Rural Energy Hubs. These mode-based innovation activities will be linked together to allow the setup of the first pilot Rural Energy Hub, in Brae, Shetland; showcasing delivery of our fully integrated, local, placed-based solutions. Learning will be combined into a UK-wide replication plan, which incorporates a range of place-based business models to ensure maximum uptake. The partners are Aquatera (AQT) (lead), Orkney Islands Council (OIC), Shetland Islands Council (SIC), the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), Community Energy Scotland (CES) and Highland Fuels (HF). This hand-picked team brings together significant real-world experience of addressing non-technical barriers to decarbonisation and successfully delivering ambitious projects of this nature.

The Outer Hebrides Net Zero Foundations project seeks to explore and overcome non-technical barriers preventing the creation of a local energy economy. The aim of the project is to enable locally generated renewable energy to be supplied directly to Outer Hebrides communities at reduced costs, alleviating fuel poverty and reducing imports from the mainland grid. This has been the ambition of local agencies for many years now and through this project a Net Zero Officer based in the Comhairle will lead efforts to understand the regulatory framework, market engagement requirements and potential local solutions to realise this ambition. The Net Zero Officer will work closely with energy stakeholders across the Outer Hebrides and look for opportunities to link project activities with Island's Deal Initiatives like the Outer Hebrides Energy Hub, and the Islands Centre for Net Zero.

Since the UK's first grid-connected wind turbine started generating electricity in 1951, Orkney has been a world leading testbed for renewable energy and decarbonisation - pioneering innovative approaches and technologies; and growing a collaborative, expert community of keen early adopters and volunteers for pilots and projects. Featuring leadership and involvement of long established and effective local partnerships between Aquatera, Orkney Islands Council, the European Marine Energy Centre, Community Energy Scotland and ReFLEX Orkney Ltd the NZPP Orkney project will build on this tradition of innovation success and pioneering development activity. These partners have significant real-world experience of non-technical barriers to achieving innovation in energy solutions, which include regulation, policy, finance, behavioural change and challenges with restrictions around the grid network. Following previous work such as the Orkney ReFLEX project, these issues are well understood but have proven wicked problems to address to date. The NZPP project will specifically engage with these known difficulties -- unlocking new and innovative solutions which can secure further progress for Orkney in decarbonisation. The Project will also take place in sequence directly after core funding completes for ReFLEX Orkney, and the launch of the new Islands Deal _Islands Centre for Net Zero project_. The ICNZ also involves the Orkney NZPP partners, and Heriot Watt University - in a 10 year programme to create a pan-island innovation Centre that will support Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides. The NZPP project will therefore enable a jump start for key thematic objectives which can underpin the future work of the ICNZ - ensuring accelerated solutions to decarbonisation for Orkney and the Scottish Islands which will in turn have replicability and application worldwide. Transition and transferability of understanding of challenges and solutions development are critical hallmarks of the NZPP project process. This will form a foundation of the Orkney project from the outset -- with direct collaboration already in place to link in with a parallel bid led by Shetland Islands Council to pursue a NZPP agenda for Shetland linked to energy hubs. There will be mutual benefit in the cumulative activity between Orkney and Shetland associated with these pilot projects -- reflecting the strong traditions of both Orkney and Shetland as innovative island communities; and presenting an effective pathway to the future work of the ICNZ which will further enable this partnership to include experience and challenges of communities across the Western Isles and beyond.

This project, a collaboration between Shetland Islands Council (SIC), Aquatera and Community Energy Scotland (CES), will address the non-technical systemic barriers to implementing rural energy hubs in Shetland. All organisations are partners in the Island Centre for Net Zero (ICNZ), a new 10-year programme that begins summer 2023\. ICNZ creates a pan-island innovation centre that will support Shetland, Orkney and the Outer Hebrides to become lighthouse communities for energy transition, trialing and accelerating solutions to decarbonisation that have replicability and application worldwide. Energy hubs that incorporate electric vehicle (EV) charge points, on-site community renewable energy generation and storage, fleet vehicles, information, training and recycling facilities provide an opportunity to co-ordinate decarbonisation efforts within a whole systems approach. However, these hubs are difficult to implement in areas such as Shetland due to low population density, remote settlements, grid constraints and lack of skills capacity. The study will utilise previous and ongoing SIC work to determine achievable pathways for decarbonising key sectors and reaching net zero through an integrated energy hub. It seeks to address the following barriers which we have come across so far: regulation, grid capacity, resource (skills/capacity), behavioural change and lack of data. The feasibility study will be split into seven stages: \*Literature review: review previous work by SIC and other agencies within Shetland relevant for rural energy hub creation \*Consultation: obtain ideas, options and community buy in to the overall concept \*Long-list of options: consider products and services for inclusion within the hub along with their advantages and challenges \*Short-listing: workshop with SIC team and relevant stakeholders to distil the longer list into short list of options \*Site identification: identify an appropriate site for an initial hub, reviewing what a network of hubs could achieve and where would they be sited \*Detailed option analysis: fully develop short-listed options to understand how barriers or challenges can be mitigated \*Concept report: highlight findings of the study as well as analysis of a preferred site and options for inclusion in a rural energy hub Overall, this work will unlock the non-technical barriers across transport, energy use, reuse, recycling and waste, business and industry, and buildings, which are all considered holistically within an integrated energy hub, enabling a clearer path to implementation within Shetland and other rural communities. Solutions and data achieved will be able to be rolled out across ICNZ and rural communities nationally.

no public description

"The energy system in Orkney is subject to specific constraints, and its independent location means it is the ideal location to demonstrate the capabilities of a self-contained smart energy network, and the potential impact it can deliver. Orkney is a representation of energy supply problems which energy networks find difficult to solve using traditional technology. Specifically; Orkney produces 130% of the electricity it needs through existing installed renewable generation, yet 63% of Orkneys residents live in fuel poverty. Project **ReFLEX** will install **FLEX**ible technologies to address the restrictions which cause this imbalance and demonstrate a **Re**sponsive Virtual Energy System which links these networks together. Thus, allowing production to be maximised, efficiencies to be recovered, and new business models to be proven, meaning energy can be supplied at minimum cost to the consumer and generating knowledge which will allow us to replicate activity and impact across the UK and internationally. The project will last for 36 months and include the installation and operation of multiple technologies including: \*Vehicle to grid charging infrastructure \*Building management systems \*Virtual power plant systems \*Integrated Grid-smart community-led transport system and infrastructure \*Smart Heating Controllers A Virtual Energy System will combine the above infrastructure to demonstrate the capabilities of a smart energy system.

PITCHES will demonstrate the feasibility of a hydrogen economy in a remote community. PITCHES will deploy and demonstrate an integrated hydrogen solution, including renewably-powered generation, delivery and use of hydrogen, in the Orkney Islands. The project will put in place systems to transport hydrogen from 2 generation locations to a number of end uses, providing electricity to the Kirkwall harbour district, heating local buildings and fuelling a fleet of fuel cell electric vehicles. The PITCHES project will explore the replicability of such systems to isolated, off-grid communities, including in Sub Saharan Africa, by testing configurations of the system, and identifying business models which best suit off-grid communities in developing countries. PITCHES will demonstrate that existing hydrogen technologies can be used to develop a new energy system to meet transport, electricity and heating needs of remote communities, showing that hydrogen based energy systems have the potential to reduce reliance on imported fuels, reduce carbon emissions, and in future as the technology develops, to reduce energy costs.

To apply Smart Grid Solutions and demand management to enhance communities' ability to maximise efficient use of renewably produced energy.