Planning Regional Infrastructure in a Digital Environment, or PRIDE, is a Strategic Innovation Fund project being run by a consortium of partners including Regen, the West Midlands Combined Authority, Advanced Infrastructure, National Grid Electricity Distribution and National Grid ESO.

Exploring new digital planning tools, governance and processes, the PRIDE project aims to improve how local planning and network investment decisions are made to fast-track the infrastructure and low-carbon technology deployment at a regional level to deliver net zero.

The PRIDE project is at the Alpha stage of the SIF process. In this stage it will be exploring three key elements:

• LAEP+ tool: Deploying and testing the functionality of a digital tool to help local authorities plan net zero and share that planning information with energy networks in a data-driven and consistent way.
• Governance structure: Testing how the LAEP+ tool works within a governance structure of local authorities, energy networks and regional infrastructure providers to inform decision making and provide democratic accountability for net zero planning at a local and regional level.
• Regional Energy Strategic Planning: Testing how the learnings from the tool development and governance structure could inform and feed into the wider framework of a future Regional Energy Strategic Planner (RESP).

The project follows on from the Discovery phase, in which Regen supported the West Midlands Combined Authority to engage with local authorities about how a digital planning tool could help improve local energy planning processes and what data and functionality they would like to see in such a tool. The Alpha phase will run from October 2023 until March 2024, at which point Regen and the consortium partners will submit a bid for the final Beta phase to continue to explore the governance system and how learnings can contribute to the development of the RESP.

For further information on the project, please contact Mollie Atherton.

PRIDE is a collaborative project between the WMCA, National Grid Electricity Distribution and Advanced Infrastructure. Its goal is to improve how local planning decisions can influence network investment to accelerate the deployment of low carbon technologies and decarbonise heat and transport.

This project explored how a whole systems digital planning tool could help local authorities develop flexible and lower cost local area energy plans, and a governance structure that would ensure those local area energy plans are embedded into network investment decisions. 

In our role, we delivered an in-person workshop and online webinar with the local authorities in the West Midlands Combined Authority region that explored:

·        The opportunities and challenges of local area energy planning.

·        How the whole systems digital planning tool could help local authorities develop local area energy plans.

·        Governance structures that provide a platform for better engagement between local authorities and energy networks.

It was important to us that local and regional needs were being considered throughout the project. We designed the workshops to provide a platform on which local authorities can share their challenges with project partners as well as other local authorities to encourage peer-to-peer learning and support. 

This project formed part of the Discovery phase of PRIDE, which finished in June 2023. We have supported the project partners submit the SIF funding bid for the next phase of the PRIDE project, during which we will join the consortium as a project partner and help continue to support the development of the whole systems planning tool and trial the governance structures with local authorities and infrastructure providers in the WMCA region. 

For further information on the project, please contact Mollie Atherton.