T2050- QUEST

Change policies, regulations, plans and behaviours, enabling a reduction in emissions.Our approach, combining the Renewable Energy (RE) Mapping and Spatial Planning Toolkit with RE Accelerator Workshop, aims to provide municipalities with the means to establish and deploy more collaborative planning processes for RE development that are more likely to garner support from utilities, landowners, and community. This will help identify and engage key stakeholders required to advance the goals, and develop the overall platform for municipalities to advance project initiatives both during and beyond the project life. The intensive three-day RE Accelerator Workshop will allow staff to learn from experienced practitioners including utilities and energy service providers, policy makers, and government. Participants will benefit from hands-on learning, practical skills application, and real-world examples. This includes:—Increasing level of ambition and defining pathway to achieve outcomes—Integrating energy, emissions targets, and policies into other municipal plans and policies and vice versa—Securing council support (for project implementation)—Undertaking community engagement—Quantifying resources—Financing and ownership options—Designing programs and mechanisms which will support the pathway. Mobilize the adoption of proven technologies, processes, and practices.Our RE Mapping and Spatial Planning Toolkit and RE Accelerator Workshop will establish a decision_x0002_making framework to expedite rapid but responsible identification of RE projects, along with development of financing and governance pathways to achieve those projects. Mobilization of RE technologies requires an integrated assessment of resource availability, land-use capacity, system capacity (load), pathways, costs, and operation, before they can be adopted. Our project will address these challenges. Apply new technologies, processes, and practices considered innovative in a local context.The RE Accelerator Workshop will provide municipalities with a sense of how drivers of RE development—evolving policy context, technology advancements, changing markets and business practices—are changing/need to change, to enable more distributed RE generation. After the workshop, municipalities will have a clearer sense of their role in facilitating more RE generation. Our RE Mapping and Spatial Planning Toolkit is an innovative approach to spatially-explicit RE assessments and community/stakeholder engagement. The toolkit and information yielded from its implementation will enable municipalities to be better prepared to understand, facilitate, and capture opportunities for RE generation.Assist in the scaling of these technologies, processes, and practices within the participating municipalities.Our team will work with the cluster to pilot a RE Protocol to support the implementation of RE with local utilities and/or energy service providers to meet community low carbon objectives. The RE Protocol will be developed collectively by the cluster, piloted, and applied regionally. Offering coaching and training in how to use these tools, municipal staff will be able to understand and use data to cultivate political and community support, which is the bedrock for advancing the PCP milestones, reducing emissions and successfully implementing RE. Following the RE Workshop, regional and issue-based group mentoring opportunities will be offered quarterly and delivered through a webinar platform. Specialists will be invited to help address questions and issues of the cluster nationally or regionally.