Read up on renewable energy in parks

Supporting experimentation for green energy production in parks

The Rethinking Parks programme supported two projects, Mapping Green Energy, delivered by greenspace scotland and Powering Parks, to explore the potential of public parks to become a widely-used source of renewable energy, through better available data and an analysis of possible business models.

This leaflet produced by Nesta outlines their findings, some of the challenges faced, their key takeaways, and provides compelling examples that aim to drive sustainable energy generation in public parks and greenspaces.

Our research project was Mapping Green Energy exploring the potential for public greenspaces
to support green energy services. It also looked at how these services could help deliver income, long-term savings and support the Scottish Government’s ambition to transition to a net-zero economy by 2045.

The research brought many interested people and partners together to build a group of local authorities to co-design and use prototyping methods to create a GIS online ParkPower dashboard. This publicly available tool allows users to view and filter approximately 3,500 greenspace sites across Scotland according to their potential suitability for a range of green energy generation technologies. A technology guide is also available to explore each of the technologies in more detail.

Read the leaflet