A New Zero Energy Action Plan for Cowley Local

Low Carbon Hub is extending our community-based energy planning approach, first developed for the Eynsham Primary Substation Area (PSA) for a very different setting: Cowley Local.

A place of contrasts

Cowley Local is one of Oxfordshire’s most complex and contrasting places. It includes the two most deprived neighbourhoods in the county, both within the 10% most deprived nationally, sitting alongside more affluent rural communities. It is also home to major employers and energy users, including BMW, Unipart, Oxford Business Park Campus and Oxford Bus Company, plus another 2,700 registered business meters with high and often specialised energy demands. That mix of household deprivation, rural affluence, and heavy industrial and commercial energy use makes Cowley Local a uniquely demanding test case, and a vital one. If we can work out what a just and fair energy transition looks like here, it tells us something important about what’s possible everywhere else too.

Starting with trust

Unlike Eynsham, Cowley Local has no pre-existing community energy groups to build on. So we’ve started where any good community project should: by building trust with local leaders and designing our approach alongside them, rather than arriving with a fixed plan.

Working under the aegis of the Zero Carbon Oxfordshire Partnership (ZCOP), we’ve brought together representatives from across the area to build a shared understanding of the area’s energy dynamics, how energy is used, where the pressures are, and what matters most to the people who live and work there.

Combining insight with analysis

We’re now bringing that community insight together with detailed analysis of current and future energy requirements across the area. The result will be a programme of work grounded in equity, fairness and transparency, shaped as much by lived experience as by data.

We’ll be sharing updates as the project develops.