Overview

"Northumberland National Park is a carbon credit area and has been successful in piloting a number of innovative approaches to renewable energy in partnership with local businesses and communities. Our partners view this as an advantageous position from which to launch a full-scale regionally important and nationally significant programme to rapidly accelerate the production micro-renewable energy production and energy efficiency.

"Our aspiration is one of the two key aims in the newly adopted National Park Management Plan: the other is to raise skills to enable people to make a good living from better managing the environment. Hence, this nationally unique programme aims to maximise the economic and environmental impact from a step-change growth in micro-renewable energy. Northumberland National Park is ideally placed to be a ‘test-bed’ for new technologies. For instance, nowhere else in the region, or indeed the UK, is adjacent to a source of biomass as significant as Kielder Forest. The fundamental approach we will adopt will be based on business enterprise, innovation and skills development.

"This exciting programme of low carbon activities will take place over the next five years. Our aim is to meet the Government’s 2020 target by 2015, so we’ll then be in a position to assist the region to also meet the 2020 target. We plan to inspire and influence people in the whole of the North-East so that as a region we are leading the way in renewable energy. The programme will allow us to test and create new markets with location specific micro-renewable energy solutions, while developing new business opportunities by growing the market and strengthening the supply chain.

"We want to reduce the cost of businesses operating in the deepest rural areas of England, using a sustainable, low carbon business model. Above all, we will create a learning and development infrastructure that positions the North-East at the forefront of the green economy, leaving a lasting legacy in terms of low carbon energy production.

"Our aim is to show that England’s more remote and protected rural area can lead the way and demonstrate the advantages of renewable energy technology to complement existing offers such as sustainable tourism and traditional farming and to address issues of disadvantage from the last technological age which leave many businesses with unreliable, polluting and costly energy source and many in our community are left in fuel poverty. Most of all we aim to ensure this programme is of such a significant scale to create strong demand to accelerate the employment, training and business opportunities in the North Energy offered by the move to a low carbon economy."

Stuart Evans (Director of Corporate Services)

T: 01434 611527
E: stuart.evans@nnpa.org.uk

SDF Renewable Energy Projects Map, 2002-2009

A Strategic Action Plan For A Low Carbon National Park In The North East Of England (PDF 2MB)

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