Planning Principles for Integrating Community Empowerment into Zero-Net Carbon Transformation

The adoption of the UN 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals is a landmark in international sustainability politics. For example, Europe has set ambitious targets to achieve 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030. However, numerous case studies from different countries have found that accelerating the transition to net-zero carbon emissions is easily hampered by the lack of a coherent systems framework, and that implementation gaps remain at the community level. These barriers are often due to a lack of an adequate end-user (i.e., household) input and early planning participation. This work therefore aims to improve on conventional planning methods that do not reflect innovative technologies with uncertainty and may not be applicable due to the lack of community empowerment, which is a dynamic learning and intervention opportunity for end-users at different planning stages (i.e., outreach, survey, planning, implementation, management, and maintenance). Using the lessons learned from participatory action research, whereby the author was involved as a project director throughout the planning and design process, we identified a six-step cycle principle. The steps are (1) collective action commitments, (2) local values and resource identification, (3) carbon footprint inventory, (4) optimized integration of environment, economy, and energy action plans, (5) Flexible strategic energy system plans, and (6) digital performance monitoring. Ultimately, the outcomes provide application support for policymakers and planners and stimulate community engagement to contribute to the achievement of zero net carbon emissions.