Carbon Neutral Islands Community Handbook 2024

Community Energy Scotland have developed a Community Action Handbook, based on the Carbon Neutral Island (CNI) project. It has been designed as an accessible and practical resource for use by communities wishing to take action on climate change.

The handbook is available to view on line and a hardcopy version is also available - to request a hard copy of the handbook, please get in touch with raina.bergasse@communityenergyscotland.org.uk. (please note that hard copiues are limited to one copy per organisation). 

This handbook shares learnings from the CNI Project as a guide to communities looking to take forward climate action in their own community. Island communities are often at the front line of climate change, and they are disproportionately affected by things such as rising sea levels, extreme weather events and ocean acidification.

In addition, they often rely heavily on industries like tourism, fisheries and agriculture which are sensitive to climate variations. However, island communities also have a valuable opportunity to model what climate resiliency and decarbonisation can look like and how local people can benefit in many ways (for example, warmer homes, reduced energy bills, better travel options). Despite these challenges, islands are places of great innovation, and this presents them with an opportunity to be at the forefront of action to tackle climate change.

This handbook will help you to:

• Understand your local context and the stage your community is at with regards to climate change and preparing for the future.
• Come up with creative engagement ideas to draw upon local knowledge and help to generate solutions that will work locally. 
• Create a Community Climate Action Plan.
• Understand what steps are needed to plan and implement projects. 
• Consider how to measure the impacts of your engagement and projects.

You can access the online handbook here