Energy Ready: empowering energy-resilient communities

A line-up of people with their arms around each other

Australian communities are increasingly experiencing extreme weather events, many of which cause power outages through damage to power lines and infrastructure. People caught in situations like those experienced by Mallacoota and Lismore must find ways around power outages to communicate, cook food, access money and more.

Energy Ready is a project that aims to build communities’ resilience and to be prepared to take action if their power goes out. It was funded by Energy Consumers Australia and delivered in partnership with the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), the Community Power Agency and Parallel Lines.

The project’s major output is the Energy Ready toolkit, a publicly available free resource for communities. The toolkit contains the Energy Ready guidebook, which explains how communities can boost their energy resilience and disaster response, and step-by-step instructions for seven simple activities that communities can do to help them examine the risks they face, identify shared priorities and develop a plan of action that’s tailored to their needs and values. The toolkit also includes materials such as flash cards and plan templates to enable these activities.

Community connections

To set the parameters of the project, ISF first conducted a review of how community energy resilience is defined and what it means for communities in the face of climate extremes. The research revealed that collaboration is crucial in preparing for, responding to and recovering from environmental disasters and that forming social relationships and together exploring strategies to find technical location-based energy solutions are key to building energy-resilient communities.

The next step was to work out how this collaboration might be activated and for this, the project team turned to communities themselves.

The second phase of the project involved close community consultation, led by the Community Power Agency (CPA). CPA are facilitation and education experts in the renewable energy space and drew on their rich experience of working with communities to conduct workshops in six locations around Australia. The locations chosen – Mullumbimby and Lake Macquarie in NSW, Gympie and Magnetic Island in Queensland, and Bonang and Mornington Peninsula in Victoria – represent communities that either have experienced an environmental disaster, or are at risk of experiencing one in the future.

The workshops involved hearing from communities about their experiences, how they prepared and responded to extended power outages, what went well and what didn’t, and their ideas for things a community might consider when putting together an energy resilience plan. Researchers knew from the literature review that communication and social relationships are important in a disaster situation, so the workshops explored ways of communicating with no power and how solar and battery storage can provide back-up power for communications. At the workshops, community members also mapped possible resources, such as diesel generators, that could be commandeered in a time of need.

From workshop to toolkit

The ideas and responses that came up during the workshops formed the basis of the Energy Ready guidebook. Working together with Chris Gaul of Parallel Lines design agency, the project partners developed a simple step-by-step guide to community planning for energy resilience that includes advice for putting together a community working group, methods for making decisions, and activities and resources for community groups to use when putting together their resilience plan.

Disaster response and energy resilience experts were also consulted in putting together the guide.

The result is the first edition of an easy-to-understand, publicly available resource for communities. Its aim is to prompt conversations about energy resilience and shape these into all-inclusive community actions that meet the needs of different groups and individuals during difficult times

The importance of working together

The Energy Ready project has foregrounded the importance of collaboration, not least among the project’s partners. Energy Consumers Australia helped to bring in resilience experts, government representatives and disaster response agencies to support the project; Parallel Lines brought a wealth of experience in visualising social and environmental aspects, the Community Power Agency leveraged their expertise in engaging communities in discussion about energy and forming plans of action, and ISF contributed rigorous research methods and experience in translating research into usable resources.

Caroline Valente:

We're proud to fund this project through our grants program as a collaboration grant. This meant we had the opportunity to work alongside the project partners, the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, Community Power Agency, and Parallel Lines to bring this from an inspiring idea to a ground-breaking piece of work.

The Energy Ready project aims to gather lessons and best practices on community energy resilience. So, through extensive desktop research, deep community engagement, collaboration with experts in energy resilience and disaster response, plus a human-centered visual design approach, the project team was able to translate the findings into a one-of-a-kind resource for communities.

Sarah Niklas:

The definition of community energy resilience, which we proposed in the literature review, says that resilient communities are communities that utilise localised energy sources in order to prepare. So, that's to learn and to anticipate, to respond and withstand, and to recover from disasters. And so, they also include aspects of social connections and social learning. They include economic aspects related to affordability and accessibility. And of course, it includes renewable energy technologies and any technology solutions.

Kristy Walters:

As a partner, Community Power Agency brought facilitation skills and engagement skills in figuring out who the communities should be that we are talking to, who are the correct people to come along to the workshop to give their insights and experiences. What they've been through in these disaster-affected communities and at-risk communities, and designing an interactive process that makes communities and people in these workshops feel comfortable and able to express what they've been through and do that deep thinking to share their experiences with others.

Elianor Gerrard:

It's really essential that things like this are actually grounded in lived experience, and the way to do that is to go and listen and hear from communities that have gone through experiences like environmental disasters such as a fire or a flood, and hear about what they've done and then ground anything that you're wanting to inform other communities to help them prepare.

Amy McPherson:

Things that I'm worried about in terms of resiliency are the short-term emergency situations that we're finding ourselves in, whether that's bushfire or flood, but I'm also worried about the long-term energy resiliency of communities.

What I learned today were about understanding how this sort of energy resiliency happens at different levels and in different locations. At the short, more immediate short term, it made me start thinking about how I respond to an emergency situation and what the community needs to do and what I need to do as part of a community in responding to an emergency situation.

Chris Gaul:

One of the things that we thought about with this project was that resilience comes from working out what you need to do for yourself. So, we've designed a guide that isn't just about giving people information and advice but giving them the opportunity to develop their own approach to energy resilience.

Caitlin McGee:

Some of the main challenges we faced, there were two really. The first is that energy resilience is quite a complex topic, so really translating something that's quite complex into something that makes sense for communities. And the other challenge is that the topic can be quite distressing for people, especially communities who have been through disasters. So, trying to really portray the information in a way that's authentic and doesn't deny the seriousness but is also very upbeat and constructive and says here's what you can do.

Caroline Valente:

The Energy Ready Toolkit was produced in consultation with communities for communities, and we really want it to be used. It contains seven steps to guide and help communities leverage their unique features, examine the risks they face, identify shared priorities, and develop a plan of action for improving energy resilience.

So, we encourage communities all across Australia to access this rich resource, use it and reuse it as many times as possible, and tell us how the Energy Ready Toolkit made them a stronger, safer, and more energy resilient community.

The next steps…

Because the Energy Ready guide has been made in consultation with communities, for communities, it’s important that it is now tested by communities. The project team hope to capture community feedback on this pilot version of the guide, and to further develop it and improve it in response to this feedback.

Introducing Energy Ready webinar

On 12 December 2023, the team behind Energy Ready hosted a free webinar for anyone interested in boosting their community’s energy resilience. You can watch the recording here to find out more about the project and how to use the Energy Ready toolkit.