Multi-disciplinary technical advice services

CARES is designed to accelerate progress towards the Scottish Government’s target of two gigawatt of community and locally owned renewable energy by 2030, and that at least half of all newly consented renewable energy projects will have an element of shared ownership. It supports the Scottish Government’s target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

CARES supports community and locally owned projects to generate their own energy or to invest in or benefit from larger commercial developments. Communities and rural businesses can access finance from the CARES programme in the form of loans and grants to investigate and develop renewable energy projects. CARES provides support to community organisations looking to secure, develop and ensure the effective management of community funds from renewable energy sources. The scheme is also open to national or regional non-profit organisations with charitable aims and objectives and faith groups.

The CARES projects listed below are expected to be typical during the period of the Framework:

• Decarbonisation of community buildings. Supporting communities to implement energy efficiency, solar photovoltaic systems (PV), energy storage and low carbon heating in community buildings and assets.
• Community-based heat pump schemes. Community organisation support members of the community (homeowners, and other local heating loads) to install heat pumps and enabling measures.
• Community solar hosted on third party roofs. Community-owned solar hosted on suitable rooftops in the local area i.e. local authority, public sector, and civic buildings.
• Community-owned renewables connected to local loads through private wire installations. These may serve large energy loads, including buildings, centralised heat pump plants alongside civic or utility needs. These may result in reduced electricity cost for consumers and higher Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) prices for generators, which can create a strong business case.
• Remote off-power grid communities to upgrade their energy systems to be resilient and prepare for net zero.
• Local energy system and innovation projects have been and will continue to be supported to develop new business models.
• Generation projects suppling energy to the grid using wind, hydro and PV.

Case studies are available via www.localenergy.scot/projects-and-case-st… ↗

More information about the CARES programme can be found here: www.localenergy.scot ↗

Given the complexity of projects, tight deadlines for delivery and potential to look for synergies across these projects, the Energy Saving Trust currently anticipates that it will appoint two to four multi-disciplinary technical consultancies who are able to provide support across the wide range of technical advice that is required to support the delivery of the CARES funding programme.

Contractors appointed to this framework will provide detailed and complex advice on energy systems, storage, heat and transport to applicant organisations to assist them in the progression of projects.

Example tasks include:

­ Technical reviews

­ Option appraisals

­ Feasibility studies

­ Procurement support

­ Project planning

­ Defining and preparing a risk register

­ Defining and preparing a project plan

­ Client engineers support services

­ High level engineering support

­ Cost consultancy services and value engineering

­ Planning, building warrants and other consents

­ Grid capacity and connections

­ Due diligence and business case development

The range of potential projects and example technical advice services set out above to support them above is wide ranging. The level of support will be agreed between Local Energy Scotland and CARES applicant organisations. The right tasks to support a project may include any of the above rather than all of the above and we require contractors that can draw on a range of engineering and cost consultancy skills.