Strategic Innovation Fund

Collaborative Local Energy Optimisation (CLEO)

On this page

What the project is about How we’re doing it What makes it innovative What we’re learning

Project Data

Start date:

03/01/2022

End date:

03/31/2025

Budget:

£3,000,000

Summary

CLEO is a digital platform that supports local authorities and communities in collaboratively planning, optimising and delivering low-carbon energy projects. By leveraging data and digital tools, CLEO helps identify the most effective local opportunities to cut emissions, reduce costs and accelerate the transition to net zero.

What is the project about?

Regulatory expectations from Ofgem emphasise that local energy plans should guide network investment to align with long-term decarbonisation goals. However, local authorities face challenges due to limited expertise and resources in energy planning, making it difficult to assess energy needs, engage stakeholders, and develop Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs).

To address this, UK Power Networks has established a team to support all 133 local authorities during the RIIO-ED2 period, offering a three-tiered support service to assess, develop, and implement action plans that guide investment decisions.

To facilitate collaboration, the project has created a free-to-use web-based platform for local energy planners. The platform enables them to:

  • Analyse datasets to model Low Carbon Technology (LCT) deployment.

  • Visualise and assess the impact of decarbonisation scenarios.

  • Make data-driven decisions aligned with community needs.

By providing insights into how energy plans interact with infrastructure, the platform helps planners develop and refine LAEPs, feeding into long-term network forecasting for informed investment decisions over the next 25 years.

How we’re doing it

The initial Beta version of ‘Your Local Net Zero Hub’ was launched in July 2023, with 11 early adopters testing its functionality and providing feedback. Since then, the platform has undergone several iterations, improving usability, expanding datasets, and refining key features based on real-world use cases.

Through these iterations, we learned more about local authority needs, such as aligning with the Greater London Authority’s sub-regional LAEP programme, allowing London boroughs to share their decarbonisation plans once. We also introduced tools like the Distribution Future Energy Scenario (DFES) widget, which allows authorities to easily share high-level targets. Additionally, we reviewed all 133 local authority decarbonisation plans and created a personalised visual summary, ‘Your decarbonisation journey’, to provide clarity and highlight areas where further information was needed.

By October 2023, the Beta platform was open to all 133 local authorities. To drive engagement, the Local Net Zero Team launched a second year of regional engagement in October 2024, providing an overview of the platform’s capabilities and support.

The response was positive, with 70% of local authorities signing up and actively using the platform. Ongoing fortnightly training sessions have been held, achieving a customer satisfaction score of 84.9%, addressing key challenges such as:

  • Using the platform to design investable projects.

  • Leveraging ‘Data Stories’ to engage stakeholders and residents.

  • Uploading and integrating local datasets for enhanced analysis.

What makes it innovative

CLEO stands out for its focus on collaborative, data-driven decision-making at the local level. Unlike traditional energy planning tools that can be opaque or overly technical, CLEO is designed to be transparent, user-friendly, and grounded in local needs. It combines advanced digital infrastructure—such as spatial mapping, LAEP+ modelling, and opportunity prioritisation algorithms—with templates and engagement tools specifically tailored for local government realities.

A key innovation of CLEO is its modular approach: users can start with high-level opportunity scans (Scenarios) and gradually expand into detailed project planning as capacity and funding grow. CLEO also breaks down silos between energy system actors, encouraging collaboration between councils, communities, and delivery partners.

Its real-time collaboration features and automation tools reduce the manual burden of planning and reporting, allowing teams to focus more on delivery. By turning complex data into actionable insights, CLEO accelerates the shift from planning to actual projects, helping bridge the gap between climate ambition and tangible impact.

What we’re learning

CLEO is revealing common challenges faced by many local authorities, such as fragmented data, limited internal capacity, and navigating the complexity of energy systems. By simplifying processes, offering visual insights, and providing templates and training, we’re unlocking latent potential and accelerating project delivery.

Early pilots have shown that embedding co-design and iteration with local users is crucial—tools must align with local constraints, language, and decision-making cultures to be effective. Cross-team collaboration, particularly across planning, housing, and sustainability departments, is another key success factor, and CLEO’s structure facilitates this.

We’re also learning the importance of linking planning directly to delivery mechanisms, whether through government funding, private finance, or community ownership models. As we continue working with local areas, we’re not only refining the tools but also the broader support ecosystem needed to move projects from concept to implementation. Ultimately, CLEO is demonstrating that, with the right tools and support, local authorities can lead the energy transition—and it’s helping turn that leadership into a reality.

thinking outside the box icon
Share your ideas

If you have an idea that could reshape or revolutionise the way we work, we want to hear from you.

Submit an idea
cta-bg-details