Bioenergy and Renewable Energy Community Assessment Toolkit

Whether renewable energy – and specifically bioenergy – can move our society onto a more sustainable energy path, relative to our current trajectory, remains unresolved. Grantee Sharon Lezburg's intent with this toolkit is not to resolve this question, but rather, to encourage government entities, communities, and land-owners to engage in a process of public deliberation to assure that community residents have a voice in decision-making about renewable energy development within their own community. Communities can elect to impose a standard of sustainability for renewable energy development; in doing so, they set the criteria that industry must meet in order to be appropriate for a particular locale.

The Bioenergy and Renewable Energy Community Assessment Toolkit provides a decision making tool (the matrix) to guide communities toward developing their own standard of sustainability and criteria for meeting that standard.

Want more information? See the related SARE grant(s) ENC07-100, Biofuels and community participation: Engaging process in the emerging bioeconomy .