Across the UK, millions of households are struggling to afford to heat their homes. Energy poverty has risen sharply since 2021, with around 6 million households unable to keep warm without cutting back on essentials.

At the same time, the UK faces a race to meet net zero by 2050, including delivering 70GW of solar power by 2035 (that’s enough energy to power 35 million homes).

Brownfield sites – the abandoned or disused lands that dot the UK’s cities and towns as a result of de-industrialisation – could be an untapped asset.

As a multidisciplinary sustainability researcher, I have seen how brownfield has slowly been incorporated into urban planning in the UK – from locally managed brownfield assets and datasets through to combined brownfield datasets and eventually to a national register.

To date, there are still more than 37,000 brownfield sites in England alone, many in deprived areas where property values are low and investment scarce. These sites range from as small as 0.001 hectares (0.00000386 square miles) to 157,945 hectares (610 square miles), according to the UK government’s brownfield land register.

Although different countries have different interpretations of what constitutes brownfields, they are often fenced off, contaminated or derelict – a symbol of neglect rather than renewal.

My team’s recent study shows that repurposing this land for community-based renewable energy projects, such as solar farms, wind turbines or ground source heat pumps, could not only help boost the renewable........

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