Farm Energy Survey for Greater Lincolnshire

1. We are inviting you to take part in a research study. Before you decide, it is important that you know why we are doing the study and what is involved. Please read the following information carefully.

This survey is designed to identify the status of energy usage and energy generation at the establishments within the UK Food Valley located in the Greater Lincolnshire region. Using this information, we are willing to identify the level of decarbonisation needed within the selected geographical region. The outcome of this study is to provide a tool for selecting appropriate sustainable technologies to contribute to the Net Zero ambition while ensuring market competitiveness.

You are being invited to take part because you are working at an establishment within the UK Food Valley located in the Greater Lincolnshire region.
Participation is completely voluntary. You should only take part if you want to and choosing not to take part will not disadvantage you in anyway.

You may consent to share data electronically by answering the yes or no question before completing this survey. The entire survey will take around 15-30 minutes to complete, and you must fill it out once. However, you may skip any question in this survey.

In this survey, you will be prompted to provide the location of your establishment. The researchers will use this information to identify the energy availability and infrastructure at the location of your establishment. If you do not intend to share this information, you may provide us with the locality of your establishment or skip the question altogether.

Note that the information you provide will be completely anonymised before any publication. If the researchers wish to publish any non-anonymous data, they are expected to acquire additional consent from you.

You will not be paid to participate in the study.

If sufficient data can be gathered through this survey, the researchers will have a better idea about the technology to adopt to ensure decarbonisation cost-effectively. Thus, the researchers will be able to inform you about the low-carbon energy options.

The Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership (GLLEP) and the University of Lincoln (UoL) will jointly conduct this study in the United Kingdom. The GLLEP will collect the survey responses from you and provide them to the UoL. The researchers at UoL will be using information from obtained from the GLLEP to undertake this study and will act as the controller of the data. This means that we are responsible for looking after your information obtained from the GLLEP and using it properly.

The research team at the UoL will not be aware of any personal details and will keep the location of your establishment confidential and secure. Certain individuals from UoL may look at your research records to check the accuracy of the research study. The people who analyse the information will not be able to identify you and will not be able to find out your name or contact details. You will not be identified in any report/publication if you do not wish to be. 

The data obtained from the GLLEP will be stored securely on the university OneDrive in password-protected files. Only the researchers will have access to it. We will delete all data after the study has finished.

You are free to withdraw at any point while answering the questions in the survey. If you intend to withdraw from the study after you have completed the survey, we can delete your data only if you have filled out the location of your establishment. Your data will be completely anonymous if we do not have the location. Hence, we will not be able to identify the data related to your establishment to delete it.

I confirm that I have read the information above for the above study. I have had the opportunity to consider the information, ask questions and have these answered satisfactorily.