Learning From Legacy Land-Energy Nexus to Inform Future Renewable Siting
A new partnership between the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Human-Inspired AI (CHIA) and NutGraph Social Data Lab to build a first-of-its-kind AI-augmented geospatial evidence base that helps India’s energy transition learn from past land-use challenges
As India scales renewable energy at unprecedented speed, an important question emerges. What can decades of land-use change, community-resource interactions, and project experiences across thermal power, hydropower, and transmission infrastructure teach us about planning the next generation of energy systems?
Nutgraph Social Data Lab, in partnership with the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Human-Inspired AI, is launching a new research initiative to build a National Energy Sector Land Use Atlas. The project moves beyond conflict documentation to analyse how landscapes, commons, and land-use patterns have changed before and after project development across energy sectors. It also examines how these shifts have shaped the evolving relationships between land, communities, and energy infrastructure over time. By learning from legacy energy systems. using multimodal AI, the project aims to help renewable energy expansion avoid repeating past land-governance blind spots while strengthening long-term energy security and investment confidence.
Combining NutGraph’s field-verified database of 130+ energy-linked land conflicts, including those affecting renewable energy projects, with satellite imagery, time-series analysis, and on-ground validation, the project will map changes in forests, commons, grazing lands, wetlands, water bodies, and built landscapes. It will also examine how these landscapes were recognised, planned for, or overlooked across project lifecycles. The result will be a comparative spatial evidence base designed to help policymakers, investors, lenders, and developers identify land-related risks early, improve siting decisions, and support more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable energy planning.
We’ll be sharing insights as the work progresses.
About Nutgraph Social Data Lab
Nutgraph Social Data Lab is a research and data analytics organization that focuses on land governance, infrastructure development, and resource-use transitions in India. Backed by a network of interdisciplinary researchers spread across geographies, it produces data-driven insights from the ground, using innovative research methods, to help organisations and institutions drive social change. Its flagship initiative, Land Conflict Watch (LCW), maintains India’s largest database on land-related disputes, documenting and tracking 1,500+ verified cases across sectors, including renewable energy.
About Centre for Human-Inspired AI (CHIA)
The Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA) is located at the University of Cambridge, in the heart of one of the most dynamic AI ecosystems in Europe. It is dedicated to advancing AI for the benefit of humanity and the world we live in. CHIA brings together an interdisciplinary community of researchers to investigate the innovative ways in which human and machine intelligence can be combined to yield AI which is capable of contributing to social and global progress. Cambridge Collective Intelligence and Design Group at CHIA builds novel tools for energy and climate justice decision-making and policy applications.
