--- title: "UNESCO - Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites" description: "Revamped UNESCO’s World Heritage guidance into a bilingual, mobile-friendly hub for wind and solar projects." url: https://reliefapplications.org/projects/unesco-guidance-for-renewable-energy-projects-in-a-world-heritage-context/ lang: en updated: 2026-11-11 --- # UNESCO - Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites Revamped UNESCO’s World Heritage guidance into a bilingual, mobile-friendly hub for wind and solar projects. - **Client**: UNESCO - **When**: May–Jul 2025 - **Team**: 4 people - **Services**: [App development](https://reliefapplications.org/services/app-dev-and-maintenance/) - **Technologies**: ColdFusion, TinyMCE, Bootstrap 4.6, jQuery - **Industry**: Environmental protection - **SDGs**: 7. Affordable and clean energy, 11. Sustainable cities and communities, 13. Climate action, 17. Partnerships for the goals - **Client website**: [unesco.org](https://www.unesco.org/) Relief Applications partnered with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre (Europe & North America Unit) to transform the existing Wind Energy Guidance into the new bilingual Guidance on Wind and Solar Energy Projects in a World Heritage Context. Our team redesigned the user journey, migrated English-and-French content, and released the site on schedule, ensuring that States Parties and developers can more easily balance renewable-energy ambitions with heritage protection. The legacy “Guidance for Wind Energy Projects” site had grown into a dense collection of references, case studies and technical notes spread across long pages. Mobile navigation was cumbersome, page hierarchies were inconsistent, and every update had to be repeated in French. WHC wanted a redesign that integrated new solar content, worked seamlessly on phones and tablets and remained maintainable inside its custom ColdFusion CMS. Our approach First, our designer produced an interactive Figma prototype where a horizontal menu gives one‑click access to every chapter, and collapsible sections cut scrolling time. A floating action button replaces the old mobile side‑bar, opening a quick‑jump panel. To keep authors productive we built an Angular “sandbox” that mirrors the CMS environment; editors could paste draft HTML, see the result instantly and then move the code into TinyMCE. Modular Bootstrap components ensured visual consistency with UNESCO branding. Development and content integration moved forward in weekly sprints, tracked in JIRA. While UNESCO’s team finalised graphics, we converted Word drafts into semantic HTML, first in English then in French. Thanks to this workflow, late‑arriving material could still be published the evening before launch. Live site: whc.unesco.org/en/renewable-energy ## The challenge - Legacy guidance covered only wind energy. - Long, text‑heavy pages created scroll fatigue and slowed information retrieval. - Mobile navigation relied on a multi‑tap side drawer that hid core chapters. - Each change required duplicate work in French, doubling editorial effort. - A bespoke ColdFusion CMS limited modern component options. - A fixed launch allowed just ten weeks for design, build and localisation. ## What we did - Added a horizontal one‑click chapter menu for instant navigation. - Collapsible sub‑sections divide dense text into bite‑sized chunks. - Implemented a floating action button on small screens that opens a quick‑jump modal, replacing the bulky side‑bar. - Built an Angular sandbox mirroring the ColdFusion environment so editors could preview content live before pasting into TinyMCE. - Developed modular Bootstrap components aligned with UNESCO design tokens to ensure seamless branding. - Adopted an agile workflow (GitHub + JIRA) enabling same‑day deployment of late‑arriving bilingual content. ![Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites, UNESCO: screen 1](https://reliefapplications.org/images/projects/slides/p022/01.webp) ![Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites, UNESCO: screen 2](https://reliefapplications.org/images/projects/slides/p022/02.webp) ![Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites, UNESCO: screen 3](https://reliefapplications.org/images/projects/slides/p022/03.webp) ![Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites, UNESCO: screen 4](https://reliefapplications.org/images/projects/slides/p022/04.webp) ![Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites, UNESCO: screen 5](https://reliefapplications.org/images/projects/slides/p022/05.webp) ![Renewable Energy Guidance for World Heritage Sites, UNESCO: screen 6](https://reliefapplications.org/images/projects/slides/p022/06.webp) ## More projects - [Equality Fund - Impact Library: Data, Stories & Insights](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/equality-fund-impact-library/): Equality Fund - [HQAI - Innovation & IT Advice](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/hqai-innovation-and-it-advice/): HQAI - [WHO - Global Health Cluster Support](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/who-global-health-cluster-support/): WHO - [UNESCO - MAB Biosphere Reserves Platform](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/unesco-mab-platform-for-tracking-biosphere-reserves-submission-workflow/): UNESCO - [French Red Cross - Plateforme Alimentaire de Guyane](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/crf-plateforme-alimentaire-de-guyane-stock-and-distribution-management-application/): French Red Cross - [GIZ - GovStack Website Redesign](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/giz-govstack-website-redesign-modern-infrastructure-for-digital-government/): GIZ - [All projects](https://reliefapplications.org/projects/)