Non-traditional business models for city-scale energy storage: evidence from UK case studies

This paper investigates emerging non-traditional business models for decentralised energy systems with a focus on the role of city-scale storage technologies. We discuss the key characteristics of the different business models which have been identified in the literature and we discuss case studies across the United Kingdom in order to illustrate the key factors which influence their adoption and implementation. On the basis of evidence from recent UK case studies we investigate the market and regulatory barriers, contractual and transactional issues which may prevent key actors from exploiting the full market potential of their assets. We find that emerging business models rely on a range of different revenue sources with some limitations due to complex contractual relations, regulatory barriers and limited access to markets for ancillary services. The evidence we provide can be used by companies and organisations intending to operate in this fast developing market and inform policymakers aiming to promote the expansion and improvement of emerging business models

Pay (for it) as you go: Prepaid energy meters and the heat-or-eat dilemma

The “heat-or-eat” dilemma, a trade-off typically between food consumption and heating, may elevate public health concerns during the 2022 energy-price crisis. Our paper contributes to the literature by exploring the role of domestic energy prepayment meters (PPMs) in the heat-or-eat dilemma, focusing on the association between PPM use and fruit and vegetable consumption. Using a representative sample of 24,811 individuals residing in Great Britain (January 2019–May 2021), we find robust evidence of lower fruit and vegetable consumption amongst individuals using PPMs, compared to those using post-payment energy bill payment methods. On average, our point estimates suggest that individuals using a PPM consume 2.7 fewer portions of fruit and vegetables per week. Our findings hold when bounding analysis is employed to account for omitted variable bias. Using a suite of IV approaches to further alleviate endogeneity concerns we found that our ordinary least squares results are consistent as opposed to IV models. Further robustness analyses highlight the deleterious impact of PPMs on people's healthy eating habits relevant to the consumption of enough fruit and vegetables. Our results suggest that targeted support for PPM users may have beneficial effects on people's fruit and vegetable consumption patterns

Household energy price resilience in the face of gas and electricity market crises

Despite the provision of financial support by the Government in response to the recent energy crisis, the resilience of households to the ensuing high energy prices remains to be established. In this study we propose a new definition of resilience, specifically ‘energy price resilience’, and put forward an empirical approach to capture low energy price resilience (LENRES). We also assess its associated socio-economic and demographic factors using a representative UK panel. Using models that account for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, we further explore the association between LENRES and a rich set of health, disability, and wellbeing outcomes for adults and children through two fundamental routes: (1) the low energy and thermal affordability channel (LEA); and (2) the low energy and financial solvency channel (LES). We find that employment status, housing tenure, inability to save, energy prepayment methods, and household composition are systematic socio-economic correlates of LENRES. Moreover, LENRES is associated with worse health, disability, and wellbeing outcomes for adults; these associations are primarily driven by the LES component. On the other hand, in the case of children, LENRES at home is only systematically associated with life satisfaction, rather than general health. Our results suggest that targeted energy interventions could generate wider societal benefits

Non-traditional business models for city-scale energy storage:evidence from UK case studies

This paper investigates emerging non-traditional business models for decentralised energy systems with a focus on the role of city-scale storage technologies. We discuss the key characteristics of the different business models which have been identified in the literature and we discuss case studies across the United Kingdom in order to illustrate the key factors which influence their adoption and implementation. On the basis of evidence from recent UK case studies we investigate the market and regulatory barriers, contractual and transactional issues which may prevent key actors from exploiting the full market potential of their assets. We find that emerging business models rely on a range of different revenue sources with some limitations due to complex contractual relations, regulatory barriers and limited access to markets for ancillary services. The evidence we provide can be used by companies and organisations intending to operate in this fast developing market and inform policymakers aiming to promote the expansion and improvement of emerging business models

Subtypes of psychopathy : proposed differences between narcissistic, borderline, sadistic and antisocial psychopaths

Atascadero State Hospital (ASH) is a maximum-security forensic hospital that houses male patients with a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses. Psychopaths at this institution appear to be a heterogeneous group of individuals who, while sharing core personality characteristics, manifest substantial variability in their behavior. Identifying subtypes within this clinical classification can have implications for patient treatment and management, as well as for the safety of the staff who work with them and for the communities to which they will eventually return. Several means of identifying subtypes have been proposed in the literature, and potential subgroups have been identified. Clinical observations at ASH have suggested 4 possible subtypes of psychopathy: narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial. Issues related to the conceptualization of psychopathy are addressed, recognizing that additional data are needed to understand the observed variations in cases of psychopathy.<br /

The elephant in the energy room: Establishing the nexus between housing poverty and fuel poverty

This paper contributes to the literature on fuel poverty by bringing together the “housing-cost-induced-poverty” definition and the “low-income-high-cost” indicator. Relying on the housing-cost-induced-poverty definition, this paper identifies three “dimensions” of fuel poverty: 1) income-poverty-high-cost; 2) housing-cost-induced-poverty-high-cost; and, 3) fuel-cost-induced-poverty-high-cost. After breaking down the underlying structure of the low-income-high-cost framework, this paper proposes an alternative conceptual definition of fuel poverty and puts forward an empirical strategy which can help to identify the households most in need of financial and energy-related support. An application based on energy cost data in England allows us to identify several policy implications following from our proposed approach

Getting warmer: Fuel poverty, objective and subjective health and well-being

This paper uses data from Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study to explore the association between fuel poverty and a set of wellbeing outcomes: life-satisfaction, self-reported health measures and more objectively measured biomarker data. Over and above the conventional income–fuel cost indicators, we also use more proximal heating deprivation indicators. We create and draw upon a set of composite indicators that concomitantly capture (the lack of) affordability and thermal comfort. Depending on which fuel deprivation indicator is used, we find heterogeneous associations between fuel poverty and our wellbeing outcomes. Employing combined fuel deprivation indicators, which takes into account the income–fuel cost balance and more proximal perceptions of heating adequacy, reveals the presence of more pronounced associations with life satisfaction and fibrinogen, one of our biological health measures. The presence of these strong associations would have been less pronounced or masked when using separately each of the components of our composite fuel deprivation indicators as well as in the case of self-reported generic measures of physical health. Lifestyle and chronic health conditions play a limited role in attenuating our results, while material deprivation partially, but not fully, attenuates our associations between fuel deprivation and wellbeing. These results remain robust when bounding analysis, IV and panel data models are employed to test the potential role of various sources of endogeneity biases. Our analysis suggests that composite fuel deprivation indicators may be useful energy policy instruments for uncovering the underlining mechanism via which fuel poverty may get “under the skin”

Fuel poverty and financial distress

Governments and advocacy groups have drawn attention to the precarious position of those members of society who are unable to attain an adequate level of energy services, i.e. the fuel poor. Concerns have also arisen about the ability of fuel poor individuals to adapt to the hardship recently brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring empirically the link between fuel poverty and financial distress prior to and during the first wave the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is based on the most recent longitudinal, nationally representative survey of the United Kingdom, Understanding Society (UKHLS, Wave 10, January 2018–February 2020). After correcting for the effects of potential endogeneity in the variables of interest, our results identify a statistically robust relationship between fuel poverty indicators and self-reported measures of current financial distress, with stronger effects for subjective indicators. The fuel poverty indicators however exert only a limited influence on an individual's expectation of their future financial situation. Our analysis of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic also confirms that fuel poverty contributed to financial distress. Our main findings are robust to a suite of specification and sensitivity checks. Our results lead to recommend assessing measures which target fuel poverty on the basis of their potential indirect effect on financial distress