Policy in the Face of Uncertainty: The Smart Meter Dilemma

Smart technologies, which can communicate and share information, have been hailed as a panacea for a range of our energy problems. The possibilities for energy savings and greater energy efficiency are enormous. The first step in realizing the smart vision of the future is the humble smart meter, which is due to be universally available in British homes by 2020. However, the behavioural science behind the effects of an in-home energy meter is mixed. Pilot tests have returned a range of results, from energy savings to increased consumption and everything in between. Given that there is scientific uncertainty, how should policy makers respond? I argue that the Government must clearly prioritise its reasons for the adoption of smart meters in order to create meters that are most likely to produce a single desired result, instead of solving all the nation’s energy problems

Implementing UK Wind Energy: Lessons from Environmental Psychology

As the UK aims to produce 15% of its energy consumption from renewables by 2020, planning policy becomes increasingly important to facilitate the large-scale implementation of renewable technologies. As it stands, there is great opposition to wind farms across Wales, the North East of England and Scotland. How can we improve the planning process and companies’ engagement with the local community to increase the success rate for planning applications? This piece looks at what we can learn from psychological and sociological frameworks, such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour and concepts of place attachment, to craft a suitable government response

Rural Electrification Policy and Off Grid Solar: Sector Engagement Strategies in India and Beyond

1.1 billion people currently live without access to electricity. Sustainable Development Goal #7 advocates for clean, affordable energy for all by 2030, but most of the work of electrification is spurred by national electrification efforts. How rural electrification policies attempt to engage market actors, and the impact that these policies have on enterprises, is crucial to understanding what makes policies effective. This thesis begins by creating a typology of rural electrification policies in order to improve comparison and contextualisation of individual policies. Within this typology, the research explores the relationship between programmatic policies and market actors (enterprises). Given India’s history of rural electrification programmes and its well-developed off grid solar market, the thesis then takes India as a case study and explores on two of its off grid solar programmes: the Decentralized Distributed Generation Scheme and the off grid component of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. In depth interviews explore how enterprises’ business models respond to policy change, their political strategy and how end users are selected. Findings suggest that enterprises respond quickly to changes in their policy environment, and a single change can have large knock-on effects within the business model. Political strategies are impacted by a number of factors both exogenous and endogenous to the enterprise, which can limit engagement with programmes. Finally, the target populations for rural electrification programmes are not necessarily the ideal customers for enterprises, even for those selling off grid products. While the interviews focus exclusively on India, these findings more generally suggest that governments must support the market that their policies require.Department of Land Economy Peterhous

Ten-year assessment of the 100 priority questions for global biodiversity conservation

In 2008, a group of conservation scientists compiled a list of 100 priority questions for the conservation of the world's biodiversity ?Sutherland et al. (2009) Conservation Biology, 23, 557?567?. However, now almost a decade later, no one has yet published a study gauging how much progress has been made in addressing these 100 high?priority questions in the peer?reviewed literature. Here we take a first step toward re?examining the 100 questions and identify key knowledge gaps that still remain. Through a combination of a questionnaire and a literature review, we evaluated each of the 100 questions on the basis of two criteria: relevance and effort. We defined highly?relevant questions as those which ? if answered ? would have the greatest impact on global biodiversity conservation, while effort was quantified based on the number of review publications addressing a particular question, which we used as a proxy for research effort. Using this approach we identified a set of questions that, despite being perceived as highly relevant, have been the focus of relatively few review publications over the past ten years. These questions covered a broad range of topics but predominantly tackled three major themes: the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems, the role of societal structures in shaping interactions between people and the environment, and the impacts of conservation interventions. We see these questions as important knowledge gaps that have so far received insufficient attention and may need to be prioritised in future research

New and renewable energy social enterprises accessing government support: Findings from India

In a world that increasingly invites private actors to address social needs, there has been a rise of social enterprises in a variety of sectors, including new and renewable energy. As of yet, little research has focused on how these enterprises interact with government policy in low- and middle-income countries. This research specifically explores how social enterprises operating in rural India with decentralised renewable energy solutions seek to access government support, and what strategies they adopt to engage with the government. An inductive theory-building approach was adopted to explore this and advance current knowledge in the boundaries of social entrepreneurship and policy. We propose \u2018Engagement\u2019 and \u2018Disengagement\u2019 as the two strategies used by social enterprises in this context in accessing government support and policy. \u2018Engagement\u2019 is a strategy comprising of the tactics: (a) Leveraging Policy, (b) Building and Leveraging Relationships, (c) Lobbying, and (d) Monitoring. \u2018Disengagement\u2019 is a strategy comprising of the tactics: (a) Avoiding Government Presence, and (b) Disengagement from Policy

To end coal, adapt to regional realities

Four broad categories capture countries' political and economic barriers to quit coal. Use these to tailor solutions