A United Kingdom? The case for a net zero Just Transition Commission

Last year, the UK was the first country in the world to pass legislation to become a net zero emissions economy by 2050. To achieve this, the entire UK economy will have to be radically transformed over 30 years through deep decarbonisation. This commitment was ambitious at conception. Now it has to be achieved amidst an economic crisis, with social inequality brought to the fore through Black Lives Matter protests and the stark inequalities exposed by Covid-19. This has led to many voices calling for a green and equitable recovery, able to combine social and environmental concerns in climate change policy

Exploring local energy justice in times of austerity: Civic energy sector low-carbon transitions in Bristol city

The rapid rise of energy justice in recent years has been accompanied by a theoretical bias towards a ‘systems approach’, which is grounded in the dominant theoretical frameworks for understanding energy transitions. This PhD contributes ‘local’ perspectives to understandings of energy justice, through analysis of civic energy sector low-carbon transitions in Bristol City. The thesis draws on a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach with civic energy actors in Bristol, using participant observation, in-depth interviews (n=31) and a focus group (n=7) conducted over a 24-month period between 2015 – 2017. Set against a backdrop of continuing fiscal austerity reconfiguring institutional state capacity at multiple scales, alongside the simultaneous growth of the low-carbon economy, the thesis draws on three core tenets of energy justice (distributional, procedural and recognition justice) and ‘bottom-up’ approaches and pathways to energy transitions, to generate original insights into how communities, local organisations and local government are seeking to combat energy injustice and realise energy justice. The three tenets are used to analyse the critical role of prominent community and civic energy organisational structures and schemes, intermediary organisations and new forms of local ‘energy activism’. The findings show that ‘local’ energy justice connects to a powerful discourse of localism in a time of austerity, in which civic energy projects seek to challenge ‘extractive’ forms of neoliberal economic organisation and privatised ownership over the UK energy system. However, this localism is shown to critically reflect broader issues of persisting social inequalities in Bristol. Drawing on the three tenets, the emerging politics and geographies of local low-carbon energy infrastructures and initiatives are explored further through four core case studies derived from the primary data. The thesis concludes with a call to shift energy justice away from its ‘systems approach’ to a fundamentally ‘multi-scalar’ theoretical framework, recognising the importance of all scales of analysis. It also finds the integration of ‘spatial justice’ into local approaches to energy justice vital for developing the real-world applicability of the field and facilitating critical engagement with energy decentralisation, whilst offering original insights into the importance of novel organisational structures, intermediaries and civic energy networks for local energy justice. It finishes by opening up a bold new research agenda that calls for energy justice to significantly expand into spaces for innovative bottom-up approaches, in both theory and in practice, to further empower the communities at the heart of local low-carbon energy transitions

Vulnerability to fuel and transport poverty

This briefing highlights the groups of people that academic research has identified as vulnerable to experiencing fuel poverty and transport poverty. Fuel and transport poverty are distributed across the UK, although the groups affected in each place can vary and the characteristics can be different depending on the location and make up of households

Correlating maintenance, energy efficiency and fuel poverty for traditional buildings in the UK

The scoping study here funded by Historic England, Historic Environment Scotland and Cadw, looks at the potential for a developing a research framework to address the potential for energy efficiency for historic buildings to be increased with better maintenance programmes. The new British Standard for conservation has already triggered recognition of the correlation of dampness to energy efficiency (British Standards Institution., 2013), here we aim to address further means to link building condition to building performance and to further substantiate that claim. More broadly the paper investigates the potential for recovering evidence in the interests of incentivising maintenance as a business case addressed to stakeholders and custodians, underwriters and legislators

Towards improved solar energy justice: exploring the complex inequities of household adoption of photovoltaic panels

Solar energy, including household and community based solar photovoltaic panels, is the fastest growing source of low-carbon electricity worldwide, and it could become the single largest source of renewable energy by mid-century. But what negative equity and justice issues may be associated with its adoption? What risks are being accelerated as solar energy grows exponentially in its deployment? In this study, we rely on a mixed methods research design involving household solar interviews (N = 24), site visits (N = 4 solar neighbourhoods), and a literature review to investigate four types of inequities associated with household solar adoption. We utilize a novel framework looking at demographic inequities (between groups), spatial inequities (across geographic scales), interspecies inequities (between humans and non-humans), and temporal inequities (across present and future generations). This framework enables not only the identification of multiple and often interlinked inequities; it also points the way towards how to make solar energy adoption more sustainable and just, with direct implications for solar business practices (and supply chains) as well as energy and climate policy

Eating, heating or taking the bus? Lived experiences at the intersection of energy and transport poverty

Experiences of poverty can manifest in multiple aspects of everyday life, often in interlinking ways. One example is ‘double energy vulnerability’, where a household faces both energy poverty and transport poverty simultaneously. This can result in trade-offs, where prioritising one essential need (e.g., transport) makes accessing another impossible (e.g., heating). Such decisions are not easily made, and they can have distinct spatio-temporal characteristics. They can vary between space and time and across different household members, and result in stark inter- as well as intra-household differences. People with socio-demographic and contextual vulnerabilities are particularly at risk of experiencing double energy vulnerability. Based on 59 household interviews across the four nations of the United Kingdom, we provide novel, multi-nation empirical evidence on the lived experiences of double energy vulnerability, drawing on our themes; ‘being locked into infrastructure’, ‘facing high costs and low incomes’, ‘choosing between energy and transport’, and ‘missing out’. A cross-national lived-experiences approach sheds light on double energy vulnerability as a relational, contingent and ongoing phenomena, attending to everyday experiences and capacities. We provide suggestions for further research, such as further study of double energy vulnerability amongst refugees and migrants. We also highlight that the study of lived experiences can aid the recognition of how different forms of poverty intersect and how they need to be taken into account in the design of Net Zero policies

Transitioning to low-carbon transport must address social justice issues alongside emissions reductions

Dr Mari Martiskainen, Senior Research Fellow at SPRU and Equity and Justice Theme lead for the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), and Dr Max Lacey-Barnacle, Research Fellow in Energy Justice at SPRU, explain why we must think beyond reducing emissions to ensure no one is left behind in the transition to low-carbon transport

Energy justice in the developing world: a review of theoretical frameworks, key research themes and policy implications

Energy justice, building on foundations within both the field of environmental justice and wider justice scholarship, has grown rapidly as a research field over recent years. However, the dominant energy justice theoretical frameworks, and many of the field's core case studies, originate from work in developed countries, with energy justice research only recently spreading to new areas of the world. This paper thus systematically reviews the current state of ‘developing economy’ and ‘economy in transition’ literature in the energy justice field. In doing this we analyse the (1) methods, energy types and locations explored thus far, unearthing key gaps, as well as (2) the multitude of ‘justice-led’ theoretical frameworks used. We also identify core themes illuminated by energy justice research in the developing world, including: (3) decentralisation, access and sustainability, (4) exposing institutional instability and corruption, (5) acknowledging marginalised communities and gender inequalities, while extracting key (6) policy implications. Vital questions are raised for the continued advancement of energy justice research into new contexts and thus its conceptual evolution. Our review highlights the potential for energy justice-led attention to expand current institutional, contextual and empirical scope in specific ways, including greater attention to the poorest global regions, and certain energy technologies including nuclear and CCS. We suggest four ways in which future theoretical developments of the field might take place: (i) greater attention to spatial analyses of neglected regions; (ii) expanding the field to further include non-western philosophical traditions; (iii) more work on applying tenets, frameworks and principles specific to energy justice and (iv) systems approaches to developed-developing country relations, with an emphasis on how they relate to low-carbon transitions. Thus, while we explore past and present applications of energy justice in developing world contexts, we also offer guidance on the ways in which it could be applied in the future, alongside encouraging dialogue between different ‘justice’ fields