Power and heat transformation policy: Actor influence on the development of the UK’s heat strategy and the GB Renewable Heat Incentive with a comparative Dutch case study

Abstract

The system for space and water heating in the UK must be transformed if policy goals are to be met. This transformation will require major technological and social changes including the renovation of homes and other buildings, the replacement of any appliances which combust fossil fuels with low carbon heat technologies and infrastructure changes. An effective Government strategy will need to drive these changes through policies, regulations and the development of a clear vision. The UK Government has already made a number of policy interventions associated with decarbonising heating. Transformations of large systems, such as the UK heat system, have been increasingly considered from the perspective of ‘sustainability transitions’, a branch of theory which considers the transitions of large socio-technical systems from being ‘unsustainable’ to ‘sustainable’. The ‘multi-level perspective’ is a model which has emerged from the ‘sustainability transitions’ literature as potentially valuable. However, this model and wider approaches to ‘sustainability transitions’ have been accused of not paying enough attention to the complex social phenomenon of power. Greater insights around power and policy change associated with transitions could strengthen transitions theories by providing evidence of how power can affect socio-technical change. Employing an approach to power called the ‘four faces of power’ and using a methodology called the ‘EAR instrument’ based on data triangulation which has never before been applied to UK energy policy issues, this inter-disciplinary research investigates the combined issues of power, transitions and the policies associated with UK’s heat system. Power in this thesis is understood as the ability of actors to affect policy and governance associated with the decarbonisation of heat. Therefore an actor is considered powerful or to have had power if their behaviour has successfully affected policy change. The thesis examines if actors have had the power to affect historic UK heat policy and what approaches have been used to attempt to influence it. In doing so, the research provides original contributions to the literature on UK energy policy which has seen little focus on heat decarbonisation and similarly little focus on how politics and influence affect policy change. A Dutch case study has also been completed as the Netherlands has a similar, highly natural gas dependent heat system. Similarities and differences between the two countries have been investigated. Numerous attempts to influence heat policy by various actors have been identified in both countries. Approaches used to have power over policy and the actors involved in attempts to have power have been considered in detail. Only some attempts to influence have been successful and contextual and institutional issues have also affected power struggles. The size of actor has not determined policy influencing success in this analysis. The power associated with policy change is shown to be an important element of the UK’s heat transformation. As actors primarily attempt to influence policy based on their own interests and appear to have some success, a major issue for transitions may be that the speed and direction of transitions reflect politically active actors’ interests, rather than wider societal interests. However, in this study, actor power has operated to both constrain and emancipate the transformation showing that power is not, in this example, one directional