Projects
Projects: Projects for Investigator |
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| Reference Number | ES/N017765/1 | |
| Title | Local Authorities and Sustainable Energy Innovations: Decentralisation, Institutional Capacity and Civic Participation | |
| Status | Completed | |
| Energy Categories | Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts) 100%; | |
| Research Types | Basic and strategic applied research 100% | |
| Science and Technology Fields | SOCIAL SCIENCES (Politics and International Studies) 100% | |
| UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation | Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation) 100% | |
| Principal Investigator |
Dr C Kuzemko No email address given Politics and International Studie University of Warwick |
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| Award Type | Standard | |
| Funding Source | ESRC | |
| Start Date | 01 October 2016 | |
| End Date | 30 September 2018 | |
| Duration | 24 months | |
| Total Grant Value | £91,153 | |
| Industrial Sectors | ||
| Region | West Midlands | |
| Programme | Training | |
| Investigators | Principal Investigator | Dr C Kuzemko , Politics and International Studie, University of Warwick (100.000%) |
| Web Site | ||
| Objectives | This project will assess the changing role of UK local authorities within sustainable energy transitions, thereby making a valuable contribution to energy and climate governance research areas as well as to practitioners and other stakeholders within UK local energy circles. As climate governance literatures make clear, UN, EU and national government targets alone are not enough to drive energy transitions (Carter 2010: 57; Compston and Bailey 2013: 3). Instead, what is now needed is a far greater understanding of HOW to govern, at various levels, towards solving this highly complex collective action problem in ways that are sufficiently inclusive of civilians, to ensure lasting change. At the same time, predictions are that by 2020 small-scale, distributed generation will represent a third of total capacity in the UK (National Grid 2015), whilst little is known about how policy and regulations need to change to accommodate for this shift from centralized to more distributed generation. In countries like Germany and Denmark, that are further advanced in terms of decentralised energy, municipal authorities play a central institutional role in supporting sustainable energy innovations and enabling civic participation (Burger and Weinmann 2014). The UK energy and political systems have both remained comparably far more centralised. However, there are two important ongoing change movements driven largely by local actors: the fast growing involvement of local authorities in energy programmes and increasing numbers of devolution deals (completed and in application). Perhaps not surprisingly given how new some of these changes are, too little is known about new energy business models, types of energy partnerships, and local authorities' capacities to deliver sustainable energy programmes within a context of fiscal austerity and shrinking budgets. It is also, as yet, unclear what impact the devolution of political power has on the ability of local authorities to become more established sustainable energy actors. This project will, therefore, pose and answer important questions about how inter-relations between local authorities and other public and private sector actors are changing and with what consequences for their ability to act sustainably and in a way that involves greater civic participation.This project builds upon important work, including scoping activity with Ofgem and the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE), undertaken by the PI as part of her work on the EPSRC-funded research project 'Innovation and Governance for a Sustainable Economy' (IGov). The project will contribute to policy practitioner and academic understandings of how transitions take place at the local level, and strengthen the PI's abilities to become a future research leader in the complex but vital area of energy and climate governance. Overall, this project will combine theories of political science, local governance and energy transitions to create a breakthrough in the understanding of practice. Specifically the project has been designed with the following outcomes in mind:1 Document and analyse the emerging landscape of local authority energy programmes and strategies - including which actor groups are involved and which types of business models are developed and used and why;2 Develop inter-disciplinary methods for measuring local authority energy programmes in sustainability and participatory terms (i.e. degree/type of civic participation);3 Create a framework for revealing and understanding the various sets of inter-relationships between local authorities, central government and other energy partners and explain their significance;4 Strengthen the PI's existing knowledge base and research standing by creating new knowledge and data about sub-national energy governance and innovations;5 Achieve impact through knowledge co-production and exchange with relevant policy-makers and practitioner groups at the local and national levels. | |
| Abstract | Both energy and political landscapes are changing in the UK, but so far no analysis has considered how these movements towards greater decentralisation relate to one another. Indeed, local authorities are becoming increasingly involved in enabling and providing sustainable energy programmes whilst, at the same time, many are applying for and securing devolution deals. Some scholars and policy analysts have argued that decentralising energy will be vital in securing popular buy-in to sustainable energy transitions through greater civic participation whilst others are point towards the power of the local in delivering better-attuned services. This research project will reveal the details of how these two decentralisation movements interact with one another in practice by exploring and mapping five local authority sustainable energy programmes and critically examining their relationships with central government.This research is timely and innovative. It is timely because according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), whose job it is to monitor the UK's progress on climate mitigation, the UK is at risk of missing its Fourth Carbon Budget and because central government support for solar and wind generation has also recently been cut (Energy Spectrum 2015). At the same time, however, local authorities have been emerging as one area of innovation with regard to sustainable energy, partly by creating new energy companies that operate according to non-traditional business models and partly by offering supply services focused on affordability. The project is innovative in that it combines conceptual insights from socio-technical transitions, political science and human geography to reveal the emerging role of local authorities in sustainable transitions whilst also exploring these changes within the context of political decentralisation.This project has been designed with input from Ofgem, the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) and two local government personnel. It aims to engage on a regular basis with practitioners and stakeholders at the local authority level with the intention of on-going knowledge exchange and co-production about this fast changing area. The project is also designed so that local authorities will have the opportunity to engage with one-another through a targeted, practitioners' workshop. Towards the end of the project findings about how local authorities and central government work together in practice, in particular with regard constraints and opportunities for improvement, will be shared with Ofgem, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and local authority networks such as the Local Government Association. The findings from this research project should be relevant not only to academics working on local government and local energy in the UK, but also to scholars interested in questions of scale and of civic participation in sustainable energy transitions. By undertaking and completing this project the PIwill be given a valuable opportunity to develop and further improve her research skills, create new networks, produce groundbreaking research and to continue on her trajectory to becoming a world leader in the field of climate and energy governance. | |
| Publications | (none) |
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| Final Report | (none) |
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| Added to Database | 02/01/18 | |
