Interdisciplinary Cluster on Energy Systems, Equity and Vulnerability (InCluESEV)

Project Lead: Dr KJ (Karen ) Bickerstaff (Exeter University)

Durham University team

Professor Harriet Bulkeley (Department of Geography)
Dr. Sandra Bell (Department of Anthropology)
Dr Charlotte Adams (Department of Earth Sciences)
Professor Philip Taylor (now at Newcastle University)
Dr Sara Fuller

Key non-academic partners in the project included: National Energy Action, Eaga, Warm Zones and the Building and Social Housing Foundation.

Output highlights

The project developed a methodology using a ‘whole systems’ approach to ensure equity implications are considered across the whole life-cycle of an energy technology. A whole systems approach looks at the various elements of a system and how they interact. It is therefore fundamentally interdisciplinary.

The project recognised that integrating equity and justice into energy policy, governance and implementation is a necessary part of achieving a sustainable and socially progressive transition to a low carbon future.

The approach was developed for the areas of micro-generation, nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage.

The project contributed novel insights into how ‘energy vulnerability’ is produced and experienced and the ways interventions can be designed to build greater resilience for individuals and communities. The research highlighted the value of viewing energy vulnerability through the lens of social justice and stressed the importance of applying a whole systems approach.

Key non-academic partners in the project included: National Energy Action, Eaga, Warm Zones and the Building and Social Housing Foundation.

Overview

The Interdisciplinary Cluster on Energy Systems, Equity and Vulnerability (InCluESEV) was an interdisciplinary research cluster led by Durham University, King’s College London, and Lancaster University. It brought together academics and practitioners working on issues of equity, vulnerability and low carbon energy systems.

InCluESEV recognises that issues of equity are a fundamental but under-researched challenge in the energy domain. Integrating equity and justice into energy policy, governance and implementation is a necessary part of achieving a sustainable and socially progressive transition to a low carbon future. Equity, in terms both of access to affordable, safe and reliable energy and of the distribution of the risks and benefits of new technologies, varies over space and time, and between and within social groups.

InCluESEV promotes interdisciplinary understanding of and research into differentiated landscapes of energy vulnerability and resilience – shaped by complex interactions between technologies, infrastructures, policies, markets and practices.

Focus and Objectives

InCluESEV focuses on the uneven production and experience of energy vulnerabilities, and examines the likely consequences of emerging low carbon energy systems for the changing nature and distribution of equity across time and space. The specific objectives of the cluster are:

to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and new collaborations on equity, vulnerability and low carbon energy systems
to develop improved understanding and new thinking on how equity and justice factor within energy systems and within evolving patterns of access to energy resources and services
to develop interconnections between, and enhancements of, existing energy and climate change research initiatives through a specific focus on equity, vulnerability and resilience
develop the evidence base through the synthesis of existing knowledge and new evidence and insights
to establish the science challenges in this domain, build capacity to address them and develop future funding proposals
to engage stakeholders in research and to formulate and disseminate policy relevant outputs

The work is centred around eight workpackages:

WP 1 – Understanding and conceptualising energy vulnerabilities and resilience (Convenor: Walker)
WP 2 – Exploring the diversity of energy vulnerabilities (Convenor: Day)
WP 3 – Built environments and designing for energy resilience (Convenors: Van der Horst and Gatterell)
WP 4 – Scenarios of future energy vulnerability and resilience under climate change (Convenor: Bulkeley)
WP 5 – Conceptualising equity and justice in energy systems (Convenor: Bickerstaff)
WP 6 – Whole-system equity analysis of new nuclear generation capacity (Convenors: Simmons and Butler)
WP 7 – Whole-system equity analysis of carbon capture and storage (Convenor: Lovell)
WP 8 – Whole-system equity analysis of Micro-generation technologies (Convenor: Taylor)

Durham University led on:

Workpackage 4: Scenarios of future energy vulnerability and resilience under climate change (Prof. Harriet Bulkeley)
Workpackage 8:Whole-system equity analysis of Micro-generation technologies (Prof. Philip Taylor, Prof. Sandra Bell and Dr Charlotte Adams)

Workpackage 4: Scenarios of future energy vulnerability and resilience under climate change

To date, our understanding of energy vulnerability has assumed that the environmental context within which we use energy – and in particular the climate system – is a given. However, predictions of climate change over the next 20- 50 years suggest that the environmental factors that shape our energy use decisions (in particular concerning demands for warmth and cooling) may change considerably.

These changes are likely to be experienced differently by different vulnerable groups, given that they will be mediated by a range of social, cultural, economic and political factors. At the same time, the potential for new forms of built environment and new systems of energy provision at the local scale, will also impact on the nature of future energy demands and practices.

The purpose of this research is to generate insights into how these different factors will shape future patterns and experiences of energy vulnerability and resilience in the home. It will seek to develop a scenario based approach to examining the implications of climate change for the nature, distribution and intensity of energy vulnerabilities and the ways in which these might evolve under different future environmental, social and economic conditions (e.g. increased demand for summer cooling).

Workpackage 8: Whole-system equity analysis of micro-generation technologies

As a distributed system of energy generation, micro-generation potentially offers a distinctive configuration of equity where the risks, costs and benefits of energy production and consumption are more closely coupled. However, the ways in which equity is mediated through the production chains of micro-generation, and the implications for the electrical networks within which they are embedded is far from clear. At the same time, the policy and market frameworks within which micro-generation is currently being integrated vary considerably across space, so that in some areas of the world it remains a technology to which only a small elite have access.

As part of the ESRC-EPSRC Interdisciplinary Cluster on Energy Systems, Equity and Vulnerability (InCluESEV) this work package brought together experts in micro-generation technologies and systems, energy distribution networks, the built environment, energy policy and energy practices to consider the equity implications of the current development of micro-generation and to consider scenarios for the development of equitable micro-generation systems in the future.