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New Thinking: Welfare and Sustainable Energy Transitions
Blog from Berlin Part Drei – Welfare and Sustainable Energy Transitions Caroline Kuzemko, IGov Team, 6th November, 2014 About Caroline: http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Caroline_Kuzemko Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarolineKuzemko In this last of the ‘Blog from Berlin’ trilogy I highlight an under-researched area: that of how questions of welfare tie in with successful energy transitions. When analysing and debating transitions we often talk about how to develop new ways of producing and using energy – emphasising environmental aspects of sustainability. This is, of course, incredibly important but we spend relatively less time considering how to make sure that energy systems are transformed in
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New Thinking: Growth, Efficiency, and EU Targets
Growth, Efficiency, and EU Targets Tom Steward, IGov Team, 5th November, 2014 About Tom: http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/igov/people/igov-team/tom-steward/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Steward_T Last month, EU leaders struck a deal for three targets for 2030 – one on emissions, one on renewables, and one on energy efficiency. It’s this third of these that is troubling me. What was agreed was a non-binding 27% energy efficiency improvement compared to current 2030 projections. This is only moderately more ambitious than the UK official negotiating position, which was for no energy efficiency target at all – on the basis that specific renewables or efficiency
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Paper: Measuring and explaining policy paradigm change – the case of UK energy policy
Caroline Kuzemko, discusses her article Measuring and explaining policy paradigm change: the case of UK energy policy written with Florian Kern and Catherine Mitchell, which is published in the latest edition of Policy & Politics. Across the social sciences a great many scholars are engaged in trying to understand policy and institutional change – not least within political science. One reason for mounting interest in change has been the growing awareness of anthropogenic climate change, of continued growth in global emissions and of what kinds of (varied) implications this might have for societies around the world. Energy has received a
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Guest Blog: Does anyone know where the UK gets its gas from?
Richard Lowes, Energy Policy Group – 30th October 2014. Concerns around UK security of energy supply have been in the headlines recently. On BBC breakfast earlier this week, energy minister Matt Hancock suggested that shale gas exploration could resolve these security problems but also suggested that UK reliance on Russian gas is at a very low level, 1%. In this blog I aim to shed some light on where the UK’s gas actually comes from. Firstly, it’s worth understanding that the upstream gas ‘market’ really is a murky world. It’s certainly more of a market than
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It is the Black Fog the Daily Mail needs to worry about, not the Green Blob
It is the Black Fog the Daily Mail needs to worry about, not the Green Blob Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 27th October, 2014 About Catherine: http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Catherine_Mitchell As someone who travels a lot, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I like and don’t like about Britain. And at the top of the list of likes is British humour. The Daily Mail picture of Parliament being taken over by the Green Blob, as argued by Owen Paterson, seems to me to be quintessentially British – it is a great, memorable, funny rip-off. There
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New Thinking: Having your cake and eating it
Having your cake and eating it: energy companies want profit without risk Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 22nd October, 2014 About Catherine: http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Catherine_Mitchell Having your cake and eating it – energy companies want profits without risk The fire at Didcot electricity gas plant on Sunday night has, as to be expected, led to numerous articles (e.g. here, here, here and here) which argue, when boiled down, to two simple points: (1) that not enough has been done by Government to stimulate investment in the electricity system and as a result we are now dangerously close to having
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Submission to DECC Consultation on the draft Strategy and Policy Statement
University of Exeter Energy Policy Group submission to DECC consultation URN 14S/271: Strategy and Policy Statement: a consultation on the draft statement Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft Strategy and Policy Statement (SPS). This comment is set out in the following way: an introduction to our view; responses to your three questions; and a conclusory section of our view what a SPS should include. Introduction A key criticism of the Draft SPS is that it does not clarify how the Government wishes to prioritise its goals, or how the trade-offs between them
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Working Paper: Energy networks and distributed energy resources in Great Britain
Energy networks and distributed energy resources in Great Britain By: Matthew Lockwood – Energy Policy Group, University of Exeter EPG Working Paper: 1406 Abstract: This paper examines the rules and incentives governing electricity, gas and heat networks in Great Britain from the perspective of how far these facilitate or prevent a shift towards an energy system with more ‘distributed energy resources’, including flexible demand, local electricity generation and heat production, and energy storage. Much of the analysis focuses on electricity distribution network, where the greatest need for innovation is expected to lie. Most of the relevant rules
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New Thinking: Network governance and distributed energy resources
Network governance and distributed energy resources Matthew Lockwood, IGov Team, 15 October 2014 About Matthew: http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Matthew_Lockwood Twitter: https://twitter.com/climatepolitics A new IGov working paper on energy networks give a comprehensive account of the rules and incentives for network operators and network users (generators, shippers, suppliers and consumers), and how these facilitate, slow or block a shift to a more demand side focused energy system in Britain, along with a greater use of distributed energy resources. Most of these rules and incentives are created by economic regulation of networks or come under industry codes and standards, and the paper also
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Presentation: German Sustainable Transition – Governance Enablers & Constraints
German Sustainable Transition – Governance Enablers & Constraints From: Caroline Kuzemko To: Ofgem, 9 October 2014 Summary – Phase II: longer history of action (renewables/R&D) – Learning (what policies/regulations/infrastructure change at what stage) – Policy and institutional change: coordination – Finance: KfW, greater public support – Greater distributed authority and local differences – Culture of anti-centralised power/big companies and of municipalities/community (and of angst) – Growing security, pricing (who pays) and grid concerns – Market structure and efficiency policy being reworked – Political recognition that miss emissions target (DS) Download presentation: German Sustainable Transition-Oct14
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