governing transitions in energy demand

GOVERNING TRANSITIONS IN ENERGY DEMAND

Dr Catherine Butler

@drcbutler [email protected]

Collaborators: Dr Karen Parkhill, Dr Karen Bickerstaff,

Professor Gordon Walker

Project background

•  Analyses of governance issues relaDng to energy demand focus on ‘energy’ policy or closely related areas (e.g. transport)

•  ‘What energy is used for, or how energy needs are made, is in part

a reflecDon of how governments shape objecDves, investments and ways of providing and working across many different policy domains’ (Shove et al. 2012)

•  Analyses have highlighted policy across mulDple areas that has implicaDons for shaping everyday life with consequences for energy needs and vulnerabiliDes (Butler et al. 2014; Hand et al. 2005; Simcock et al. 2015)

•  To effecDvely understand how to address the consDtuDon of

demand we must aWend to a broad sweep of policies that extend beyond what is currently recognised as energy policy

Current UK welfare and employment policy

Poverty and social jus?ce

Welfare reform Employment European funds

Older people

Household energy Health and safety reform

State pension age Automa?c enrolment in workplace pensions State pension simplifca?on

Child maintenance reform

Energy welfare project methods

Document analysis (2015 ongoing)

Policy and stakeholder in-‐depth qualitaDve interviews – naDonal to local scales

(2015-‐2016)

Three UK case study areas: Biographical interviews with people directly impacted by welfare policy (Oct 2016 – March 2017)

Four dimensions [beyond] ‘energy’ governance

•  Other policy areas have direct forms of influence on energy needs and the nature of contemporary energy issues

•  They have influence related to contribuDon to wider governance goals and cross governmental agendas

•  Role of other areas of governance in creaDng longer term trajectories that influence what is possible or not within energy policy as well as consDtuDng contemporary needs for energy

•  Significance of framing and agenda seeng outside of energy policy that influences what is conceived as possible

Directly influencing needs and vulnerabiliDes

•  Welfare reforms can be highlighted as exacerbaDng energy vulnerabiliDes, for example in disproporDonately affecDng disabled people (CiDzen’s Advice, 2015) and unemployed people.

•  These groups are now idenDfied as parDcularly energy vulnerable with new definiDons and more complex understandings. But direct aspects of ‘energy’ policy -‐ cold weather payments and winter fuel payment targeted at elderly.

•  Role of wider poliDcal context shaping policies across government – e.g. poliDcal sensiDviDes about voters.

•  Wider welfare policies (e.g. zero hours contracts, work placements) also shape poverty and exacerbate vulnerabiliDes

Directly influencing needs and vulnerabiliDes

“I’ve worked out how much Universal Credit is going to affect disabled people and some people are going to be hugely worse off and yet they’re saying there’s no impact” (Interviewee Policy Delivery)

“I suppose the target group that it mainly hits i.e. old people, is a poliDcally significant group as well. The fact that we're dealing with elderly people who are at risk of fuel poverty and seem to have a lot of sway poli?cally because they all vote. As we know when it comes out ... and it came out when our Secretary of State resigned, one of the things that he talked about was the poli?cal clout of the silver voters. That was quite interesDng. So yeah, it is a very poliDcal area. I haven't worked in an area of DWP that's been so poliDcal I think as fuel poverty”. (Interviewee Policy DWP)

Department roles in wider policy agendas

•  Digital technologies as an increasing proporDon of household energy demand, and fastest growing area of global energy demand (DECC, 2015)

•  Governmental agenda to accelerate the pace of development of the ‘informaDon society’

•  PossibiliDes for posiDve environmental prospects from ICT (Ropke et al. 2008)

Department roles in wider policy agendas

“you’ve got all these Job Centres and part of a strategy for reducing that is to consolidate Job Centres and move everything online” (interviewee policy DWP)

‘We have recently launched over a dozen digital services, including the Universal Credit, Carers and Pensions services. Last year, we delivered 7,229 iteraDons and changes into producDon. 70% of all paper correspondence is now digi?sed across DWP, including incoming post. We’re combining design-‐thinking and digital technology with our social purpose to create exciDng and innovaDve products and services which improve outcomes for 22 million people. (DWP Digital, 2016)

Policies affecDng change over Dme

•  Housing as a core dimensions of UK welfare policy historically and today – e.g. social housing development, housing benefits, right to buy.

•  Material and social trends in housing influenced by

welfare policy with implicaDons for energy intensity of UK housing and for energy policy

•  Material nature of housing in the UK related to history of housing as a welfare policy – densely built housing for the working poor

•  Social nature of ownership in housing related to welfare policy – government built housing versus selling off of council houses -‐ implicaDons for current energy policy possibiliDes and challenges


You have things like the private rented sector regulaDons already but if you were to do something similar in the homeowner sector, that could be quite controversial and take up quite a lot of poliDcal will to say, if you introduced a requirement by 2020, whenever a home was purchased, it has to be a Band E or above. So it would be maybe the seller or buyer’s responsibility to bring it up to that standard. So that is something that could be feasible to do in regula?on but would be extremely unpopular and would probably pick up quite a lot of media aVen?on so might not be the poli?cally easiest way of achieving carbon savings so they are looking at what other alternaDves there are for doing that. (Policy Interviewee)

Framing and agenda seeng

Austerity Worklessness

Individual Deficits

Scope for reshaping policy

agendas

Being employed helps promote recovery and rehabilitaDon and prevents the harmful physical, mental and social effects of long-‐term sickness absence. Fit for Work is designed to… [help] employees to get back to work as soon as is appropriate. (DWP, 2014)

Interviewee: “I suppose poliDcally… that they’ve gradually over Dme managed to paint people on welfare as scroungers yet most of the people on welfare are actually working hard, or else they have a very legiDmate reason for not working but they’ve managed to paint this thing… over a long period of Dme”. (Interviewee Policy)



Individual Deficits


agendas

•  Time travel surveys show increasing levels of travel related to work (Carlson-‐Kanyama and Linden, 1999)

•  High job densiDes contribute toward increasing distances travelled for work (Boussauw et al. 2010)

•  Work place energy use versus home working (Spurling and Mcmeekin, 2015)



Individual Deficits


agendas

Reimaging different trajectories of work (Spurling and McMeekin, 2015)

Requires a different framing of the problem beyond individualism

Conclusions: Energy governance

•  Governance of energy demand – creaDng intervenDons and socio-‐technical transiDons (Strengers and Maller, 2015; Smith et al. 2005)

•  Governing insDtuDons are always already intervening –

even if through ‘freedoms’ and have intervened historically in ways that can have different kinds of outcomes for energy demand (e.g. keeping it low or increasing needs)

•  AlternaDve approaches needed to deliver the scale of transformaDon needed to meet climate change targets and address growing energy vulnerabiliDes –

•  Examining governance more broadly – beyond energy policy – helps to idenDfy scope for (and challenges) of such approaches

Thank you

[email protected]

@drcbutler @energywelfare

www.energywelfareproject.org

governing transitions in energy demand

Science