Local community energy event - Lewes

On the 24^th of November I attended a local community energy event that was organised by Lewes District Council (LDC). The aim of the event was to draw attention to community energy opportunities in the Lewes District, and to identify some practical proposals that could potentially be taken forward by the participants. Presentations included: a recent Lewes District Low Carbon Study commissioned by LDC’s Planning Department, financial opportunities to develop renewable energy projects, two community energy case studies and a final summary of the event from the Climate Change Officer at LDC, Matthew Bird.

Edward Sheath, the Planning Manager at LDC, was only able to present some of the conclusions from the Low Carbon study for Lewes District, concentrating mainly on the opportunities for renewable energy technologies (RE) in the local area. An outline of the report can be found at: http://www.lewes.gov.uk/corestrategy/. During the presentation, Edward Sheath pointed out that the refurbishment of the old and inefficient housing stock plays a major issue for reaching local climate change targets rather than the impact of new developments.

The speakers, who presented the two case studies, Ringmer Community College and Woodland Enterprise Centre, provided practical examples of local community action. For example, Ringmer Community College has about two hundred students who have volunteered to be Eco Reps. They are keen to improve the environmental performance of the college, and to not only change the attitudes of their teachers to environmental issues but also of their parents, siblings and friends.

At the end of the event, the panel discussion was dominated by community members who wanted to gain advice about funding opportunities, recommendations on how to develop RE projects in conservation areas and guidance on choosing reliable contractors to conduct RE feasibility studies. As well as the possibility to network with a variety of community energy actors, one of the major outcomes of this event has been the future plan to set up a Community Energy Partnership.

Big societies? Market societies? The Green Deal and community-based approaches to energy effiency

On Thursday 11^th November I was invited by YouGov to attend an event they were holding in Westminster on the topic, Sustainable Communities – Building the Big Society. It attracted a mix of local government, regeneration, housing, development and environmental professionals. The Director General of Housing from the Department of Communities and Local Government, Richard McCarthy, did his best to enthuse us about the meaning and practice of a Big Society and illustrating its operation in the government’s plans for localism; whilst the Shadow Minister for Civil Society, Roberta Blackman-Woods, MP tried to distinguish her party’s approach to civil society.

Whichever brand of state-society (dis-)engagement you prefer, there was not a great deal of evidence of community engagement in the presentation of government plans for their Green Deal on energy efficiency in homes. Phil Wynn Owen from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) presented the thinking thus far, and which will be consulted on soon, before legislation, then implementation from Autumn 2012. Phil explained the basic model, which reclaims the installation costs of various household energy efficiency measures from the savings at the energy meter, effectively displacing the investment costs to the householder that initiates the installation. Phil explained that a number of banks and energy utilities were in discussion with government about participating; different packages for were being developed. DECC foresaw a ‘thriving, competitive market’, where energy advisors and efficiency installers would compete to provide their services.

A long-standing and growing body of research and experience indicates that efficiency measures that deliver deep reductions in energy consumption (needed if we are to meet international targets) require quite complex and long-term engagements with households. Trusted, timely and tailored advice can require an ongoing dialogue, in which the positions of those giving and receiving advice are important (e.g. independent advice, product marketing, social class). As Philip Selwood, Chief Executive of the Energy Savings Trust, put it in his presentation to the event, ‘the household is the most important partner’. Otherwise rebound effects can reduce the impact of the efficiency measure.

Household energy practices are also shaped by the way people respond to the technologies installed, the skills they develop for using these technologies, and the meanings this has for them. Low energy practices do not just mean installing cavity wall insulation, say, but also that people realise what this can mean for their home, and that it is the thermostat that can be turned down, rather than opening the windows. Insulation used in a way that means less thermal energy is needed for a given level of comfort for the householder, could open up other opportunities, such as alternative heat supplies viable at lower rates of consumption; or even flow into discussions and commitment to greener practices across the board.

The challenge for the supply-driven approach to Green Deal is to ensure it is household energy practices that change, and not simply the installation of kit. Target- and bonus-driven installers working in highly competitive markets will need to ensure not just joined up household energy efficiency measures, but that these are internalised into household practices in ways that cut deep into energy consumption levels. The Green Deal might be very effective at the mass diffusion of certain energy efficiency technologies, but meeting the requirements of the financiers rather than the households might mean a rather shallow technological impact. Careful programme design means this need not be the case; and no matter how inappropriately used, mass diffusion might nevertheless deliver more limited energy savings that add up to something quite significant on a mass scale.

At the same time, however, a longer-standing and better-funded form of marketing to households comes from producers of a growing variety of electronic consumer products and devices, with their own impacts on aggregate carbon emissions. Various governments have sought to regulate the energy performance of these products. Once again, these technological standards only become absolute reductions in energy through the way the devices are used. Perhaps the engagements initiated by the Green Deal could complement government standards programmes by working across a wider variety of energy practices in households?

Considered in this way, some of the area-based, locally-interlinked and flexible features of community-initiated and community-based approaches might prove attractive for developing these longer-standing relations that seek deeper-seated shifts in energy practices. Community energy groups bidding for Green Deal contracts might argue these local multiplier effects as their unique selling point. Examples of community-based initiatives already exist thanks to programmes where grant-funding can be competed for and used to deliver energy advice and support in innovative ways. Whether claims for their strengths (and weaknesses) are valid or not is the subject of ongoing research, for example through collaboration between the Economic and Social Research Council and DECC’s Low Carbon Communities Programme. But as Sir Stewart Etherington, Chief Executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, argued at the Sustainable Communities event, there can be a tension sometimes between flexible, adaptable, solutions specific to local scales and diverse households compared to large-scale, standardised measures pitched at mass markets.

It will be interesting to see how the different approaches to energy efficiency, experimented with over many years now, vie with one another as the details of the Green Deal move from proposal to programmes next year. Certainly, there is no shortage of experience of home energy measures and programmes, some targeted to demand and locally adapted, others rolled out on a mass scale. It is important that the Green Deal consultation draws upon this experience and associated research.

DECC – a view from the inside

What is it like to work for the Government and how is energy and climate policy really shaped in the UK today? These were some of the questions answered by Dr. Tim Chatterton when he presented a “DECC – a view from the inside” seminar at SPRU on 4^th November. Dr. Chatterton, originally a social scientist from the University of the West of England, is on a 12-month Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Fellowship to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The goal of his fellowship is to advise Government on certain research projects, but also develop linkages between academia and policy makers – hence the visit to SPRU.

It seems that energy and climate policy making at DECC is mainly in the hands of civil servants with a background in technical sciences and engineering. When Dr. Chatterton started his Fellowship at DECC in February 2010 there were no social scientists at the department, now that number has risen to three. Partly this is due to departmental shifts – when climate change was taken out of Defra and moved to DECC, much of the social science research stayed behind in Defra (there are still only 12 social scientists in Defra today). On one hand the Government is advocating concepts such as “new localism” and “ the big society” for dealing with problems such as climate change, but what is interesting to see is how much weight is actually being given to social science regarding this inside the Government. Much of energy and climate change policy making still seems to be based on large, top-down and supply-side focused engineering solutions.

What Dr. Chatterton wants to focus on while inside DECC is to highlight the role that social sciences can have in energy and climate change policy making. This involves concepts such as behavioural change and what can be learnt from social and psychological sciences in terms of energy behaviours - majority of which are based on socially constructed habits. People need to shift their behaviours at the individual level, but the Government needs to also engage communities and encourage them to play a positive role.

Current Innovations for Sustainability

Pioneering research at the University of East Anglia is looking into how innovative bottom-up, community activities can contribute to sustainable development, focusing on complementary currencies. Researchers from the School of Environmental Sciences held a successful workshop in London that bought together a range of practitioners and academics from the field of complementary currencies from across Europe and beyond.

The Grassroots Innovations: Complementary Currency project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Dr Gill Seyfang (ENV), is exploring the diffusion and replication of complementary currency systems. These are alternative forms of money, such as the Brixton Pound, green loyalty reward cards, or volunteering ‘time banks’. The workshop at the UEA London offices bought together twenty representatives from a range of  different currency schemes. Representatives discussed initiatives that were being implemented in various European countries as well as South America and Asia.

Senior Research Associate Noel Longhurst commented,

“The workshop was intended to serve two purposes. The first was to discuss the current developments in the complementary currency field, exploring the latest models and trends. The complementary currency field is fairly fragmented and it is difficult to get reliable data on the specifics of different systems. Many participants were unaware of the other systems that we bought together.

The second objective was for us to explore some of the conceptual framework with participants, before we engage in a stage of deeper empirical work. On both counts the workshop was a great success with both participants and ourselves benefiting from the exchange of information."

Visit the project website for more information