• Energy Research

In the sociological tradition, markets are understood to be constituted of social relations: relations of trust, friendship, power and dependence, which have moral and emotional qualities. In this paper, we explore how people in energy poor households construct the energy market and its impact on energy policy. Drawing on secondary analysis of a large collection of qualitative interviews on the lived experience of energy poverty carried out from 2003 to 2018 (n = 197 interviews and 20 selected), and the results of an OFGEM quantitative survey on consumer engagement released in 2018, we document the experience of the energy poor as actors in the British retail energy market. We uncover a number of challenges and opportunities facing energy poor participants in the market: having access to good quality information about suppliers, energy tariffs and grants, and having the skills and resources to act on this is important, without these it can be difficult for people to take action. In explaining people’s engagement with the market, we draw on the concept of ‘socio-economic attachments’, showing how a supportive network of family and friends, and people’s trust of and resulting loyalty to their energy supplier mediate their engagement. These findings lead us to relational explanations of the retail energy market, with related policy recommendations: if we are to aim for people to act ‘rationally’, they will need support to navigate the market from intermediaries.

Energy poverty is becoming a main challenge of the European welfare systems and beyond, abounding on the inequalities derived from living conditions and social determinants, with a direct and negative impact on health and wellbeing, mainly in urban contexts. Health problems attributable to energy poverty include respiratory diseases, heart attacks, stroke and mental disorders (stress, anxiety, depression), but also other acute health issues, such as hypothermia, injuries or influenza. The complex nature of this recently identified phenomenon requires a comprehensive analysis of the problem and its solution from a multidimensional approach, which should involve environmental, political, social, regulatory and psychological issues, thus involving other Social Determinants of Health and health inequalities. Urban policies and initiatives might respond very efficiently to energy poverty and their effects on the citizens wellbeing and health, by providing evidence-based interventions covering different angles of the challenges, including complementary actions covering individual (behavioural), but also social-political actions (regulations, urban planning) that include health in all policies. In this context, the main objective of WELLBASED is to deliver a comprehensive urban programme to contribute to significantly reducing energy poverty and its effects on the citizens health and wellbeing. The programme will be implemented and evaluated in 6 different pilot cities. The design of the urban programme will be built on evidence-based approaches, representing not only different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models. WELLBASED’s overarching objective will be realised by a series of Specific Objectives (SO) as follows: SO1- To design a comprehensive urban programme to reduce energy poverty and its effects on health and wellbeing based on existing evidence, adaptable and transferrable to different European realities. SO2- To foster the implementation of urban planning that considers health as a horizontal challenge. SO3- To evaluate the short and mid-term effects of the programme on specific health conditions and wellbeing indicators. SO4-To analyse the social and gender determinants linked to the intervention and its effects. SO5-To determine the cost-effectiveness of the proposed programme in the different cities and compare its outcomes in the relevant dimension. SO6- To develop policy recommendations to reduce energy poverty in cities and keeping sustainable high levels of urban health and quality of life. SO7-To establish a systematic data collection framework and data platform on urban health which will enable better analysis and informed decisions on urban health issues. SO8-To analyse the possibility to exploit the open data generated by the project to generate new business models for local SMEs. SO9- To roll out a campaign to sign the " WELLBASED Manifesto". Cities determined to combat energy poverty and improve the health and well-being of their citizens are invited to demonstrate their commitment by signing the manifesto. The project will run for 48 months, starting in March 1st 2021 and finishing in February 2025. Finally, in order to fulfil one of the final objectives of the project, the data collected and analysed during the course of the study will be made available to the scientific community, following a process of aggregation and anonymisation of the data in order to comply with the European Union's guidelines on the protection of personal data. Local references, personal data and data that could indirectly lead to guessing the origin of the data have been eliminated. If you would like information about the mechanism for accessing this data, please contact: a.vangrieken@erasmusmc.nl  Introduction The WELLBASED project, the “Project” is participating in the Horizon 2020 framework program for open science and innovation in the topic “SC1-BHC-29-2020-Innovative actions for improving urban health and wellbeing - addressing environment, climate and socioeconomic factors”. This topic is aimed to address health inequalities, improved physical or mental health, relevant socio-economic and/or environmental determinants of health, and the need for more systematic data collection on urban health across the EU. WELLBASED had designed, implemented and evaluated a comprehensive urban programme to reduce energy poverty and their effects on the citizens health and wellbeing, built on evidence-based approaches in 6 different pilot cities, representing different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models. The project’s multidisciplinary consortium, made up of 19 partners from 10 countries, has been built to guarantee the full coverage of the scientific, clinical, social and environmental competencies, and to gather the viewpoint of different communities and actors necessary to develop, test and evaluate the interventions related to WELLBASED in order to maximize its chances of success. What is WELLBASED?Improving health, wellbeing and equality by evidence-based urban policies for tackling energy poverty WHAT: WELLBASED is a European project funded under the HORIZON 2020 programme of the European Commission. The diverse team will design, implement and evaluate a comprehensive urban programme to significantly reduce energy poverty and its effects on the citizens health and wellbeing, built on evidence-based approaches in six pilot cities that represent not only different urban realities but also a diverse range of welfare and healthcare models. WHY: Energy poverty is becoming a main challenge of the European welfare systems and beyond, abounding on the inequalities derived from living conditions and social determinants, with a direct and negative impact on health and wellbeing, mainly in urban contexts. Health problems attributable to energy poverty include respiratory diseases, heart attacks, stroke and mental disorders (stress, anxiety, depression), but also acute health issues, such as hypothermia, injuries or influenza. The complex nature of this recently identified phenomenon requires a comprehensive analysis of the problem and its solution from a multidimensional approach, which should involve environmental, political, social, regulatory and psychological issues, thus involving other Social Determinants of Health and health inequalities. Urban policies and initiatives might respond very efficiently to energy poverty and their effects on the citizens wellbeing and health, by providing evidence-based interventions covering different angles of the challenges, including complementary actions covering individual (behavioural) but also social-political actions (regulations, urban planning) that include health in all policies. HOW: Based on the socioecological model, we test intervention schemes addressing energy poverty in 6 different pilot cities in Europe: Valencia (Spain), Heerlen (The Netherlands), Leeds (UK), Edirne (Turkey), Obuda (Hungary) and Jelgava (Latvia). The city of Skopje (North Macedonia) joins the pilots as an observer. WHEN:The responses to the tests used in this project and the values of the sensors and meters will be collected between September 2022 and September 2024.

Decentralised energy storage is increasingly seen as being important for decarbonising local energy systems and the global market for such systems is expected to grow significantly. Several studies have looked into the technical development of decentralised energy storage systems, as well as examining how different business models can enable them to capture a variety of value streams. Recent work has also explored public perceptions of energy storage, yet so far there has been little focus on how the different dimensions affecting deployment interact together. Here, we present the result of a deliberative workshop which gathers stakeholders’ views and addresses how the interplay between these three dimensions affects successful deployment. Our approach is holistic and integrative and utilises a participatory decision-making methodology. The findings of the research add substantially to the understanding of how decentralised energy storage schemes should be implemented. The research reveals that there are many aspects that can help to either facilitate or impede a storage scheme, and stakeholders perceive multiple ways to engage with the deployment of the technology. We show that the following four principles could contribute to achieving success: maximizing simplicity and clarity; managing expectations, uncertainty and risk; generating benefits for the community; and the involvement of trusted actors.

We review the existing evidence on interventions for energy poverty and health with a novel and distinctive focus on how interventions work to produce health outcomes. There is a substantial literature on the impacts of interventions for energy poverty on health, most of which is concerned with substantial energy renovations, and focused on measuring health outcomes. Here we offer a distinctive analysis of this material: using a combination of realist review and process evaluation we use the evidence to articulate the ways in which interventions work. We focus on substantial energy renovations for health, given most of the existing evidence refers to these. Our analysis allows us to identify the logic of intervention design, showing how the practicalities of implementation are shaped by causal assumptions, as well as documenting how participants respond to these interventions. The analysis reveals gaps between intervention design and participant response, which suggest that interventions must work closely with participants to ensure success. Policy recommendations include: energy poverty interventions should take account of how people will respond to technical change, fund support for households to adapt to new technology, offer opportunities for inclusive design processes, and be flexible in delivery.

Distributed energy storage technologies (DES) are expected to help in decarbonising the power sector, decentralising power sources and meeting the mismatch between the produced and consumed energy. However, the likelihood of the use and acceptance of these technologies will partly hinge on public perceptions. Here, we present results of three focus groups and dialogue from the city of Leeds (UK) held with members the lay public with and without personal experience of technology (photovoltaic panels) about public perceptions of distributed energy storage technologies at household and community scale. We apply and adapt the Energy Cultures framework, which was initially developed for understanding energy behaviours as mediated by individual psychological factors, by practice-based, energy-related culture and infrastructural elements. Accordingly, we connect what people think, do and have in energy contexts, to better understand perceptions of DES technologies as part of a broader renewable energy landscape (culture) that is both materially and socially constructed. We show how a variety of elements such as forms of energy consumption; costs; expectations of family members; previous experiences; perceptions of government and the municipal authority; and expectations about the technologies, are likely to shape acceptance and adoption of battery storage at the household and community level.

The literature on technological expectations finds these to be performative: mobilising, coordinating and directing investment and decision-making. Expectations can involve conditionality and be normative, empirical or realist; that is, they may concern what should happen or what is considered likely. Expectations may also be of a form involving conditionality. Here we examine the interrelated role of normative, empirical and conditional expectations, their function in managing expectations relating to techno-science policy, and their implications for how stakeholders state that they perceive their agency and locus of control. Looking at UK steel industry decarbonisation, we show how stakeholders direct both their normative expectations and direct their locus of control towards the Government, as a form of strategic positioning. Commercial actors state the policy responses that they expect of the UK government mostly relate to reducing costs. We comment on actors’ arguably strategic appeals to normative expectations that displace responsibility from themselves, and the Government's potential role in terms of intervention.