Our social relations shape our decision-making in surprising ways. Here’s what that means for home retrofit policy.

Sussex Energy Group members Donal Brown, Giulia Mininni and Marie Claire Brisbois, are among the co-authors of a fascinating a new paper out in Energy Research and Social Science

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Posted in All Posts, Energy demand and behaviour, Energy efficiency and energy security, Retrofitting buildings, The social relations of energy

Which net-zero policies do people want? Launching the Local Green New Deals report

Reducing the amount of energy we use will be key to cutting emissions and reaching net zero, but energy demand reduction measures also have a range of co-benefits which can help to improve citizens’ wellbeing, such as improved health outcomes and local job creation.

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Posted in All Posts, Energy Governance and Policy, Just and Sustainable Transitions to Net Zero, Local Energy, The energy transition

Last week we met the Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee. Here’s how it went.

On Wednesday 08 November the Sussex Energy Group held its annual keynote address – always a major event on the University of Sussex Business School’s calendar. This year we were fortunate  enough to have Chris Stark as our keynote speaker.

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Posted in All Posts, Electrical Markets, Energy and Society, Energy demand and behaviour, Energy Governance and Policy, Just and Sustainable Transitions to Net Zero, policy, Politics of energy and energy institutions, The energy transition

A new framework shows how local buy-in can deliver net-zero transitions

A new framework is being launched this week that shows how fair and acceptable deployment of net-zero technologies can be delivered.

Local communities must be consulted about – and benefit from – large-scale decarbonisation industries built in their areas, researchers say.

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Posted in All Posts, Just and Sustainable Transitions to Net Zero, Local Energy

Sunak is right to call for an honest conversation, but his announcement yesterday was neither honest, nor a conversation

Why Rishi Sunak made yesterday’s announcement about delaying the ban on new petrol and diesel cars and weakening the gas boiler phase out is fairly obvious – an attempt to drive a wedge between the Conservatives and Labour. This strategy is also fairly obviously built on Tory success in using the ULEZ for this function in the Uxbridge by-election, and with the possibility that manipulation of social media can again play a part.

But the real question is why it has taken so long for such a strategy to emerge. The UK liberal economic model is built on flexible labour markets, for which read low pay and economic insecurity for a large section of the population, which in turn means that any suggestion of climate policies that impose costs on people is risky. The evidence is clear that people’s attention to these costs increases during phases of economic turmoil. At the same time, our first-past-the-post electoral system produces a highly competitive political culture and incentives for parties to attention to the demands of voters in marginal constituencies over delivering public goods.

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Posted in All Posts, Energy Governance and Policy, Just and Sustainable Transitions to Net Zero, Politics of energy and energy institutions, The Co-benefits of the energy transition

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The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the individual authors and do not represent Sussex Energy Group.

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