What role for microgeneration in a shift to a low carbon domestic energy sector in the UK?
By Noam Bergman, N. Eyre. 2011
145 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Domestic energy use accounts for more than a quarter of CO2 emissions in the UK. Traditional approaches to energy reduction look at direct emissions savings, and recommend insulation and efficiency as more cost-effective than microgeneration. However, microgeneration has indirect, ‘soft’ benefits and could play a significant role in emissions reduction. Current uptake of microgeneration in the UK is low, with various barriers—economic, technical, cultural, behavioural and institutional—both to uptake and to maximising energy and emissions savings once installed. Subsidies and spreading information alone do not guarantee maximising uptake, and even if successful, this is not enough to maximise savings. The industry focuses on maximising sales, with no incentives to ensure best installations and use; householders do not have access to the best information, and user behaviour does not maximise energy and emission savings. This is related to a broader state of socio-technical ‘lock-in’ in domestic energy use; there’s a lack of connection between personal behaviour and energy consumption, let alone global climate change. This suggests that a major cultural–behavioural shift is needed to reduce energy/emissions in the home. Transition theory and strategic niche management provide insights into possible systemic change and a suitable framework for future policies, such as supporting a variety of radically innovative niches, both technological and social. Microgeneration, properly employed, has the potential to play a part in such a transition by increasing awareness and energy literacy and empowering people to seriously engage in energy debates as producers, as well as consumers, of energy. This deeper understanding and heightened responsibility are crucial in a shift toward bottom-up emission-reducing behaviour change and better acceptance of top-down energy-saving policy measures, as part of a new domestic energy paradigm. The implications for policy are that, as well as supporting the technologies, it needs to support existing niches and to develop new niche experiments. Policy needs to consider how to promote empowerment and responsibility and support or even develop new energy sector models; this will involve a range of stakeholders and multiple governance levels, not just national incentive schemes.
Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b56b821efa5f5fc76d778ed4da14395c0622024
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
In Global and Planetary Change
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Explaining the Diversity of Motivations Behind Community Renewable Energy (2016, background): “It follows that households will invest in RE microgeneration systems if the expected return of the investment, in the form of avoided electricity imports and therefore reduced electricity bills, balances or exceeds its upfront capital cost (Bergman and Eyre, 2011; Sauter and Watson, 2007).”
- Social impacts of community renewable energy projects: findings from a woodfuel case study (2012, background): “Results have been ambivalent but some studies suggest interaction can increase sustainable energy behaviour (Bergman and Eyre, 2011).”