Organisation and Governance of Urban Energy Systems: District Heating and Cooling in the UK
By D. Hawkey, Janette Webb, Mark Winskel. 2013
111 citations recorded by the source corpus.
A number of UK urban authorities are developing combined heat and power (CHP) with district heating and cooling (DHC) networks as a means to achieve local sustainable and affordable energy, and to contribute to economic regeneration. Findings from case study research in three UK cities are used to explore the local energy governance and organisation (LEGO) models adopted in the context of privatised, centralised energy markets. Local developers are reliant on sources of social capital to make systems work, given limited support from public policy and limited access to finance. Local actors, drawing on non-local community energy and commercial and technical networks of expertise, work to: introduce the technology into strategic planning; establish its legitimacy and the legitimacy of a form of multi-organisation suited to numerous stakeholders; secure finance; negotiate risks and responsibilities; and engage with energy markets designed for large-scale centralised provision. For DHC to make a fully effective contribution to UK sustainable urban energy, a more supportive government policy framework, offsetting the difficulties of a centralised energy market, will be needed. To maximise the benefit of locally knowledgeable action, the policy framework must be responsive to the specificity of locally appropriate configurations of actors and material infrastructure.
Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/faf7a61943e146ec9be332895b772c9b0f029fad
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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
In Global and Planetary Change
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- The role of intermediaries in low carbon transitions – Empowering innovations to unlock district heating in the UK (2017, background): “Several empirical studies highlight common challenges faced by intermediaries due to their often limited resources and capabilities, as well as a lack of established powers which could limit their ability to reconfigure governance systems for empowering an innovation (Hawkey et al., 2013; Hodson et ”
- Infrastructure transformation as a socio-technical process — Implications for the governance of energy distribution networks in the UK (2015, unknown): “Another option is to enter into a long term energy services contract with a private sector partner [42,44].”
- A socio-technical perspective on low carbon investment challenges – Insights for UK energy policy (2015, background): “…that energy storage technologies fit into this category as they can help to manage a highly distributed and intermittent low carbon energy system, while Hawkey et al. (2013) argue for more emphasis on local scale infrastructure investments centred on the efficient provision of low carbon heat.”