Tag: renewable-energy

Seeing is believing?

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With all of the discussion about clean energy transitions, it can feel very abstract for most people. Massive power plants, huge wind turbines.

Talk about the energy transition seems like it would feel more tangible and real to people if they are actually part of it. Every day you’d be likely to see your panels, or those of your neighbours. The talk of a transition would feel like something you were a part of. It would feel true and real and you’d be able to see how your life was better as a result.

Public acceptance of solar across the board seems to be high. The recent ‘Britain talks climate and nature’ report by Climate Outreach found only 11% of people don’t like seeing solar on roofs. That’s a huge level of public acceptance of a measure which can make quite a difference to the aesthetics of a home or street. People are also much more likely to get solar if their neighbours have got it, creating a potentially virtuous circle in terms of acceptance and take-up.

Solar installs are much quicker than lots of other measures, and less disruptive too. In terms of integrating solar into day to day life, there aren’t really any adjustments needed once it has been installed. Unlike with heat pumps which require space to be found for them and then they are using that space on an ongoing basis.

Immediately people get a benefit in terms of the energy being generated but there’s no lifestyle changes needed to be able to use it. There are lifestyle changes you might be incentivised to make as a result of having them – switching some activities to during the day, like using the dishwasher or washing machine – but if you don’t you are the one who might lose out.

With other energy efficiency or low carbon measures, there might be adjustments which are needed to make sure it works properly. There are also potential risks from an energy and climate perspective of the rebound effect. For those who have been under-heating their home that can actively be a good thing in terms of moving to a level of comfort which is better for health and wellbeing.

Directly providing measures which improve homes could also go some way to addressing the phenomenon Chen et al, (2025) identified, where the messaging on affordability doesn’t resonate with those on low incomes. This is something that people within the environmental sector can focus on around the benefits of some measures or the approach to decarbonisation more generally. So it’s humbling but helpful to get some insights into why that message can actually alienate many of the people it’s specifically trying to help. That messaging makes people feel nervous thinking about the costs because they don’t feel they can afford it. This is exacerbated by the fact they don’t think they will benefit from any transition so the costs are for them but not the benefits.

Being able to tangibly show people it’s for them can change that. With some things, like insulation, the measures themselves just aren’t visible to people unless they’ve been badly installed and then it becomes apparent through the mould, damp and other structural issues. Otherwise the impacts of the insulation can easily become invisible. People tend to take the savings from the energy efficiency and use it to fund an increased level of comfort – which can be the intention in fuel poverty schemes – or the savings get lost as prices rise anyway. So people feel frustrated because they were expecting a reduction in costs and instead see an increase.

In the medium term increasing the deployment of solar will also make it easier to shift costs from electricity to gas because people are less reliant on gas. Making that change is something that needs to happen to support the electrification of energy. Given most people are currently reliant on gas for their heating and hot water, there is an understandable concern about the impact of that shift on people’s health and incomes. Reducing the cost to people of electricity through the provision of free solar can then create the space to fairly and progressively make changes to costs.

Finding a way to give people a more tangible sense of ownership of the move to a decarbonised future feels utterly fundamental to getting people on board. Solar could be one way to do that, to allow people to see themselves as part of, and benefiting from that change.

Picking your poison

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In the discussion between fabric first and fabric fifth it can often feel as though people are trying to get to the ‘right answer’ rather than looking at where the inefficiencies are, how big they are and trying to decide which is more feasible.

In choosing fabric fifth it means that there will be a need to generate more energy and increase grid resilience. All of this costs and means building more national infrastructure. It’s not the more efficient approach in lots of ways, as it means putting more energy generation in than might be optimally required. Asking people to decarbonise their heat supply is a much simpler message and one which can have the biggest impact on their individual carbon footprint. There can still be a place for other measures too, particularly if people want to fund them themselves, but if it’s hard to persuade people to take up any environmental measures, focusing on the most impactful could bring efficiencies that way. In addition to generating carbon savings more quickly, it could also help to reduce costs in trying to recruit people by using a simpler message, and cutting the costs of assessing homes as the standalone heat pump installation can be simpler than internal or external wall insulation.

With fabric first, there should be less energy needing to be generated. In practice this isn’t straightforward, with lots of evidence suggesting there’s a performance gap arising from quality issues in the install process and then a rebound effect, with many households taking improved energy efficiency as comfort savings. This can lead to an increase in energy consumption – and for those households who are under-heating their homes, with the knock-on impacts on the health of the people and the building itself affected, this can be a good thing on wellbeing grounds.

To get to those carbon savings also means trying to persuade people to take up the deeper levels of insulation it requires. This can be more invasive, with most of the ‘easy’ to treat measures done – such as loft or cavity wall insulation. There are still some remaining but these are more likely to be complicated works such as non-standard cavity walls, or perhaps they are lofts where the amount of things being stored makes it too difficult for the occupants to contemplate the work. The longer it takes to persuade people, the more carbon gets emitted along the way.

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of the shape of the decarbonisation curve, what that means in terms of the quantum of carbon which gets emitted and crucially what that means in terms of how the shift feels to live through. Reaching net zero by any date by plateauing in a steady state way and then plummeting to zero, or a more gradual downward trajectory both get to the same point. Imagining the shape of those two separate trajectories, and therefore the space underneath them as a proxy for the carbon emissions, shows the amount of carbon generated is much bigger in the first scenario than the second. The first scenario increases the likelihood of feedback loops, which mean the impacts could be more significant. Thinking about the transitions and how they would feel to live through, goes to some quite different places. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, what felt like a total transformation in how we lived globally led to a c.4-5% drop in carbon emissions in 2020. It’s hard to imagine a precipitous drop which is good for humanity. Whereas the more gradual drop suggests a more managed approach which seems likely to be much easier to live through.

If we lived in a world where everything was aligned to the fabric first approach – funding, regulation, owner and occupants willingness and interest and the supply chain capacity and capability – it could still be the best option. Effective and efficient. If that isn’t where we are, which it isn’t, then the question becomes one of trade-offs. To make decisions means choosing the trade-offs rather than acting as though they aren’t there and continuing to push specific approaches.

In plain sight

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Always really humbling and hopefully helpful to see things hiding in plain sight that have been taken for granted that don’t quite work.

The definition of fuel poverty has changed a lot over time. Broadly speaking it’s about finding different ways to express the fact that people don’t have enough money to be able to heat their homes to a suitable temperature. There’s a separate debate about the term, and it’s not one that many people would recognise for themselves but still, those are not really for today.

There are all kinds of subtleties to that though. People’s circumstances can change for various reasons, all of which affect their ability to pay. From changes in their income – which is the main reason people move into or out of fuel poverty, to changes in the household – increases or decreases, or someone becomes unwell. There are plenty of other reasons besides but they give a sense of the fact this isn’t an absolute number that can be used as the benchmark to assess a household’s situation.

Yet when we look at fuel poverty, we look at the energy costs. This includes costs to heat the home and typically heating is the largest part of the cost. It’s not the only part of the cost. Even just looking at gas costs doesn’t allow you to separate out the heating costs, as people also use gas for hot water and potentially for cooking too.

Somewhere along the way those different aspects – assessing fuel poverty on the basis of ability to heat the home, and looking at energy costs in the round, got joined together.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter. As many, including Druckman and Jackson suggest, energy costs for heating are more variable than electricity costs. Heating costs are more dependent upon the energy efficiency of the home and the need for different levels of comfort. So perhaps it’s a pragmatic proxy that avoids making life even more complicated.

Nonetheless, that sense of being shown by Walker, Simcock & Day how those two different considerations have been joined together in a way which isn’t articulated clearly was astonishing.

A reminder of how often there can be shared blind spots. Unspoken understandings and misunderstandings which then block opportunities or set parameters unnecessarily.

Opportune boiling

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Really interested in the perspective of Sovacool and Geels reflecting on past energy transitions as ones that were opportunity driven, compared to the current energy transition which is problem driven.

In the past, energy transitions – as they describe them, for another day whether what has actually happened is we have ‘more and more and more’ energy sources – were about trying to do things better, faster, easier. More useful sources of energy, or energy sources that could be more easily deployed meant an increased level of comfort – with better quality and longer lasting light sources, people could stay up later, do more activities, make more time for themselves outside of work. It also allowed tasks to be more easily done, from the home to the factory. Machines picking up and outpacing what people could do. An increase in the amount of materials or products that could be made, or making it easier to clean the home and cook.

In terms of the transition to low and zero carbon sources of energy, the driver of the change is about reducing the environmental impact. From an individual or even organisational perspective, not much would change in terms of what can be done. Most people are interested in energy to the extent it helps them do the things they want to do, as Fouquet describes it, the ‘energy services’ – such as heating, electricity, running computers, phones or the like. Changing the way in which energy is generated to low carbon sources doesn’t do anything to immediately make a change in terms of how people can use and benefit from the energy.

It made me wonder again if part of the way to engage with the shift away from fossil fuels is to try and identify the issues with the current technologies. At the moment in the UK, most homes are heated by gas boilers. So all discussion is about how heat pumps work compared to gas. There seems to be an implicit assumption that the starting point is good and fine, so then discussions about how it feels to live with a heat pump are always slightly apologetic.

There are so many things about gas boilers that aren’t great though. Ignoring for now all of the air quality and carbon emissions arguments. Purely thinking about them from the perspective of how they work in the home, how they feel – there are loads of things which don’t work so well.

Most people think they know how to use their gas boiler – there’s generally a button you can press which just sets off an explosion of highly combustible gases in a box in your home, which then quickly warms the place. It’s then easy to switch off in the same way. All very straightforward. Although that idea of how explosive it is doesn’t feel like something that is naturally a seller, yet we somehow have accommodated ourselves to the fact of the explosiveness and manage not to think about it. Not having that in the home feels like a win though.

Meanwhile, most homes don’t have their boiler set-up, or used in the most efficient way. So it’s actually not a very easy to use system in practice. Nor is it therefore an efficient system, which means people are paying more than they need for whatever comfort they are getting. Or indeed could have more comfort and warmth than they are getting for the same price or less. If people are interested in the level of comfort rather than the cost, being able to give that comparison feels like one which is of much more interest to people.

The sense of the warmth being really enveloping is one that many people enjoy and is something that’s seen as a negative for heat pumps, where that almost palpable sense of the heat doesn’t come through. It can be satisfying but then quickly feels a bit too much. Leading to a see-sew sitch where you then have to turn the heating down or off to make it more comfortable and not so stuffy.

This can be particularly an issue overnight when it’s cold. Hard to know how to get the balance of bedding and heating right so it’s comfortable. Just right, not too hot and not too cold. If you wake up in the night and need to get out of bed when it’s cold it can just be awful. Takes as long, often longer for me, to give a pep-talk about getting it done quickly as it does to actually get out, do the thing and run back to bed.

Just a few of the many ways in which boilers don’t deliver the comfort we want, yet somehow the goodness of them generally and compared to other options feels unarguable, sacrosanct. Maybe we need to start picking at that thread and finding out more about what people don’t like about their current set-up?

Friction burns?

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A recent report by Citizen’s Advice found that 72% of people would be open to making environmental improvements to their homes in the next five years. Absolute scenes – there’s the market transformation we need. 72% is just brilliant news, if we’re thinking about the Technology Adoption Curve, which of course we are, then we’re deep into late majority territory where this is just all very mainstream and normal. How do we go about getting the supply chain ready to do all of that work in that short space of time?

Hang on though, there’s a kicker. People went on to say that they would prioritise kitchens, bathrooms and other measures over environmental measures. Stand down the supply chain. Or maybe – as you were…

What I’m interested in is why people would prioritise kitchens, bathrooms and the rest over environmental measures. In some ways it seems obvious, kitchens and bathrooms are more appealing and desirable. There are magazines and shows which do makeovers and it’s all very lifestyled and lovely whereas lots of us – most of us? – find heat pumps ugly. It’s also crucial to eat and clean yourself, so there’s that. However, it’s also crucial to be able to keep warm, with lots of health conditions linked to, or exacerbated by cold weather. It’s also crucial to be able to use electricity in today’s society.

There’s more reasons besides but I’ve been wondering if there’s something about the comparative friction between kitchens, bathrooms and other aspects of home renovation, compared to energy and environmental measures. Friction on a day to day basis but maybe also societal frictions.

On a day to day basis, if you don’t like the look of your kitchen, bathroom or elsewhere, you will be constantly reminded of it. It might become a low grade hum that you get used to but this can then be amped up whenever you’re reminded of how much you don’t like it. Whether that’s visiting a friend who has a nice(r) place than yours, or seeing them on TV, in films, social media or magazines. There are potentially lots of times when you’ll be reminded of how you don’t like your kitchen or suchlike in a way that doesn’t happen so much with energy or environmental measures.

As Pennartz notes in ‘At home: An anthropology of domestic spaces‘, an aspect of a space being pleasant is how easy it is to be convivial in it. If the space makes it harder to do that, say the kitchen is designed for just one person then that doesn’t feel very sociable and there’s a friction between the desire and the reality.

There has been a shift away from gendered spaces, with men also likely to be in the kitchen. As such, that sense of friction between what people want and how the space operates affects both genders, and therefore more people, more often.

There’s also the friction in use. If a kitchen or bathroom isn’t set-up as you would want then this can catch you each day. Whether it’s a cupboard that doesn’t shut properly, a shower that doesn’t properly attach to the wall so you have to hold it to shower yourself, or whatever else it may be, there can be things which every day, sometimes multiple times a day, create friction and frustration.

Where is the friction with energy usage though? People who pay by direct debit don’t need to really engage with their bill on a daily or monthly basis, as it’s smoothed out across the year. It’s hard then to get any real time friction between the usage and the cost. Not least because, as costs continue to rise, people can reduce their energy consumption and still see rising prices. Under the current pricing structure with standing charges fixed irrespective of consumption, this regressive pricing structure makes that particularly true for those on lower incomes or using less energy.

People don’t have the social friction of not having a heat pump because most people don’t have one either. There’s also not so much of a friction around having a home that isn’t so warm. People will often choose to put the heating on when they’ve got guests, to make sure they feel comfortable.

There’s also not so much friction from the supply chain when trying to get more environmentally friendly measures – for instance a replacement boiler rather than a new heat pump. There are just over 20,000 qualified heat pump installers in the UK, compared to over 150,000 gas engineers. It’s therefore much easier to find someone who can repair or replace your gas boiler on a like-for-like basis. Homes are set up for boilers rather than a heat pump. If you want to switch to a heat pump if your boiler dies you’ll end up with friction. The heat pump can’t go into the space you had your boiler in. You’ve then got a random space you need to sort out, which might or might not be useful. Mine is in a wall cupboard with no base, so the boiler bits can disgorge themselves. If I switched to a heat pump I’d then have a cupboard I can’t use. More friction arises trying to figure out where a heat pump and hot water tank can go. This has been made easier by the removal of a planning requirement which says it needs to be at least one meter from the boundary

Is friction different to hassle though?

The ‘hassle-factor’ is often cited as a rationale for people not to do something, in relation to the home or more generally. Friction seems different to hassle in terms of the ongoing impact, particularly in relation to the visibility of a heat pump or solar. The hassle might be there to get it put in but then once in that hassle would go. The friction might remain when you see it on a daily basis and find it really ugly, or it’s taking up space and it takes a while to get used to the new configuration of the spaces and knock-on impact on the various practices. With larger properties with lots of land that might not be an issue – it can be hidden away somewhere and that friction doesn’t arise as often. For people with less space that might be experienced as daily friction which has been introduced into their lives.

Energy usage can create a sense of friction. A room which isn’t a comfortable temperature creates a sense of friction. This can be between the need for it to be warm and cosy and the sense of how it is. As expectations have increased about the level of warmth we should be feeling in our homes, there can also be a friction between lifestyles – the clothes we wear at home, and the temperature of the space. Whilst for much of history the initial focus would have been on putting on more clothes or being more active to get warmer, people are now more likely to focus on the heating to get their required level of warmth.

The friction between want and reality can also lead people to not use rooms at certain times or temperatures because they are too uncomfortable. This can also manifest in making it harder to do certain activities – studying can be more difficult when it’s cold for instance, as can other more sedentary actions like reading or watching TV.

This leads to a friction in use but most people focus on ways to reduce their energy bills by changing their tariff or provider as the way to reduce that friction. By cutting the costs of energy it’s therefore more affordable to use the same amount of energy, or more – hence the rebound effect where people take cost savings from more insulation as higher levels of comfort.

Inherently though, most people don’t experience friction when using their boilers, which is the main fuel source for most people. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that actually people aren’t using their boilers very effectively or efficiently and if they were they could cut their costs significantly. That actual friction is not visible to them though – the cost of their energy bills are hard to relate to any actual friction as most people can make the boiler switch on and off, so the fact it’s not working as efficiently is somewhat hidden to them.

This can then lead people to feel like changes to their heating system is someone else’s desire or need rather than their own. Someone else is experiencing a sense of friction between what they think should be happening and what isn’t happening. Being asked to do something about it means that people can feel they are being told to choose something that isn’t a priority for themselves, over things which are. This can create multiple frictions – between their own sense of themselves as people who care about these things and yet are choosing to put time, money and energy into other things; and on a financial level between the things they want to spend money on and what they are being told they should be spending money on. Potentially this also creates a friction which then impacts upon their voting actions – looking for those who help to reduce that friction for them.

On a daily basis then, people are perhaps more likely to feel a sense of friction by other factors in the home than energy or environmental issues. Even where they do manifest as friction they can be mediated by other actions in a less time, money and personally energy intensive way, so it’s perhaps not a surprise people don’t prioritise home improvements with environmental dimensions more often.