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‘Justice, Socio-Technical Transitions and Community Energy Models: The Case Of
Bristol City’
Max Lacey-Barnacle
PhD Researcher
Welsh School of Architecture
Cardiff University
Structure
1. ‘Community Energy’ in the UK • Four key developments
2. Energy justice research • Energy justice: Procedural, Distributive and Recognition justice • Evidence of inequality in UK low-carbon transitions
3. Theoretical frameworks of Socio-technical transitions • The MLP • Transition Management • Transition Pathways
4. PhD case study: The City of Bristol • Application of energy justice framework to niche models of community ownership in
Bristol • Methodology – three phased approach
5. Q&A
The growth of ‘Community Energy’ in the UK
• Within the transition to a low-carbon economy, community-scale low-carbon energy systems now receive substantial attention in academic research and policy
• ‘Community Energy’ (CE) is now used by policymakers and key stakeholders to refer to four main areas of local activity: managing energy demand; purchasing energy; reducing energy usage; generating low-carbon energy
• CE projects encompass both micro- and meso-scale installations, commonly within geographically defined localities e.g ‘Sheffield Renewables’ & ‘Brighton Energy Co-op’ – often contested & continuously evolving . . . .
• Four key developments:
• Institutional changes
• Legislative developments
• Policy & markets
• Hyper-sizeability of renewable energy technology (RET)
Institutional Changes – State and Market
DECC – First Ever ‘Community Energy Strategy’ Published January 2014
• £10 Million Urban Community Energy Fund established alongside £16 million Rural Community Energy Fund
• £100,000 community energy efficiency project competition
• New ‘Community Energy Unit’ within DECC announced
Substantial growth in activity within the Co-operative / ethical / community banking & financial sector
• Co-operative Enterprise Hub have earmarked £1 million to support the establishment of new renewable energy co-operatives
• To date, over £60 million has been raised in community shares. Investments in community energy schemes now account for 70% of all investment in the community shares market.
Legislative Developments
• Legally binding EU legislation on climate and energy "20-20-20" targets
• Climate Change Act 2008 puts in place a legally binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050
• Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 replaces the ‘industrial and provident society’ legal form with two new legal forms:
• Co-operative society
• Community benefit society
• These organisational models are favoured by many communities looking to start their own renewable energy projects
• Community Interest Companies (CIC’s) & Joint Ventures also growing in CE sector
(Uncertain) Policy & Markets
Policy mechanisms
• Feed-In Tariff (Soon to be cut by 87%!)
• Renewable Heat Incentive (to be scrapped?)
• Green Deal: a government-backed financial mechanism designed to incentivise investment in retrofit and energy efficiency measures (dead!)
Expanding markets
• Community energy generation ambitions fall between 0.5GW and 3GW of generation capacity by 2020 – new markets in wind, solar, biomass, heat pumps & CHP will support this 3GW target
• PV has now been deployed on over half a million buildings, with total installed capacity having exceeded 5GW in 2014
Hyper-Sizeability of RET
RET can be deployed at a variety of scales and sizes:
• Micro roof-mounted wind turbines & Macro scale offshore and onshore deployment
• Solar PV farms & individual household implementation
The focus of my research is Solar PV deployment:
• The hyper-sizeability of PV installations makes them suitable for community projects
• This quality lends itself to community-based organisational models
• New decentralised RET infrastructure emerging
2. Energy Justice research Key research beginning to emerge on energy justice
• Fundamentally concerned with how social inequalities are manifest in energy systems & transitions. Also issues of equity in the creation of new systems.
• Distribution of ‘environmental goods’ - new approach
The ‘Triumvirate of Tenets’:
Procedural Justice – concerned with processes that enable communities to overcome a lack of community capacity and institutional barriers to involvement in decision making Distributive Justice - the distribution of costs and benefits, such as assets and income, focusing on ’who gets what’ Justice as Recognition - seen as foundational to distributional & procedural inequalities - a failure to attribute rights and recognition to vulnerable and marginalised groups signifies a claim for injustice. Understanding cultural, social and economic basis for inequalities.
Integrating Cosmopolitan Justice – complicating or enhancing energy justice?
Cosmopolitan justice – we have duties of justice to all human beings based solely on their humanity alone, without reference to nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, race, religion, gender or other particularities
Can we distinguish between normative and analytical/conceptual uses of Energy Justice?
‘Conceiving of energy justice as a mesh of procedural, distributive, recognition, and cosmopolitan
aspects does more than create an integrated, synthetic concept; it also is a useful analytical tool for
altering how energy problems exist or are framed […] As we […] transition to renewable energy, the
biggest challenge will be determining how we make this transition, and more specifically who gets to
make it, and who has to pay for it’ (Sovacool & Dworkin 2015 p.437)
Evidence of inequality in UK low-carbon transitions
• Two reports published by NEA and JRF in 2014 point towards growing inequality in energy transitions, leading towards a growing ‘energy divide’
• Many of the UK’s energy policies designed to incentivise the take-up of low-carbon energy technologies are paid for through levies on energy bills as opposed to taxation
• The financial landscape for the CE sector is based on a competitive bidding process in which different community projects across the country compete for private and government funding.
• ‘Climate change and social justice’ - Lower-income and other disadvantaged groups pay, as a proportion of income, the most towards implementing certain policy responses and benefit least from those policies. Their voices also tend to go unheard in decision making.
• Broader systemic context of growing inequality in the UK under fiscal austerity – 13 million people classed as living below the UK poverty line
Energy injustice emerging from UK low-carbon transitions?
Evidence of inequality x coherent argument for ‘fair’ treatment = justice claim
4. Theoretical frameworks – Transition theories & management
Multi-level Perspective Transition Management
Theoretical frameworks – Transition Pathways
(Johnson et al 2014 p.14)
Integration of Energy Justice into Socio-Technical Transitions
Socio-technical systems - The social and the technical are intricately intertwined. Technologies are socially embedded technological components shaped through the actions, practices and desires of producers, consumers, infrastructures, industry, end-users, regulators and political processes and ideologies – little use of social justice in the analysis of socio-technical transitions
• MLP – How can niche innovations embed principles of justice in order to ensure wider diffusion into the regime?
• TM – Where in the TM cycle can principles of justice be embedded? • TP – Which pathways or ordering of pathways may produce more ‘just’
outcomes?
4. PhD Case Study: The City of Bristol Why Bristol? • Renewable energy accounts for 15%
of the cities electricity to date
• European Green Capital 2015
• Bristol actors have developed their own Community Energy Strategy for the city (before DECC)
• Bristol mayor & council pushing ‘solar city’ project – target of 1GW of solar PV deployed by 2020
• Abundance of different solar PV community projects already exist within the city
Application of energy justice framework to niche models of community ownership in Bristol
Co-operative • Run for the mutual benefit of members
who use its services
• Democratic organisational structure – 1 person = 1 vote
Community Benefit Society/Community Interest Company
• CBS - Run primarily for the benefit of the community at large, rather than just for members of the society
• CIC - Special type of limited company which exists to benefit the community rather than private shareholders
• Both CBS and CIC share a Statutory ‘Asset Lock’ - to prevent assets (including profits or other surpluses generated by its activities) from being used other than for the benefit of the community
• Communities forge partnerships with private businesses, such as developers and public bodies & local authorities or housing associations
• The community holds a financial stake in a project or some degree of ownership.
Joint Ventures/Shared Ownership
Ownership models – CE as an expression of Generative vs Extractive?
‘There are differences between those who are pursuing a strong co-operative model, who see community benefit just in terms of the projects they deliver and the outcomes of those projects […] and they don’t see the need to have community benefit funds on top – so all the profit and all the value that is generated – only goes out to members’
(Director, Community Energy England)
Methodology – Three Phase approach
• Methodological approach influenced by ‘research impact’ agenda. Emphasis is on qualitative research techniques in the participatory action research (PAR) tradition.
• To ‘enhance the possibilities of the ‘development and implementation of context appropriate strategies towards empowerment and transformation’ (Kindon et al 2007 p.2) in Bristol’s CE sector. More community involvement from typically excluded communities.
• Phase 1 – Interviews with key community energy actors in the public, private and third sector.
• Phase 2 – Interviews with community energy group directors -Focus groups with members of community energy groups.
• Phase 3 – Focus group sessions with community groups from across Bristol. The
views and opinions will be tested against those within community energy projects.
Conclusion
Future problems for consideration:
• Niche/Civil Society/Generative models could deepen social inequalities at the local level without energy justice considerations
• Risk of a rise in ‘investment clubs’ without any consideration of ‘community benefit’ and implications for wider community
• Future research:
• Further combinations of socio-technical transition theories and energy justice perspectives
• Role of networks & intermediaries emerging as increasingly important aspect of understanding energy justice in Bristol . . . .
• What role can organisational structures play in enhancing different aspects of energy justice?
Key References
• Banks, N. Preston, I. Hargreaves, K. Kazmierczak, A. Lucas, K. Mayne, R. Downing, C and Street, R. (2014) ‘Climate change and social justice: an evidence review’ Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
• Eames, M. and Hunt, M. (2013) “Energy Justice in Sustainability Transitions Research”. In Bickerstaff, K., Walker, G. and Bulkeley, H. (Eds.) (2013) “Energy Justice in a Changing Climate: Social Equity and Low-carbon Energy”. Zed books, London.
• Johnson, V. C., Hall, S., Burchell, K., Rettie, R., Roberts, T. C., Becker, S., ... & Warwick, E. (2014). Community energy and equity: The distributional implications of a transition to a decentralised electricity system. Victoria, 8(3).
• Kelly, M., & Korten, D. C. (2012). Owning our future: The emerging ownership revolution. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• Kindon, S., Pain, R., & Kesby, M. (Eds.). (2007). Participatory action research approaches and methods: Connecting people, participation and place. Routledge.
• McCauley, D. A., Heffron, R. J., Stephan, H., & Jenkins, K. (2013). Advancing Energy Justice: The Triumvirate of Tenets. International Energy Law Review.
• Sovacool, B. K., & Dworkin, M. H. (2015). Energy justice: Conceptual insights and practical applications. Applied Energy, 142, 435-444.
