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Policy efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of domestic energy consumption have, over the last three decades, been dominated by an almost dichotomous reading of the relationship between technology and social change. On the one hand, there is a conception of personal responsibility that constructs domestic energy users as key actors in the adoption and (appropriate) use of low carbon energy technologies; from this perspective, environmental change becomes a matter of mobilising personal capacities such that individuals make better choices. On the other hand, decarbonising homes is conceived to be an outcome of top-down infrastructural interventions, with householders (or end users) positioned as relatively passive agents who will respond to engineered efficiency in linear and predictable ways. In practice, both positions have been found wanting in terms of accounting for how (and why) change happens and in turn delivering on ambitious policy goals. The argument we develop in this article goes beyond critiquing these problematic framings of technology and the locus of agency. Drawing on three contrasting low carbon energy technology projects in the UK, we present an alternative perspective which foregrounds a more experimental, ad hoc and ultimately provisional mode of governing with domestic energy technologies. We reflect on the meaning and political implications of this experimental turn in transforming (and decarbonising) domestic energy practices.

1. Pathways to Low Carbon Living -- Part 1: Energy Transition2. Energy futures for Australia -- 3. Rooftop photovoltaics: distributed renewable energy and storage (or low cost PV changes everything) -- 4. Community owned renewable energy: enabling the transition towards renewable energy? -- 5. Unlocking the benefits of vehicle electrification -- 6. Decarbonising household energy use: the smart meter revolution and beyond -- Part 2: Transition to Zero Carbon Buildings -- 7. Assessing embodied greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment -- 8. Transitioning to net zero energy homes: learnings from the CRC's high performance housing Living Laboratories -- 9. Decarbonising commercial buildings -- 10. The trajectory to a net zero emission built environment: the role of policy and regulation -- Part 3: Regenerating Urban Precincts and Cities -- 11. Sustainable precincts: transforming Australian cities one neighbourhood at a time -- 12. Development of low carbon urban forms: concepts, tools and scenarios -- 13. Health and the compact city -- 14. Low carbon urban mobility -- 15. Integrated urban water systems -- 16. Energy benchmarking for efficient, lower carbon wastewater treatment operations in Australia -- 17. Toward low carbon urban metabolism: the impact of eliminating food waste -- 18. Urban heat island mitigation for overheating and local climate change -- 19. Performance of urban precincts: towards integrated assessment -- Part 4: Human Factors in Low Carbon Living -- 20. Consumer responses to rating tools and residential energy efficiency disclosure -- 21. The Low Carbon Readiness Index -- 22. A social psychological guide for transformation into low carbon living -- 23. Shifting domestic energy consumption through a holistic understanding of the home system of practice -- 24. Engaging home renovators: opportunities and challenges for low carbon living -- 25. Sharing advice online: lessons for fostering sustainable homes from online discussion -- 26. Engaging local communities -- Part 5: A Future Perspective -- 27. Visions scenarios and pathways for rapid decarbonisation of Australian cities by 2040

The UK has introduced ambitious legislation for reaching net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Improving the energy efficiency of homes is a key priority in achieving this target and solutions include minimising unwanted heat losses and decarbonising heating and cooling. Making a dwelling more airtight and applying insulation can result in a lower energy demand by reducing unwanted heat loss through fabric and openings. However, the supply of sufficient outdoor air is required to dilute indoor airborne pollutants. This research investigates the relationship between dwelling air infiltration and self-reported health at population neighbourhood level for Greater London. This paper links data from a variety of sources including Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), the Greater London Authorities' Large Super Output Area (LSOA) Atlas and the Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards (AHAH) database at LSOA level. Beta regression has been performed to assess the influence of air infiltration rate on self-reported health, whilst controlling for other socioeconomic factors. All factors have been ranked in order of their association with self-reported health. Findings indicate that air infiltration rate has a positive association with the percentage of people reporting themselves to be in "good or very good" health. ; publishedVersion ; Peer reviewed

It is now widely accepted that the residential sector offers significant potential for carbon mitigation. This is true for both the overall magnitude of emissions reductions and the cost per tonne of CO2(eq) mitigated. However, both the scope and scale of potential carbon mitigation pathways remain controversial. The pace of decarbonisation is also openly debated. Examples of some of these contentions include: centralised versus decentralised energy supply; energy efficiency versus low carbon generation; demolition versus renovation of the existing building stock and behaviour change versus technological solutions. Incontrovertibly, any one of these seemingly apparent tensions is not mutually exclusive, and the ultimate decarbonisation pathway will likely consist of most if not all of these proposed solutions being implemented to some varying degree. Despite the significant potential for carbon mitigation in the built environment, deep cuts have not yet materialised. It is argued that this lack of progress stems from a poor understanding of the highly complex socio-economic, socio-dynamic and technical physical systems that underpin energy use in dwellings.Modelling this requires requires novel methods capable of capturing the complexities that arise from government policies, physical processes and technologies, human behaviour and economics. Moreover, as the effects of climate change are directly caused by the global stock of CO2(eq) in the atmosphere, the pace of decarbonisation is pivotal. New methods may prove important for representing the interactions that occur between technological sub-systems but also for modelling how the system may change over time, including feedbacks and delays endogenous to the system. The motivation for this thesis aims to explore decarbonisation opportunities from the residential sector by adopting an integrated systems perspective whilst maintaining the complexity and heterogeneity that naturally exists within the residential sector and between people. ; The residential sector in England is often identified as having the largest potential for emissions reduction at some of the lowest costs when compared against other sectors. In spite of this, decarbonisation within the residential sector has not materialised. This thesis explores the complexities of decarbonising the residential sector in England using a whole systems approach. It is only when the interaction between social, psychological, regulatory, technical, material and economic factors are considered together that the behaviour of the system emerges and the relationships between different system components can be explained giving insight into the underlying issues of decarbonisation. Building regulations, assessments and certification standards are critical for motivating and driving innovation towards decarbonising the building stock. Many existing building performance and evaluation tools are shown to be ineffective and confound different policy objectives. Not only is the existing UK SAP standard shown to be a poor predictor of dwelling level energy demand but it perversely incentivises households to increase CO2 emissions. At the dwelling level, a structural equation model is developed to quantify direct, indirect and total effects on residential energy demand. Interestingly, building efficiency is shown to have reciprocal causality with a household's propensity to consume energy. That is, dwellings with high-energy efficiency consume less energy, but homes with a propensity to consume more energy are also more likely to have higher energy efficiency. Internal dwelling temperature is one of the most important parameters for explaining residential energy demand over a heterogeneous building stock. Yet bottom up energy demand models inadequately incorporate internal temperature as a function of human behaviour. A panel model is developed to predict daily mean internal temperatures from individual dwellings. In this model, socio-demographic, behavioural, physical and environmental variables are combined to estimate the daily fluctuations of mean internal temperature demand. The internal temperature prediction model is then incorporated in a bottom-up engineering simulation model. The residential energy demand model is then used to project decarbonisation scenarios to 2050. Under the assumption of consistent energy demand fuel share allocation, modelling results suggest that emissions from the residential sector can be reduced from 125 MtCO2 to 44 MtCO2 after all major energy efficiency measures have been applied, the power sector is decarbonised and all newly constructed dwellings are zero carbon. Meeting future climate change targets will thus not only require extensive energy efficiency upgrades to all existing dwellings but also the complete decarbonisation of end use energy demand. Such a challenge can only be met through the transformation of existing building regulations, models that properly allow for the effects of human behaviour, and flexible policies capable of maximising impact from a heterogeneous residential building stock. ; Cambridge Econometrics Bursary, University College London (CARB-HES dataset)

This is the accepted version of an article subsequently published in the journal, Public Understanding of Science [Sage / © The Authors]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963662513512442 ; Decarbonising housing is a key UK government policy to mitigate climate change. Using discourse analysis, we assess how low carbon housing is portrayed within British broadsheet media. Three distinct storylines were identified. Dominating the discourse, Zero carbon housing promotes new-build, low carbon houses as offering high technology solutions to the climate problem. Retrofitting homes emphasises the need to reduce emissions within existing housing, tackling both climate change and rising fuel prices. A more marginal discourse, Sustainable living, frames low carbon houses as related to individual identities and 'off-grid' or greener lifestyles. Our analysis demonstrates that technical and economic paradigms dominate media discourse on low carbon housing, marginalising social and behavioural aspects.

When it comes to announcing its targets without the slightest idea of how to achieve them, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is world beating. Wisely or otherwise, DESNZ set its key target for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Initially, emissions fell, largely because the UK exported carbon-emitting industries. In March 2022, the Public Accounts Committee report concluded: "The government has unveiled a plan without answers to the key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on and replace income from taxes such as fuel duty, or even a general direction of travel on levies and taxation. The government has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses and government itself." In other words, it had no plan. In July 2022, Mr Justice Holgate ruled, in effect, that DESNZ had no plan to achieve its objective and they should prepare and publish one by 31st March 2023. In the event, no plan emerged and on 15th November 2023, the Public Accounts Committee reported on how DESNZ was managing innovation and its contribution to achieving net zero carbon 2050. It found it to be short-termist, muddled and had no central management.DESNZ has published numerous aspirational papers on what might be achieved but none bring the whole picture together or explain what the overall energy/electricity needs will be or how they will be generated without carbon emissions. On low wind and sun days, renewables and nuclear will be inadequate and so fossil fuels, with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) will be needed into the foreseeable future.  For example this month, wind  generation reached a low of 0.4GW (1.7% of demand). Nominal installed wind capacity is over 27GW. As of now, CCUS is commercially unproven in the power sector, so it is all a bit speculative. At the 8th November Oral Evidence session with the ESNZ Select Committee, the Secretary of State claimed "we're now spending £20 billion on carbon capture and storage". Clearly net zero carbon will be impossible without CCUS. DESNZ claims the UK will be the world leaders in that and has set up a council to achieve it: "Commissioning of the first CCUS facility from the mid-2020s would help the UK to meet our ambition of having the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently."  The £20bn is possible in the future, but not currently and needs clarifying. It is not clear whether this should be government funding.  Surely the responsibility for, and costs of, decarbonising fossil fuel emissions should lie with the fossil fuel generators.The creation of the UK's CCUS market lies with its Council, inaugurated in 2018. Its last meeting was on 27th June. Some 45 or so members, including the Director, CCUS, DESNZ and his five deputies, discussed bureaucratic matters, like reporting lines, with little evidence of practical haste. The idea of having "a timeline to understand industry progress" was introduced.  Fancy that! Things would move a lot faster if they were left to the fossil fuel companies.The overall picture is that DESNZ in inadequate. What do its 8,498 staff actually do? Probably around 44% work from home.  The ESNZ Select Committee held a brief Inquiry into what DESNZ actually does. The new Secretary of State was not asked how the 2050 targets might be achieved, so it might be described as a soft ride but other ESNZ Committee inquiries are addressing those issues and will be reporting next year. The bottom line is that we have this vast number of people in DESNZ, their main target is achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and, after years of prodding, have still not produced a plan, never mind a decent one, to achieve it.UK industry is back-peddling on CCUS as they wait to see how tough the post-election Government will be on CO2 emitters. The current Government seems to be supporting this by allowing the Emissions Trading Scheme to decline in effectiveness as evidenced by the UK's falling carbon price, in sharp contrast to the rising carbon prices in other countries. The Sunak Government seems to have thrown in the towel on tackling climate change and will, I imagine, keep a low profile at the upcoming COP.