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The design of energy and climate policy is usually seen as an 'expert' domain, relying on technical tools such as economic analysis. However, policy requires the support of politicians and citizens alike, through the democratic process. Many policies, such as reducing carbon emissions from homes and transport, also affect people's lives directly. It is thus necessary to supplement technical analysis with methods that allow an exploration of people's views, values and behaviours. One such method is codesign, whereby groups of citizens work with policy analysts to develop strategies informed by the lived experience of citizens, as well as the specialist knowledge of analysts. There is a history of co-design approaches in public services such as healthcare, but there have been few attempts to co-design public policy measures. This paper reports on a Citizens' Panel, a representative group of people working with specialists to create co-designed policy recommendations for reducing carbon emissions from homes. The process revealed that policy co-design can provide detailed, viable proposals. In this case, panellists emphasised the necessity of leadership and support from government; tailored, consistent information; targeted regulation; and financial incentives. Finally, the wider potential role for policy co-design for energy and climate is addressed. • Co-design processes are widely used but rarely applied to the design of energy and climate policy. • Co-design processes can embed citizen perspectives in policy design. • The paper reports on an experimental panel on home energy decarbonisation. • Co-design can ensure that policies are effective and will gain support of politicians and publics. • Changes to cultures of policymaking are needed to embed such approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Energy consumption in higher education institutions (HEIs) modelled. • For the first time, panel data used, with cross-sectional and time-series variations. • Over time and across HEIs, energy use increases as income and size increase. • Economies of scale as HEIs grow, but energy use still rising with sector growth. • Research universities more energy intensive. Abstract Among the various sustainability goals of higher education institutions (HEIs), reducing energy use and carbon emissions are particularly important. However, not much is known about energy demand from the higher education sector – especially since there is a lack of robust models of energy demand in this sector. This paper, the first to utilize a panel dataset and advanced panel econometric techniques in order to model energy use in higher education, investigates variations in energy use between HEIs (cross-sectional analysis), and also changes in energy use over time (temporal analysis), using the UK as a case study. We argue that panel dataset and methods are more useful for understanding growth (and reduction) in energy use within the HE sector than the methods used within previous cross-sectional studies. Results show that, over time and also across the sector, energy consumption in the HEIs increases with increases in income and floor space, but at a slower rate. As HEIs grow overall (in terms of income, floor space, student and staff number) over time, they become more 'energy efficient' (using less energy per unit of area, population or income), indicating economies of scale in the temporal dimension. Results also show that after controlling for income and size, research intensive HEIs consume more energy. We also find a small but statistically significant effect of energy prices on energy consumption, as might be expected. Simulation using the model parameters for an example scenario suggests that energy consumption will continue to increase unless there is a significant change in the policies driving income growth and spatial expansion in the HE sector in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In the UK, housing has been identified as a major sector for contributing to the 80% reduction in carbon emissions over the 1990 baseline by 2050, required by the Climate Change Act 2008. However, pre-1919 housing stock is the least energy efficient and consequently poses challenges to meeting this target. Using a mixed methods approach, the current study demonstrates that, in actuality, there is a significant potential for reducing emissions among this sub-sector of housing, and that the major barriers to energy efficiency retrofits concern a lack of funding, the payback period for the investment, disruption to home life and finding a trustworthy and skilled installer. Moreover, this study finds that homeowners are motivated primarily by the desire to improve home comfort and aesthetics along with a reduction in energy bills rather than in reducing carbon emissions. The paper concludes with recommendations for improving the viability of retrofitting pre-1919 homes through enhanced financial resources, policy support and the promotion of social and economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy policy is too often not designed for energy consumers in a low-cost and consumer-friendly manner. This paper proposes a novel Stackelberg game and Blockchain-based framework that enables consumer-centric decarbonization by automating iterative negotiations between policy makers and consumers or generators to reduce carbon emissions. This iterative negotiation is modeled as a Stackelberg game-theoretic problem, and securely facilitated by Blockchain technologies. The policy maker formulates carbon prices and monetary compensation rates to dynamically incentivize the carbon reduction, whereas consumers and generators schedule their power profiles to minimize bills and maximize profits of generation, respectively. The negotiating agreement is yielded by reaching a Stackelberg equilibrium. The exchanged information and controlling functions are realized by using smart contracts of Blockchain technologies. Case studies of GB power systems show that the proposed framework can incentivize 9% more bill savings for consumers and 45.13% more energy generation from renewable energy sources. As a consumer-centric decarbonization framework, it can at least reduce carbon emissions by 40%. [Display omitted] • A novel consumer-centric and negotiation-based framework to decarbonize power systems. • A Blockchain based platform to integrate the exchanged information and controlling functions of the power system scheduling into data structures, nodes, and smart contracts of Blockchain networks. • How Blockchain based platform can prevent cyber attacks is discussed. • Case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in the context of Great Britain power systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]