Sustainability

Project Director: Dr Will Eadson
Project Duration: 2016-2018

Groundwork’s Green Leaders programme aims to give 900 disadvantaged young people (aged 14-19) a stepping stone to future employment by recruiting them to lead local environmental projects. In doing so, the programme also aims to make local environmental improvements and catalyse climate action in local communities. The evaluation involves tracking outcomes through a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as providing learning to projects throughout the duration of the programme. 

Project Director: Aimee Ambrose
Project Duration: 2016-2018

This project will be led by SHU in partnership with Citizens Advice and working with Eon and British Gas as the lead industry partners. It will directly involve (via a Steering Group) 25 representatives from the advice, energy, policy and academic sectors who have never previously been brought together under one initiative. It will also directly engage 40 citizens and potential beneficiaries of the project via two Citizens' Panels.

The UK government is currently carrying out a major overhaul of fuel poverty and energy efficiency policy which is having a profound impact on the advice and energy sectors. Both sectors are expected to be at the forefront of efforts to address fuel poverty and to work together- something they have never done before.

From 2018 onwards, energy companies will be obliged to deliver energy efficiency measures to fuel poor households exclusively. However, the sector has limited experience of identifying, reaching and engaging those most in need of these interventions. There is very little existing knowledge or good practice for either sector to draw on in preparing for the challenges ahead (Ambrose et al, 2016). Acquiring new knowledge on how to successfully engage society's most vulnerable households in energy initiatives will be vital if both sectors are to work together to exploit forthcoming opportunities to engage face to face with every vulnerable and hard to reach household through the smart meter roll-out programme.

The generation of new knowledge, an agreed set of good practice principles and policy recommendations through this project will support the advice and energy sectors and policy makers to meet the challenges ahead. The project will involve an evidence review and primary research with stakeholders and citizens that will yield new insights into what works best for whom and under what circumstances with respect to engaging the most vulnerable and hard to reach.

Project Director: Dr Lucie Middlemass (University of Leeds)
Project Duration: 2017-2018

This project draws on a large body of existing (under-utilised) qualitative data to investigate the impact of households’ social relations on vulnerability to energy poverty. The project team’s collective expertise in energy poverty, vulnerability and secondary data analysis will allow us to investigate the emerging link between social relations (friend and family relationships, and interactions with service providers) and households’ capacity to withstand energy poverty. Outputs will include a preliminary conceptual framework to explain how vulnerability to energy poverty is affected by social relations, and an analytical approach to secondary qualitative data on this topic. It is anticipated that outputs from the project will form the basis for future bid applications.