Our research

Current research themes

Members of the Energy Policy Group work across a range of disciplines and policy areas. The group's work focusses on exploring the policy and governance challenges of rapidly transforming energy systems to be decarbonised, sustainable and equitable, and includes topics such as:

Governance and policymaking at the European, national and sub-national levels
The politics and power dynamics of energy system change
Heat decarbonisation, fuel poverty and demand reduction
Digitalisation and smart systems
Energy innovation and entrepreneurship
New business models including community energy
Electricity market design, rules and incentives
Network regulation and the future role of distribution network operators

Current research projects
Past projects

Current research projects

Energy Democracy and the Politics of Energy Transition in African Countries

This three-year ESRC/GCRF project is examining the role of energy democracy within three southern African countries: Lesotho, South Africa and Nigeria. Led by University College London and working with partner institutions in the UK and Africa, the EPG is providing insights into how policy, regulation and wider governance frameworks can foster more inclusive and democratic energy systems across multiple contexts. EPG contact: Bridget Woodman.

Net Zero Communities (NZCom)

NZCom is a project examining how local communities can meet net zero objectives while positively supporting vulnerable households and businesses. As part of this, the EPG is leading the development of local scenario narratives to articulate plausible energy futures, as a basis for exploring options for new technologies, business models and institutional arrangements. This project is led by Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network (WREN), and is funded by Western Power Distribution (WPD) through Ofgem’s Network Innovation Allowance competition. EPG contact: Iain Soutar

Re-scaling governance for decarbonisation: co-ordinating decentralised energy systems, ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

Jess Britton holds an ESRC post-doctoral fellowship from 2020-2021 focussed on exploring how the role of local actors in energy systems is changing (with a focus on the UK), the extent to which current governance, policy and regulatory arrangements support action by the most appropriate actors at the right scale, and how action between local, regional and national governments should be best coordinated. More about this fellowship project

Examining Offshore Wind Institutional Entrepreneurship (ExOE)

ExOE sets out to explore how offshore wind industries emerge, the challenges they face, and develop insights into how these challenges may be overcome. The project addresses these questions by seeking to understand how public and/or private actors can act as institutional entrepreneurs in the creation of offshore wind industries.

IGov 2: Innovation and Governance for Future Energy Systems

IGov argues that the GB energy system effectively runs along two streams: the conventional ‘old’ energy system and the ‘new’ entrants and non-traditional practices which are occurring around the edges of the conventional systems. Within IGov 2, we are focusing on energy system change that is happening at the moment and the different dimensions of that change, such as: business models; technology; markets; networks; ownership; the role of people; political systems; system operation; economics; social preferences, etc.

We will seek to better understand the reasons for some of the changes that are occurring, the political economy context in which they are happening, and how actors across the whole energy system are reacting and adapting to this change. We want to understand the governance needs of the ‘new’ system and its actors and what the opportunities are to capture these benefits within GB. Find out more on the IGov project site

Cornwall Local Energy Market (CLEM)

The Cornwall Local Energy Market (CLEM) is a 3-year trial led by Centrica to create the UK’s first local energy market. The project will develop a local marketplace for flexible demand, generation and storage to help optimise capacity on the local distribution network and enable more renewable connections to be made across different sectors. More information about CLEM

Intelligent Community Energy (ICE)

The ICE project aims to design and implement innovative smart energy solutions for isolated territories. The project considers the entire energy cycle to deliver innovative energy system solutions. The ICE consortium brings together research and business support organisations in France and the UK and engagement with SMEs will support project rollout and promote European cooperation.

SIM4NEXUS

Water, land, food, energy, and climate are interconnected, comprising a coherent system (the ‘Nexus’), dominated by complexity and feedback. Through the five nexus themes, SIM4NEXUS aims to predict society-wide impacts of resource use and relevant policies on sectors such as agriculture, water, biodiversity and ecosystem services through a model-based analysis. Visit the SIM4NEXUS website

Future Gas

The FutureGas project, led by DTU in Denmark, is investigating the future of the Danish gas system in the context of decarbonisation. The Energy Policy Group at Exeter is providing a comparative UK case study for the FuturGas project and Catherine Mitchell has been a visiting professor at DTU over parts of the project.

Stepping Up

The EPG are one of several partners in an EPSRC project being led by University of Manchester on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. Current food, energy and water systems of provision are locked-in to unsustainable and insecure models characterised by centralised power structures. Faced with increasing resource scarcity and societal inequalities, a changing climate and greenhouse gas targets, there is a need for a step-change to put the UK on a sustainable Water-Energy-Food (WEF) pathway.

The project will be looking at UK examples of initiatives with low impact across water, food and energy systems. It will study what does and doesn’t work to explore what constitutes good practice across the WEF nexus. Once identified it will model these low-impact systems, to interrogate if and how they could be replicated in other settings - such as a much larger scale, or within a different type of organisation. The study will involve stakeholders’ expertise within the modelling to produce data to help with decision-making that can be shared with industry, government and a wider society. The project started in October 2015 and is funded by EPSRC - Grant EP/N00583X/1. Find out more about the Stepping Up project aims and outputs.

PhD Research

In addition to these current research projects, the EPG's PhD candidates are also challenging current institutions both nationally and internationally to bring forward a sustainable transformation to the current governance of the energy system.

For more information on their research, visit their pages:

Emily Judson

Helen Poulter

Thomas Pownall

Past projects

Heat, Incumbency and Transformations (HIT)

HIT was a two-year project investigating the potential impact of incumbency on the UK's potential transformation to a zero carbon heat system, funded through the UKERC flexible fund.

In phase one we analysed the existing evidence on heat system futures and considered the changing roles of current actors within the system, to produce an innovative vision of the current heat system and give an idea how incumbent companies may be affected by the transition. Phase two explored how these incumbents might support or challenge the transformation to sustainable heating.

Stepping Up

The EPG were one of several partners in a three-year EPSRC project led by University of Manchester on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. Current food, energy and water systems of provision are locked-in to unsustainable and insecure models characterised by centralised power structures. Faced with increasing resource scarcity and societal inequalities, a changing climate and greenhouse gas targets, there is a need for a step-change to put the UK on a sustainable Water-Energy-Food (WEF) pathway.

In the context of a world responding to climate-change related impacts and policies, Stepping Up was a three-year project that sought to develop a better understanding of the water, energy and food (WEF) nexus, and explored the potential, impacts, and implications of scaling-up niche innovations therein. Funded by EPSRC, the project was a collaboration between researchers at eight universities and research institutes across the UK. Read the final project report or visit the project website for more information.

Gender/Energy

This UKERC Whole Systems Networking Fund project evaluated the gender balance of the UK energy research portfolio. It analysed energy research funding data and qualitative data on the lived experience of female energy researchers across career stage and discipline. The final report, Power Shift: How to build Gender Balance in the Energy Research Portfolio, outlines 30 recommendations for improving the gender balance of energy research, split across the four topics of: understanding the data, restructuring funding and assessment processes to address inequalities, stimulating career progression for female academics and building on what is working.

IGov: Innovation, Governance and Affordability for a Sustainable Secure Economy

IGov is a four year research project aiming to understand and explain the nature of sustainable change within the energy system, focusing on the complex inter-relationships between governance and innovation. The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Our approach is to examine theories of change alongside actual practice in the UK and a number of comparator countries. The ultimate objective is to develop a framework for governance that better enables practices to change and the UK to move towards a sustainable, secure and affordable energy system. IGov is about new thinking for energy. You can find out more about IGov, its aims and outputs from the IGov research website

UKERC Phase III: The politics of UK and European energy policy interactions

The UK Energy Research Centre is the focal point for UK research on sustainable energy. It takes an independent, whole-systems approach, drawing on engineering, economics and the physical, environmental and social sciences. The Centre's role is to promote cohesion within the overall UK energy research effort. It acts as a bridge between the UK energy research community and the wider world, including business, policymakers and the international energy research community and is the centre piece of the Research Councils Energy Programme. We were responsible for policy and regulation within the infrastructure and supply theme during the first two phases which ran from 2004 to 2013. In Phase III (2014-2019) we are working within a theme on energy systems at multiple scales on a project on the politics of UK and European energy policy interactions. This project looks at tensions and trade-offs that may arise as the UK invests in more renewable energy, especially electricity, and at the same time integrates more with the rest of Europe, through market coupling and more interconnection. The project looks at political problems that have arisen within and between the two broad streams of European energy policy – the internal market project, and climate and energy packages – and implications for the AURES project.

AURES: AUctions for Renewable Energy Support: Effective use and efficient implementation options

In response to maturing renewable energy industries and an ongoing drive for costs efficiency in renewable energy policy, the European Commission intends that competitive allocation of support for renewable energy becomes the norm from 2017. EPG is engaged as part of a consortium in a three year research programme to develop and disseminate guidelines for policy-makers on the design and implementation of renewable energy auctions. The other institutions in the ‘AURES’ consortium are the Technical University of Denmark, Fraunhofer ISI, Spain’s National Research Institute, the Technical University of Vienna, consultancies TAKON and Ecofys and Climate think-tank Concito. You can find out more and keep track of the research findings via the AURES website.

The Future of the Electricity Utilities

The EPG are working on a Chatham House led project to explore current technology development and deployment trends in the power sectors in both the EU and East Asia. The research aims to help identify and discuss the major uncertainties and opportunities facing traditional utilities as well as develop recommendations for ensuring that policy/regulation and technology innovation occurs simultaneously. Ultimately this will help investors, utilities and policy makers ensure the smooth integration of new technologies and systems, reduce the risk of stranded assets and help ensure price stability. A series of Chatham House workshops will be run as part of the research and the overall findings will be published in 2016.

ENSYMORA

The EPG are research partners in ENSYMORA (ENergy SYstems MOdelling, Research and Analysis); a project supported by the Danish Council for Strategic Research under the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation. The project is part of the Council's research stream "Strategic research in sustainable energy and environment". It has the objectives of developing and improving methods and models used for energy systems analysis, planning to better reflect the large changes in future energy systems and using the models to analyse technical options, economic incentives, and policies related to both demand and supply of electricity. In particular, the models are used to address the challenges of a fossil free energy system. Find out more about ENSYMORA.

Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Catherine Mitchell was a Lead Author in the IPCC Working Group Three - Fifth Assessment report (AR5), which was published in 2014. She was also a Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of the Policy, Financing & Implementation Chapter of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation published in 2011

UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) Phases 1 & 2

We were responsible for policy and regulation within the infrastructure and supply theme during the first phase which ran from April 2004-2009 and EPG continued in this role for Phase 2 which finished in 2013.

A UKERC systhesis report is was produce in 2014 which drew on the findings of the phase II research: UKERC

Energy Security in a Multipolar World (ESMW)

ESMW was an interdisciplinary research cluster funded for four years by the Economic and Social Research Council and the EPSRC. It brought together experts in energy policy, international relations and supply chains to examine issues such as: oil and gas supply chains; energy infrastructure; vulnerability of supply chains; international relations in a multipolar world; development of new technologies and their supply chains; concerns about delivery and availability of low carbon technologies; institutional changes required to deliver major cuts in energy demand; potential of individual and local actions to improve energy security; legal implications and possibilities.

ESMW finished at the end of 2012, but a wide range of resources are still available on the ESMW website.

A new edited book: New Challenges in Energy Security – The UK in a Multipolar World is now available which bought together some key insights from ESMW.

EU Renewable Energy Policy

This research aimed to provide policy makers and interested stakeholders with a set of consensual principles for designing future remuneration schemes that will provide an effective, efficient and societally acceptable framework for RES-E (Renewable Energy Sources – Electricity) investment in the coming decade.

It was coordinated by the Smart Energy for Europe Platform and involved a group of 12 internationally renowned renewable electricity policy and market experts, who developed 14 policy principles for ensuring renewable electricity investments for a post-2020 perspective. For further information visit the project website.

Falmouth Energy Week

We ran three Falmouth Energy Weeks (FEW) which were designed to provide a forum for the dissemination of cutting-edge ideas, decision-making and energy policy design. These events bought together central decision-makers and stakeholders within energy policy in the UK to discuss the urgent transformation required to move towards a sustainable energy system. Subject to funding we hope to continue this unique series of energy events in the future.

Securing the UK’s Power Supplies

The EPG, in partnership with SSE, Consumer Focus and WWF, and representatives from 20 other organisations, ran a series of energy roundtable events that resulted in a joint communique on UK energy policy. This series concluded that the Government’s draft Energy Bill and existing energy efficiency policies would, in their current state, fail to deliver a secure, clean and affordable power sector for the UK and would result in the UK missing out on some key economic growth opportunities. The work identified a number of key concerns on current policies and proposals and some recommendations for a more successful way forward. Further information is available here from and the communique can also be downloaded here.