Challenging Lock-in Through Urban Energy Systems

The CLUES Project is a two-year project funded by EPSRC (Oct 2010 - Sept 2012).

Overview

The CLUES Research Team is a Consortium of six UK based universities led by Professor Yvonne Rydin at The Bartlett School of Planning UCL. The Consortium consists of:

• Bartlett School of Planning UCL
• University of Exeter
• Loughborough University
• University of Manchester
• University of Surrey
• University of Sussex

The CLUES project aims to assess critically the development of decentralised energy systems in urban areas in the light of the need to achieve national decarbonisation goals to 2050 and broader urban sustainability goals. It examines the range and types of urban energy systems that might be installed based upon an international review. It further considers the issues raised by the need for such initiatives in the UK to integrate with energy systems at urban, regional and national scales in order to deliver energy and carbon reductions effectively.

Achieving substantial cuts in carbon emissions is the most pressing challenge facing the UK in the period to 2050. Restructuring the UK's energy system will be central to fulfilling the Government's goal of 80% cuts but the current system is characterised by lock-in into centralisation. This lock-in is not only a technological phenomenon but also reinforced by market rules, institutional arrangements, business models and social norms that make the energy system difficult to change.

There is, however, arguably potential for challenging this lock-in through action at the urban scale with the increased promotion of decentralised systems. These can be building, site or neighbourhood-based and encompass a variety of ways of achieving carbon reductions, including the deployment of low carbon technologies, new institutional arrangements, social innovation and revised policy frameworks.

CLUES will explore both UK energy schemes and innovative urban energy initiatives as yet untried in the UK context. This will be set in the context of scenario development to 2050 based on the existing Foresight scenarios from the 'Powering Our Lives' report on energy management and the built environment.

The project will then undertake a scaling-up exercise to consider the potential contribution to national carbon reduction of aggregating up individual urban energy initiatives. This will involve analysis of the extent to which such initiatives could be rolled out across the country and their carbon impact, given different mixes of energy technologies and carbon reduction strategies.

The scaling-up exercise will also consider the implications for future urban change using the developed 2050 scenarios. The result will be a critical assessment of future change in urban areas as a result of energy decentralisation and, therefore, the promotion of decentralised energy initiatives within urban areas to carbon reductions at a national scale and urban sustainability to 2050.

CLUES is funded by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as part of the Sustainable Urban Environment (SUE) Programme (Project number: EP/10021 70/1).

Our partners are:

BIS (Department for Business Innovations & Skills), BRE (British Research Establishment), CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building), CLG (Department of Communities and Local Environment), DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change), ICE (Institution of Civil Engineers), SSE (Scottish and Southern Energy), Tengbom Architects (Sweden), TCPA (Town and Country Planning Association), University of Cardiff.

For further information about the project please contact:

Dr Catalina Turcu 
Send Catalina an email

People

Professor Yvonne Rydin
View Yvonne's profile
Send Yvonne an email

Dr Catalina Turcu
View Catalina's profile
Send Catalina an email 

Outputs

The CLUES Project has published a notable number of papers in peer reviewed journals and professional magazines, collate a series of in-house reports and presented papers at conferences. For full details of CLUES of these please look at the CLUES outputs website page. 

Impact

The CLUES Project will impact on:

• planning bodies by offering lessons for successful implementation of urban energy initiatives and a practical planning tool as well as a robust vision of how urban energy initiatives might contribute to sustainable urban environments in 2050
• industry through promoting a substantiated vision of how investment in energy infrastructure and urban development might deliver carbon reductions and urban sustainability
• policy makers through reframing energy and planning policy on promoting decentralisation of energy systems through urban initiatives
• academic community through the development of the co-evolutionary framework, the example of interdisciplinary research and replicable methodologies for scenario development and the scaling up exercise