Energy Conferences and Workshops in New Zealand

In February, Tim has been invited to participate in the International Energy Authority Demand Side Management programme (http://www.ieadsm.org/)  Task XXIV workshop in Wellington, New Zealand.  He will be helping organise part of the workshop based around the Four Dimensions of Behaviour (4DB) Framework developed as part of his current ESRC funding in partnership with Charlie Wilson at the Tyndall Centre at UEA.

Whilst he is there he will be attending the Energy Conference 2013, organised by The National Energy Research Institute and Victoria University of Wellington and entitled: Energy at the Crossroads: Energy Innovation for a Sustainable Society. http://www.theenergyconference.org.nz/

He will be presenting an oral paper entitled “Which Types of Interventions Work the Best in Changing Domestic Energy Using Behaviours?” based on the work that UWE undertook in partnership with RAND Europe and the Tyndall Centre at UEA for the Department of Environment and Climate Change.  This work has now been published as part of DECC’s Energy Efficiency Strategy
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/tackling/saving_energy/what_doing/eedo/eedo.aspx

 http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/tackling-climate-change/saving-energy-co2/6921-what-works-in-changing-energyusing-behaviours-in-.pdf

He will also be presenting a poster on his current ESRC funded work entitled “Improving Opportunities for Energy Reduction from 'Behaviour Change' through the Use of Multiple Models and a Better Characterisation of Behaviour”.

DECC and Social Science - Bridging the Gap Workshop

On 19^th December, Tim attended a workshop organised by DECC and hosted by the UCL Energy Institute to bring together academics from the social sciences, with members of the social research and customer insight teams at DECC.  The workshop stems from Tim’s 2010 Fellowship based in the DECC, as well as work undertaken for DECC in partnership with RAND EUROPE and the Tyndall Centre at UEA over the summer of 2012. 

 

All in all, the workshop was seen as being a very successful and important step forward in improving the mutual understanding between academics and the policy realm.   However, it was also clear that it was a small step in a much longer path towards allowing the social sciences to significantly shape whatever pathway we find ourselves on towards meeting the 2050 climate goals.

Seasons Greeting from all at the

Air Quality Management Resource Centre

The Mismanagement of Air Quality - Invited Presentation, Southampton University’s Centre for Environmental Science

On December 12^th 2012 Jim Longhurst was delighted to deliver the first Christmas lecture for Southampton University’s Centre for Environmental Science. Jim took a deliberately polemical position is his talk contrasting the successful review and assessment process with the action planning process in local air quality management. He described how the review and assessment of local air quality had been successful in identifying areas of air quality objective exceedence and in so doing had delineated a new geography of air pollution. He contrasted this with the failure of the action planning process to revoke air quality management areas. He reviewed the variety of evidence from official sources indicating the scale and magnitude of the health effects arising from exposure to adverse concentrations of air pollution and asked why we had arrived at a position where the policy intent and the process of remediation were misaligned. He explored whether this was a political failing and described the situation as the mismanagement of air quality.

Funding success for 2050 Low Carbon Bristol public engagement project

Rose's 2050 Low Carbon Bristol public engagement project is gaining momentum as more funding is secured to support communication activities and a further research bid.

Rose was the 2012 winner of the IES 'John Rose Award', to communicate the result of postgraduate research to the general public. Rose commissioned local street artist Andy Council to produce two visual representations of the future low carbon scenarios for Bristol from her PhD research. 

Scenario X (left) and Scenario Y (right)
©Andy Council 2012

Rose will be using these images as the basis of a public consultation and 'Dialogue' with the public, using an app from local digital democracy company Delib, and has now secured additional support and £2000 funding from the Green Capital Partnership's Community Challenge Fund to design and build some new interactive webpages as part of their redesigned website. 

Rose also yesterday secured a further £3500 of HEAT@UWE bidding funding, to support the development of a bid for external funding for an interdisciplinary research project. This will allow Rose to extend this initial phase of communication and engagement work into a larger and research project.