The 'retrofit' of energy efficiency, low carbon heating and renewable microgeneration measures in homes is a major focus for energy and climate policy. Yet despite policy interventions, few countries are achieving their residential decarbonisation targets. In this paper we argue that a core reason for this failure is the mainstream 'rational actor' framing of households, which guides energy efficiency policymaking. We introduce an alternative 'relational' framing to re-examine the assumptions surrounding the retrofit 'customer journey' and the accompanying policy framework. In doing so, the study draws on three United Kingdom (UK) case studies, exploring the customer journey of households self-funding renovations and retrofit, via (n = 30) semi-structured interviews. We argue that by paying attention to relational dynamics, we can better design policies that work with the grain of existing household practices and social relations. This includes: 1) Leveraging existing entry points such as when renovating or moving home 2) Aligning with how households currently seek advice and procure renovation services 3) Developing solutions which factor broader motivations than simply cost savings 4) Designing inclusive and long-term financing models and 5) Building trusted ongoing relationships between contractors and communities. Consequently, we argue a paradigm shift in retrofit policymaking towards a relational approach is now required.

Should we govern the energy transition through bold ‘Mission Led’ government or pragmatic ‘Radical Incrementalism’? A Mission Led approach has an emboldened state setting clear goals for transformational change. Radical Incrementalism calls for pragmatic interventions that can be implemented quickly and benefit millions. Here we explore how the UK government’s commitment to Mission Led government applies to domestic and local energy and energy regulation. We expose our collective ignorance about whether the current energy transition is fair, and describe how Net Zero policy risks making inequality worse. We argue that both Radical Incrementalism and Mission Led government could improve fairness and distributional outcomes from Net Zero, by adopting a ‘relational’ as opposed to ‘rational’ view of domestic energy consumers. This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The critical role of governance for decarbonisation at pace: learning the lessons from SHAPE research’, edited by Sarah Birch, Hilary Graham, Andrew Jordan, Tim O’Riordan, Henry Richards.

In a recent review of research on the role of social relations in shaping energy demand, authors documented increasing interest in relational approaches to energy [1]. Relational approaches to energy conceive of human behaviour as produced and reproduced by social relations and interactions, placing relationships at the centre of inquiry, as well as understanding these relationships in the context of infrastructure and the built environment. In this paper, we build on a relational approach in new economic sociology, and on our research project about the social relations of energy retrofit, to offer a methodological and conceptual guide to those working on energy demand topics. We detail the ontological and epistemological starting points of our relational approach, and articulate how research can be designed to capture the role of social relations in shaping decision-making on energy, as well as to offer innovative insights for policy-makers and practitioners. We use our experience in a research project on energy retrofit as a case study, reflecting on the practical aspects of this research approach to provide suggestions for research design for those interested in doing similar work. This includes defining key concepts and the way they interact in a conceptual framework for a relational approach to energy. We also offer some conceptually driven research questions as a starting point for energy research projects. We finish by discussing the potential for further application of these ideas in research, policy and practice.

Retrofitting the UK's housing stock is essential if the UK is to meet its climate commitments. Wider research has addressed how weaknesses in the drafting and implementation of retrofit policy have slowed progress in this area, including the tendency to treat homeowners as discrete, isolated decision makers. We contribute to this research by exploring the wider dynamics that underpin decision-making in and around households. We make this contribution by adapting Hargreaves and Middlemiss's research into the social relations of daily energy use, and Zelizer's research into the social relations of money, to consider how social relations influence decision-making over home renovations. Our findings are based on semi-structured interviews with homeowners in Otley, West Yorkshire, which we conducted from September to December 2021. This interview data demonstrates how the dynamic nature of relations with family and friends, tradespeople, gender, and money, shapes the reasons why people undertake renovations and what they aim to gain from undertaking these works. Focusing on wider renovations enabled us to speak with people who are not already engaged with retrofit policy, shedding light on possible interventions that target ‘able-to-pay’ owner-occupiers. For instance, we highlight the need to identify how people develop trust with tradespeople; account for different social groups' relations to the home; and to foreground how the role of the home changes through time.

The UK has incorporated a net-zero emissions target into national legislation. A range of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) options will likely play a key role in the government's strategy toward meeting this goal. Governance frameworks will need to be developed to support GGR development and manage the potential impacts, particularly those on the diverse local communities where the various options will be deployed. This research examines the UK's experience with development and regulation of shale gas - using the technologies of hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling - with a focus on governance and the implications for the development and widespread deployment of GGR. We evaluate the approach used against the principles of good governance, which emphasizes the critical role that local communities and publics play in deployment. The UK's top-down governance of shale gas highlights the risk of regulation driven by assumptions about national and local need, value and a lack of transparency or meaningful stakeholder participation in decision-making. The use of existing legislative frameworks for conventional fossil fuel extraction proved inadequate to address unanticipated consequences such as induced seismicity. Moreover, the support for unconventional hydrocarbons in UK energy policy appeared inconsistent with the goal of meeting greenhouse gas targets and passing significant legislation in 2019 to bring carbon emissions to net-zero. To gain social acceptance at the local level, deployment of new technologies needs to be evaluated from a variety of framings and viewpoints. Where new technologies or practices are deployed, such as fracking and GGR, the knowledge and understanding of the impacts - a fundamental principle of good governance - may be less certain or more contested. Early inclusion and participation of local communities would allow issues of concern to inform how trials are undertaken and regulation designed. This anticipatory and participatory approach fits with the principles of good governance and procedural justice, which can help build the trust needed to ensure social legitimacy leading to development and implementation of technological innovations.

This paper brings together socio-technical transitions theory with strategic foresight and human centred design. The aim is to bring in new methods for analysing the business model element of sustainability transitions. We propose a process for doing business model innovation work. Business models have become a key area of focus, particularly in the energy sector. Recent work shows how the development of new business models co-evolves with elements of the energy system, either driving technological innovation, changing user practices or placing pressure on the institutional or policy regime. At the same time, there is no recognised process for business model research aimed at transition management. It is time therefore to propose a more formalised and theoretically grounded approach to business model innovation work. We use this contribution to synthesise the lessons of a four-year research project centred on energy utility business models with industrial, commercial and government stakeholders. We describe the process adopted, and insights this process generated. We seek to establish this process in the literature, invite others to utilise it, adapt it and critique it.

Energy service business models (ESBMs) are potentially critical to reducing household energy demand and mitigating climate change. These models are predicated on a shift from the ‘throughput’ sale of energy commodities, towards providing ‘useful’ or ‘final’ energy services. However, the conceptual delineation of these models and their different variants remains opaque in the literature. In this paper, we seek to clarify this issue through the identification of a typology of ESBMs. Through a series of 53 interviews and 7 stakeholder workshops we explore contemporary domestic ESBM examples in Europe. We find that while more basic energy supply contracts are commonplace, models which deliver energy saving performance or final energy services are rarer. We subsequently identify barriers to the adoption of these business models, before proposing 13 policy recommendations. We conclude that the ‘energy throughput orthodoxy’ which has governed liberalised energy markets will need to be challenged for these models to have a significant future impact.

Energy as a service, smart home opportunities and electrification of heat and transport can lead to new ways of switching supplier or choosing new energy contracts. Here, we used business model collaboration workshops to create archetypes of new utility business models, which were then tested with a representative sample of British energy consumers to explore their attractiveness to different segments of society. We show that some of these segments have a substantial appetite for new business models. However, the segments that choose these models are more likely to be affluent, educated homeowners. Without intervention, innovation in utility business models risks exacerbating existing social inequalities, as lower incomes, lower home ownership and low education result in lower preferences for, or no ability to engage with, new utility business models. We also find that institutional trust beyond the energy sector is a key driver of consumer segmentation. Utility business models are changing to accommodate energy system decarbonization. Here the authors adopt a collaborative business model innovation process to define the business models that utilities are exploring, and then identify consumer segments based on their preferences for these new contracts.

Innovative energy business models, such as peer-to-peer trading or energy as a service, are attractive to different groups of customers. Disengaged consumers with low trust in the energy market could face further disadvantages, while already active consumers could reap even greater benefits, which risks widening existing socio-economic inequalities.

understandings of the agreements through which reliance systems come to be, and are sustained and developed, are insufficient. All well and geographical, but whenever so much comes to rest on grounded deliberation and agreement (of some form, however contested), reservations unhelpfully nag away; power, co-option, capture, misrecognition, bland consensus, exhaustion. All the more so when the spatial contract is described as a ‘nested and constantly evolving series of collective settlements’ (p. 40), fine conceptually, but practically deeply involved; and six principles for a ‘healthy social contract’ are outlined, all hard to disagree with, but suggesting a policing of what grounded deliberation may deem constitutes ‘an agreement’. First and foremost though an intellectual and analytical framework is proposed, assertively laying down a normative proposition and an approach to analysing reliance systems, starting from how they already are, in order to ‘build healthier systems’ from the bottom up. Some may well find their explicit rejection of political ideology and dramatic change problematic. But ‘retrofitting is the only revolution that doesn’t threaten people’s capacities to lead their lives’ (p. 79) is a rather nicely expressed endorsement of the materiality of reformism, which I found hard to refute. On the other hand with so much in the mix, fractures open up. Seeing like a system (chapter 2) I found hard to reconcile with seeing like a settlement (chapter 3) and begs questions about what spatial contracts would then be oriented to. Positioning, in the final chapter, the universal basic income as one of two examples of the ‘spatial contract in practice’ also for me undermined some key propositions made earlier, in particular in relation to the essential materiality of reliance systems as tangible things in the built environment, and the grounding of the spatial contract in place. But there is a compelling and accessible narrative here, with a political relevance that readily resonates, for example, with the substance of the climate emergency and to inequalities in experiences of Covid-19. Gordon Walker Lancaster University, UK IV Reliance Systems and the Contingencies of Human Freedom: Author Response The kind words and insightful criticisms the symposium authors offered for The Spatial Contract are both generous and generative. They give us hope that future readers will find the book to rate highly on what Gordon Walker refers to as their ‘useful-ometer’. The Spatial Contract is above anything else a framework, and frameworks are designed to be useful. 6 Progress in Human Geography XX(X Book review symposium 1737 institutional form, a push-back against currents of individualism in both their neoliberal and frugal self-reliance forms. Arguments are strongly made. That reliance systems are the primary purpose of politics, in our recent experience exploitative, destructive, unsustainable, but also transformative and progressive, something crucial to argue for and argue over. And there are some nice distinctions between the material and functional components of reliance systems, and their dynamics are stressed rather than their inertia, echoing conceptualizations of relations between infrastructure and practice. So, I could imagine working with the idea of reliance systems, even if it’s not a language to capture the political imagination. The core idea of the spatial contract was, in the end, a bit less persuasive, early on described as a ‘politics of provisioning for human agency’ (a rather circular phrase) and not helped by the deficiencies and dangers of Hobbes’ social version. But I swung again from cool to mildly warm as it emerged as a sort of grounded version of the social contract, retaining the notion of formal and informal agreement (from the ground up), but emphasizing the specificities of history and geography that mean that general, abstract understandings of the agreementsunderstandings of the agreements through which reliance systems come to be, and are sustained and developed, are insufficient. All well and geographical, but whenever so much comes to rest on grounded deliberation and agreement (of some form, however contested), reservations unhelpfully nag away; power, co-option, capture, misrecognition, bland consensus, exhaustion. All the more so when the spatial contract is described as a ‘nested and constantly evolving series of collective settlements’ (p. 40), fine conceptually, but practically deeply involved; and six principles for a ‘healthy social contract’ are outlined, all hard to disagree with, but suggesting a policing of what grounded deliberation may deem constitutes ‘an agreement’. First and foremost though an intellectual and analytical framework is proposed, assertively laying down a normative proposition and an approach to analysing reliance systems, starting from how they already are, in order to ‘build healthier systems’ from the bottom up. Some may well find their explicit rejection of political ideology and dramatic change problematic. But ‘retrofitting is the only revolution that doesn’t threaten people’s capacities to lead their lives’ (p. 79) is a rather nicely expressed endorsement of the materiality of reformism, which I found hard to refute. On the other hand with so much in the mix, fractures open up. Seeing like a system (chapter 2) I found hard to reconcile with seeing like a settlement (chapter 3) and begs questions about what spatial contracts would then be oriented to. Positioning, in the final chapter, the universal basic income as one of two examples of the ‘spatial contract in practice’ also for me undermined some key propositions made earlier, in particular in relation to the essential materiality of reliance systems as tangible things in the built environment, and the grounding of the spatial contract in place. But there is a compelling and accessible narrative here, with a political relevance that readily resonates, for example, with the substance of the climate emergency and to inequalities in experiences of Covid-19. Gordon Walker Lancaster University, UK IV Reliance Systems and the Contingencies of Human Freedom: Author Response The kind words and insightful criticisms the symposium authors offered for The Spatial Contract are both generous and generative. They give us hope that future readers will find the book to rate highly on what Gordon Walker refers to as their ‘useful-ometer’. The Spatial Contract is above anything else a framework, and frameworks are designed to be useful. 6 Progress in Human Geography XX(X) The book was released in March 2020, and within 2 months the coronavirus pandemic and the murder of George Floyd altered our lives and our perspectives. These terrible events, which were compounded by the looming climate disaster, have sadly only made a core claim of the book more relevant: we must start seeing our politics in terms of the reliance systems that realize our basic freedoms and essential life functions. This means understanding, for example, the right to health in terms of personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chains or understanding the right to safety in terms of policing systems instead of only police officers. ‘Seeing like a system’ helps us appreciate where injustices emerge, and how we might address them. Understanding these systems in relation to settlements – ‘seeing like a settlement’ – reveals starkly how systems like healthcare and policing touch down in places in radically different ways. While it may seem obvious that reforming policing in Minneapolis is not the same as reforming policing in Oakland, and that fixing one city’s policing system isn’t the same as reducing gross differences in Covid death, we hope that the book provides useful tools to analyse systems and settlements, and to understand both better. Systemic racism may be part of inequality in most settlements and most systems, but they are ultimately systems of different racisms we need to unpack if we are to make real change. As multiple authors point out, this sort of language often is too abstract. We agree. A core challenge to demonstrating the value of the Spatial Contract is to develop more detailed applications of the model to a heterogeneous range of concrete cases. To rectify this would require several lengthy studies. In this short space, we offer a sketch of one application to a capacity the recent pandemic has shown to be very important – the capacity to test for SARSCoV-2 infection. From a spatial contract perspective, this capacity is realized in a complex reliance system. It is not centred on any one person or any one tool. For example, in the case of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests, there is, from our point of view, no such thing as a test, full stop. This may seem paradoxical. But it’s not. Rather there are swabs, the collection kits, technicians who assist in collecting and others who process the sample, machines that do the processing, the labs housing those machines, those labs’ heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and biocontainment systems, the data collection equipment and so on. All of these, conceived diachronically and not synchronically, must operate in a complex dance in order for someone to have the effective capacity to administer a single RT-PCR test. Even this sketchy analysis drives us away from an idealized, abstract conception of a SARS-CoV-2 test to a materially and socially realized conception of the capacity to test for infection. The book argues that using this model avoids the mistake of conceiving of phenomena as distinct as mass transit and healthcare as somehow discrete abstracta, and instead facilitates conceiving of them as geographically, historically and socially contextualized systems that evolve in time. The book also argues that this approach reveals the complex ways in which retrofitting existing systems can expand certain rights, such as, for examp

The grand scale of GGR deployment now necessary to avoid dangerous climate change warrants the use of grand interpretive theories of how the global economy operates. We argue that critical social science should be able to name the global economy as “capitalism”; and instead of speaking about “transforming the global economy” as a necessary precondition for limiting climate change, instead speak about transforming, or even transcending, capitalism . We propose three principles are helpful for critical social science researchers willing to name and analyse the structural features of capitalism and their relation to greenhouse gas removal technology, policy, and governance. These principles are: (1) Greenhouse Gas Removal technologies are likely to emerge within capitalism, which is crisis prone, growth dependent, market expanding , We use a broad Marxist corpus to justify this principle. (2) There are different varieties of capitalism and this will affect the feasibility of different GGR policies and supports in different nations . We draw on varieties of capitalism and comparative political economy literature to justify this principle. (3) Capitalism is more than an economic system, it is ideologically and culturally maintained . Globally-significant issues such as fundamentalism, institutional mistrust, precarity, and populism, cannot be divorced from our thinking about globally significant deployment of greenhouse gas removal technologies. We use a broad Critical Theory body of work to explore the ideational project of maintaining capitalism and its relation to GGR governance and policy.

This chapter focuses on building an analytical framework for understanding reliance systems and spatial contracts. It is based on the argument that we must begin with the system, and understand the politics from the system up, rather than from the politics down. The framework draws on systems thinking to establish how we can differentiate between different systems. It then uses this systems perspective to repurpose ideas from economics which are useful if focused on systems instead of commodities.

Following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5 °C Special Report in October 2018, there has been a surge in public concern about climate change and demands for greater government action. We analyse the discourse of Members of Parliament (MPs) on climate change on Twitter to examine the extent to which these recent public climate-related events have influenced political agenda-setting. We argue that these events have had two, linked, effects: increased political discourse on climate change, and an increasing use of ‘urgent’ climate language. However, the language style used between political parties differs. Additionally, while the youth strikes and Greta Thunberg, who initiated these strikes, appear to have the greatest influence on MPs’ discourse, the overall relative impact is low, with responses predominately from left- and centrist-political parties. This indicates a clear difference between parties. However, Twitter may not be a suitable platform for investigating Conservative discourse. Further work to explore agenda-setting on Conservative policymaking is required.

This chapter furthers the development of the analytical framework by focusing on the relationship between reliance systems and exploitation. It reworks Iris Marion Young's five faces of oppression for use with reliance systems and the spatial contract. These five faces are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence.

Biofuel provides a globally significant opportunity to reduce fossil fuel dependence; however, its sustainability can only be meaningfully explored for individual cases. It depends on multiple considerations including: life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, air quality impacts, food versus fuel trade-offs, biodiversity impacts of land use change and socio-economic impacts of energy transitions. One solution that may address many of these issues is local production of biofuel on non-agricultural land. Urban areas drive global change, for example, they are responsible for 70% of global energy use, but are largely ignored in their resource production potential; however, underused urban greenspaces could be utilized for biofuel production near the point of consumption. This could avoid food versus fuel land conflicts in agricultural land and long-distance transport costs, provide ecosystem service benefits to urban dwellers and increase the sustainability and resilience of cities and towns. Here, we use a Geographic Information System to identify urban greenspaces suitable for biofuel production, using exclusion criteria, in 10 UK cities. We then model production potential of three different biofuels: Miscanthus grass, short rotation coppice (SRC) willow and SRC poplar, within the greenspaces identified and extrapolate up to a UK-scale. We demonstrate that approximately 10% of urban greenspace (3% of built-up land) is potentially suitable for biofuel production. We estimate the potential of this to meet energy demand through heat generation, electricity and combined heat and power (CHP) operations. Our findings show that, if fully utilized, urban biofuel production could meet nearly a fifth of demand for biomass in CHP systems in the United Kingdom's climate compatible energy scenarios by 2030, with potentially similar implications for other comparable countries and regions.

Energy systems are in transformation towards increasingly renewable, decentralised, demand responsive and smart configurations. This has led to advocacy of the ‘prosumer’ phenomenon: characterised by actors who both consume and produce renewable energy. In parallel a range of prosumer business models are emerging, governed by a range of market, municipal and community actors. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis - centred on a case study of Bristol in the UK - this paper critically evaluates the normative dimensions of prosumer business models, modes of governance and understandings of value. We discuss how competing ‘value logics’ are present within imagined futures of prosumerism, and through a novel conceptual framework, how these modes of governance may lead to divergent material outcomes in a decentralised energy transition. We argue that a more explicit recognition of competing theories of value, agency and change is needed in future discussions of prosumerism.

This chapter continues the work of building the analytical framework. Rather than pulling apart systems to appreciate their differences, as in Chapter 2, this chapter explains how systems must be seen together as human settlements. This settlements perspective illuminates two important sets of divisions that may hinder the development of healthier spatial contracts – the divide between urban and rural, and that between formal and informal.