Recent Data Additions to the EDC

Carbon and Place website & App provide free tools to allow communities, planners, and policymakers in the UK to understand their local carbon footprint.

Based on the latest research and the best available data, we explore how carbon footprints change between neighbourhoods and how the path to net-zero will vary between places.

Carbon & Place is a family of tools developed as part of the Energy Demand Research Centre.

The IEA Demonstration Projects Database seeks to map major demonstration projects of clean energy technologies, globally. For each project, it provides information on location, sector and technology grouping, status, capacity, timing and funding, when available.

Access to datasets provided by the IEA on a wide range of topics. Some of these are openly available and some have restrictions

The non-gas map is a detailed map of Great Britain showing the distribution of properties without a gas grid connection across local authorities, LSOAs (lower-level super output areas) and, for registered users, postcodes. It also provided a wealth of other information about each properties and residents, from the type of house or flat to the type of heating and tenure.

To better understand the processes of digitalisation, dematerialisation and decarbonisation, this paper examines the relationship between energy and information for the global economy since 1850. It presents the long run trends in energy intensity and communication intensity, as a proxy for total information intensity. The evidence suggests that, relative to GDP, global economic production has been reducing energy and increasing information use since 1913. The analysis indicates that it initially required little information to replace energy in production and that the ability to substitute away from energy and towards information has been declining. The result implies that the global economy is now reducing energy and increasing information at a substitution rate of 0.2 kB per kWh of conserved energy or 0.8 GB per tonne of carbon dioxide mitigated. As the price ratio of energy to information is currently higher than this marginal rate of substitution, there are incentives to further substitute information for energy. However, one conclusion is that (without the long run escalation of carbon prices) substitution away from energy and towards information is likely to cease within the next few decades and, beyond that, digitalisation will play a declining role in the decarbonisation process.

Automated vehicles (AVs) may represent the most profound technological change in road transport since the rise of vehicle mass production, with reductions in energy demand being one of the many anticipated benefits. This project has explored expectations regarding the potential energy-saving benefits of AVs among two groups ‘professionals’ and the general public. The project has used a Delphi study design. The Delphi method offers an exploratory, flexible and iterative technique to obtain insights into what futures might look like when uncertainty is large. This is the case with AVs as much remains unclear if and when fully autonomous vehicles will be introduced on the UK roads and how automation may interact with electrification and a possible shift away from individual ownership towards forms of shared ownership and use. Delphi studies typically consist of several rounds of surveys that are increasingly conducted online in which participants receive feedback between rounds and can adapt their responses and views based on that feedback. Two separate Delphi studies, each consisting of three rounds, were conducted sequentially in 2019-2020. Delphi studies have traditionally been used to build consensus among participants but this often marginalises more radical imaginings of the future and may underappreciate controversies around future developments. This project has, therefore adopted a dissensus-oriented Delphi, which cultivates divergence of views and is particularly appropriate for emergent topics such as the expected effects on transport and energy of vehicle automation.

The FAIR project explored the causes and links between fuel poverty and transport poverty in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It collected interview data to draw up policy recommendations designed to limit the impacts of double energy vulnerability in the transition to a more sustainable future. Tens of millions of households across Europe struggle to afford adequate electricity and heating services and reliable transportation, while recent high fuel prices could lead to an increase in excess winter deaths. Tackling energy and transport poverty is thus of paramount policy importance. Here, we document the drivers and lived experiences of energy and transport poverty in the United Kingdom based on expert interviews. We find a set of policies that resonate with expert planners, implying they have a level of political and social acceptability that other measures may be lacking, notably: mandatory landlord energy efficiency upgrades, increasing the extent of financial assistance to households, cheaper (or even free) bus and train fares and restarting and expanding bus services. We buttress these findings with further suggestions for energy and transport system redesign that better meets emerging principles of energy and social justice.

The current energy, climate and cost of living crises have affected peoples’ wellbeing, their health, employment and finances showing significant inequalities across population groups and regions. These kinds of challenges entail technological innovation while shifting energy consumption patterns. Yet, the UK transition to Net Zero requires greater transformative change at institutional, infrastructural, sectorial and social levels. Building on Multi Criteria Mapping and survey methods, this paper investigates how citizens value energy demand reduction options for communities’ wellbeing and identifies multiple social, economic, and environmental ‘co-benefits’, often discounted in policy making. While arguing that energy demand mitigation options can improve citizens’ living conditions and quality of life while diminishing energy use and GHG emissions, the paper challenges the adoption of approaches based on conventional economic models to deliver Net Zero. The analysis of two UK-based case studies discloses that citizens prioritise fairness including environmental intergenerational concerns and value restrictions on individuals’ lifestyle choices. The paper calls for better incorporation of citizens’ values in policy on energy demand reduction.

This data collections consists of data and documentation produced to examine the spatial and social differences in people’s lack of access to adequate energy and transport services in the United Kingdom (UK). The work responds to the need for developing a differentiated understanding of both the drivers and expressions of this ‘double energy vulnerability’, while seeking to integrate and analyse relevant information from all four UK nations. Using a variety of statistically representative census and survey datasets, the project developed a series of multi-dimensional indices to map transport- and energy-related injustices. This was followed by a cluster analysis to examine broad-level geographical patterns, and a Geographically Weighted Regression model to explore the spatial variation of vulnerabilities related to contingencies such as income, ethnicity and housing. The work corroborates the results of previous qualitative studies, and research within selected UK nations, while revealing a number of unexpected territorial clusters and underpinnings of infrastructural injustice.

A survey was undertaken with UK energy and climate change stakeholders involved in and/or effected by Brexit - it was undertaken as part of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKRC) funded project on 'Brexit and UK Net Zero Energy Policy'. The survey was designed to ascertain views on the implications of Brexit for energy and climate change policy and politics, and to build knowledge about actual effects in practice. There were 83 respondents - from UK government (Westminster and devolved), business (mainly energy industry and finance), think tanks and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics researching Brexit, and representatives of EU countries.

Data from the survey was used to inform the analysis underpinning 2 papers: the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) policy briefing paper, Brexit Implications for UK Decarbonisation Objectives, and the Policy & Politics journal article, Brexit Implications for Sustainable Energy in the UK.

From 2018 to 2023, Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) delivered a major innovation programme focused on smart local energy systems: Prospering from the Energy Revolution.

The programme was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Its aim: to work with businesses, communities and academics to explore intelligently joining up energy supply, storage and use at a local and regional level.

We live, work and travel in regions, cites, towns and communities. Yet our energy infrastructure is still very centralised – sending energy one way, from bulk supply points to the networks’ edges where we live and work.

This programme asked: what if we could bring together energy supply, storage and use to create energy-smart places, enabled by the latest technologies? Could we balance supply and demand locally, improve flexibility and resilience, save costs and carbon, and create new ways of living with energy?

With £104m of funding from UKRI, the programme funded over 80 projects around the UK, from feasibility studies to large-scale demonstrators.

The result: a rich bank of learning and evidence that will help everyone working to unlock the potential of place-based energy.

This spreadsheet contains the results for the article, "Meeting the costs of decarbonising industry – the potential effects on prices and competitiveness (a case study of the UK)". These include projected impacts for industrial process decarbonisation (costs, fuel use, residual emissions), for key years (2030, 2040, 2050), distributed in the following ways:

• Directly allocated to industrial sector in which they occur


• Shared between sectors in proportion to the share of GVA of each supply chain


• Embodied in final products


• Embodied in final products, aggregated to consumption patterns

The source of the projections and the method to perform the distribution are described in detail in the associated article.