Results:

CREDS is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), both part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Following from UKRI's commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), these issues have been taken seriously in CREDS from the beginning. The CREDS EDI strategy was developed within the first six months of the centre, in collaboration with CREDS staff. It is closely linked to our work to support and develop Early Career Researchers (ECRs). The CREDS EDI Annual Report, reporting progress on the EDI plan, was published in 2020. This was followed by a survey of all CREDS staff, inviting their responses on recruitment and the lived experience of EDI issues within CREDS. The results of this survey are being analysed and inform what is submitted here. The full report will be written up and published on our website in due course.

This report focuses on English domestic energy advice, and has three key aims: provide an overview of the history of energy policy including advice in the UK and current advice offerings, review the academic literature on the merits and drawbacks of providing energy advice, and a review of what should be considered to provide more effective energy advice to householders. The report finds that the impact of domestic energy advice on energy saving is patchy and contested, with no clear definition or appreciation of qualitative benefits or costs of its impact. Generally, there is a consensus in the literature away from a deficit model approach to energy advice provision: that solely providing information to householders will not result in a real reduction in their energy use. Despite this, multiple meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews find that energy advice does have a positive impact on domestic energy demand reduction, albeit varying depending on advice methods and characteristics.

Part of the Energy-PIECES project, this report was developed during a secondment at the Energy Savings Trust.

The problem of decarbonising heating in buildings has been studied for more than 20 years,1 but there is still no settled consensus on strategy or choice of technology. There is consensus that the problem requires analysis of the whole energy system. While there is currently much interest in the conversion of the gas grid to hydrogen as a route to heat decarbonisation, recent literature based on whole system analysis appears to indicate that heat pumps are likely to offer the cheapest decarbonisation option overall. Each new installation would achieve an immediate factor-of-three reduction in emissions, with the promise of close-to-zero emissions by 2030, as a consequence of a process that now appears unstoppable - the decarbonisation of electricity generation. Although many dwellings would also benefit from additional insulation to increase health and comfort, the overall role of insulation in reducing emissions due to heating in the UK is likely to be secondary. High levels of insulation are not essential to the deployment of heat pumps and are only likely to be cost effective in easy-to-treat properties. But technology choice is not an either-or question. Combinations of technology, such as hybrid heat pumps, and deployment of large heat pumps in district heating systems, offer obvious advantages. And even though the role of hydrogen as a vector for supplying heat to individual homes appears limited on overall cost grounds, hydrogen or hydrogen-derived fuels are likely to play a strategic role in providing backup for the electricity grid at multiple levels, in particular, for the very long-term energy storage that will be needed from about 2040. Sifting through the multiple combinations and configurations of technologies that are, and will become available over the coming 30 years will be an on-going activity. In this context, a key recent development is an understanding that technology selection has to involve an appreciation of the overall architecture of the energy system.

The clean flexibility roadmap outlines a vision for a cleaner, more flexible electricity system, which maximises the use of energy infrastructure to minimise energy bills for consumers.

Flexibility is essential for integrating the new home grown, renewable power we are building to reduce our reliance on expensive and volatile international fossil fuel markets. It is also crucial for delivering the government’s Clean Energy Superpower Mission to achieve clean power by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

Developed by the government, Ofgem and NESO, alongside energy industry stakeholders and consumer groups, the roadmap commits named organisations to specific, timebound actions to unlock flexible electricity capacity. It establishes an enduring governance framework to facilitate implementation, through tracking progress, holding action owners to account, and enabling further measures to be taken where required.

From UK Government Page - HTML Version available here.

In brief, the primary argument made is that, if the Government wishes to improve the sustainability of UK tourism, then, given the importance of travel to overall tourism emissions (S2), and the lack of technological solutions (see Annex A), it will have to address the growth in air travel by UK residents and manage demand. In the first instance, this should involve scrapping its policy of airport expansion (S5), with the use of taxes or other fiscal measures to achieve further behaviour change (S7), rather than offsets (S8). By encouraging UK residents to take more holidays at home and/or improving the attractiveness of UK holiday destinations (and associated sustainable access options), the UK economy is likely to benefit (see Annex B) and the opportunities for those on lower incomes (many of whom do not take overseas holidays) are likely to improve (S6). Over ten years of research indicates that the general public does not consider an international holiday to be necessary to achieving an acceptable standard of CREDS Consultation 005 September 2019 2 living, negating arguments that flying is now seen as 'essential' for quality of life (S6).

CREDS responds to consultations and calls for evidence from government, agencies and businesses, providing insight and expertise to decision-makers. This response was created for a call for evidence from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The consultation ran from July- September 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/fuel-poverty-strategy-for-england. CREDS provided evidence to questions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11/12, 13, 17/18, and 23/24.

This document is a report for citizens advice by CAG consultants, in association with Timur Yunusov and Jacopo Torriti.

In December 2018 Ofgem launched a Significant Code Review (SCR) looking at access and forward-looking charging arrangements. Amongst other things it is seeking to clarify "access rights and choices for small users".

Ofgem is considering the concept of minimum "core access" in its proposals. "Core access" (if it can be defined) is an amount of capacity that cannot readily be flexed and that provides for consumers' basic needs. Capacity-based (or time of use energy-based) charging might mirror this concept by considering an affordable level of "core access"

Citizens Advice is participating in the SCR and has commissioned this work to better understand the concept of core access, and understand what it means for consumers. Citizens Advice posed three key questions for this research:

Is it possible to determine a, or a set of, common core electricity network capacity levels for domestic consumers and micro-businesses?

What should the core level of access be set at?

How could this be implemented (technical or commercial solutions)? What are the barriers/risks to consumers, suppliers and networks?

In the same order, we address these questions through:

An evidence review covering experiences with capacity limits and capacity charging in other electricity markets.

Interrogation of smart meter data available from DNO innovation projects.

Commentary on the implementation options, looking at both voluntary and mandatory measures.

The evidence points to a basic core capacity of around 2-3kW, characteristic of low income consumers. However, this research simply looks at current capacity usage, and has not examined the factors contributing to capacity use. Further work is required to understand whether low income consumers are using enough electricity to meet their basic needs - it is possible that the 2-3kW figure reflects suppressed demand.

This report contains an executive summary, and is divided into the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Deriving capacity limits
4. Implementation
5. Conclusions and further work

This report is based on the findings of a research project at the University of Leeds looking at the consumption patterns of high-end and excessive consumption in households in the UK, to understand the reasons for high energy use and the structural, social, cultural and economic influences on these behaviours Data is taken from the Living Costs and Food Survey (2009 and 2001–2018 flight data), National Travel Survey

The CREDS EDI Plan exists because we recognise that the energy research community is insufficiently diverse, for example the CREDS consortium is 70% male. The aim of the plan is therefore "to foster an inclusive culture within the Centre, which promotes equality, values diversity and maintains a working and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all our staff, students, partners and stakeholders are respected." The Plan was developed by the CREDS EDI Working Group, agreed by the CREDS Executive in April 2019 and then published on the CREDS website. The Plan consists of a number of actions under different headings, against which this reports progress so far (as of Spring 2020).

CREDS is a UKRI Energy Programme focused on the critical role of energy demand in reducing carbon emissions and achieving the UK's net-zero carbon ambitions. As part its funding from UKRI, CREDS has a Flexible Fund to fill research gaps and develop research capacity. The call for Early Career Researcher-led projects was the largest single use of the Flexible Fund, with £1M (at 80% FEC) being allocated to it. As this call was for Early Career Researchers, additional support mechanisms were put in place during the call itself and a comprehensive programme of feedback has followed the call. In order to assess the effectiveness of this, a thorough evaluation was conducted looking at the call itself, its process and various aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) involved in the call. This report outlines the results. The evaluation concludes that the call was basically successful, well-run and well received. The support offered was, for the most part, enthusiastically taken up and well regarded. The qualification criteria for being an ECR, of not having held a grant as PI in excess of 100 K, alongside allowing people on non-permanent contracts to apply, were important in encouraging applicants who are not normally eligible. It is also clear that more funding for ECRs would be very welcome, potentially increasing the diversity of our research community. Based on the success of our programme, ECR funding represents a small risk from a public investment point of view.

This submission is based on our project on High Energy Consumers funded by the Centre for Research on Energy Demand Solutions1. The project investigated the potential for reduction of high-end domestic and travel-related (henceforth ''household') energy consumption to contribute to decarbonisation. Summary: We confirm known drivers of high household energy consuming behaviour as home heating, car use and frequent flying. We identify that these and other energy consuming behaviours are normalised in high consuming households and are driven by social norms and expectations rather than behaviourist understandings of discrete, rational choices primarily based on information and attitudes. We provide evidence that deliberation reveals that even high consumers believe that strong government action is required to limit some choices and make others more viable, to achieve behaviour change that has not manifested voluntarily. We therefore advise that government investment in low carbon alternatives and restriction of high consumption infrastructures and devices is necessary to achieve behaviour change in line with Net Zero targets.

Energy-PIECES was a networking and skills development project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, UK), via the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) under its Whole Systems Networking Fund. It ran from September 2018 until October 2019. It was coordinated by Anglia Ruskin Universitys Global Sustainability Institute, in partnership with the University of Cambridges Centre for Science and Policy. The project answered UKERCs call for more diverse voices to be represented in the energy sector in two ways. First, it aimed to provide opportunities for PhD and Early Career Researchers (hereafter ECRs) to engage with policy-facing organisations. Second, it sought to help embed novel Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) perspectives in places where they are under-represented.

The aim of this report is to consider how Local Authorities can better engage with publics as a part of the energy transition in a meaningful way and support the active participation of citizens in energy systems and the energy transition. The report has been informed by Social Science and Humanities literature as a means of recognising that the energy transition is not merely a technological transition, but a social one.

Local Authorities role in the energy transition and working with their citizens in doing so, has been recognised as crucial to paving transition paths. Material collated within this report is intended to better inform Energy Cities and its partners, Local Authorities and Municipalities, civil society groups and others interested in how citizens can be supported and encouraged to participate in energy system developments as a part of the energy transition. The findings in this report are therefore intended to directly help Local Authorities across Europe in implementing more participative approaches to their governance practices in energy systems.

Delivered as part of the Energy-PIECES project, this report was developed during a secondment with Energy Cities.

The transition to sustainable travel within large organisations presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. Within this, the management of staff travel, particularly parking policies, emerges as a focal area for sustainability intervention. Based on a placement with Englands National Health Service (NHS) Net Zero Travel and Transport team, this Energy SHINES policy brief explores the implications of adopting fair and sustainable travel policies, focusing on the management of staff parking, in line with the requirement to reduce private car use to meet emission goals.

The brief discusses the contextual nuances of staff travel choices and the potential of policy interventions to encourage sustainable travel modes. Through a detailed review of NHS parking policies and broader academic literature on transport practices. It underscores the need to develop comprehensive trave

The working paper reviews a wide range of options that could be incorporated into a reformed national market and help the government make a well-informed decision on which market structure to take forward.

This Policy Brief was published by the Centre for Energy Policy, University of Strathclyde, in part with UKERC funding. Read more here: https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00094709

A central concern in debates on delivering net zero is how the costs are distributed. A key issue is the burden on UK households and businesses where costs are borne through electricity bills, which raises two specific concerns:

Here we use economy-wide scenario simulation modelling to consider the impacts of recovering green costs from UK households in different ways. At this stage, the authors deliberately abstract from how funded actions might support economic expansion, focusing instead on how introducing additional green costs affects distributional and economy-wide outcomes depending on who bears the cost. They test three 'who pays' options for the introduction of an illustrative additional green cost:

The authors' central finding is that recovering green costs through electricity bills produces the least favourable and most regressive economy-wide outcomes. Crucially, the results show that adding further green costs to bills will trigger a sustained increase in the user price of electricity. This will not only damage system wide decarbonisation activity and energy security by disincentivising the uptake of decarbonisation solutions in private transportation, residential heating, and industry, but exacerbate energy cost driven price pressures across the economy.

Recovering green costs through taxation (on income or consumption) limits further electricity price pressure and other negative effects across the economy and income groups. However, the precise impacts depend on workers' ability or willingness to maintain real incomes amid wider economic change.

Energy is a crucial element for development in almost every aspect of community life such as education, health, food, and security, and it can contribute to farming productivity, income generation, and the creation of networks that enable youth to work from their villages. Despite this, around 1 billion people globally do not have access to sustainable energy sources, and 80% of those people live in rural areas across 20 countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. To decrease this energy access gap, and to improve rural livelihoods and increase economic opportunities in rural areas, Productive Uses of Energy (PUE) offer an untapped opportunity: examples of PUE include irrigation and post-harvest processing.

Despite the benefits of PUE, they are often not considered in the planning off-grid rural electrification developments. This may be partially attributed to a lack of capital; riskyframework conditions; and a lack of clear policy guidelines available on the subject. The latter of which was the focus of this research project.

Delivered as part of the Energy-PIECES project, this report was developed during a secondment with Practical Action.

Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) may be key to reducing carbon emissions from land travel. Transport emissions are flatlining but not coming down, and AVs are seen as a techno-fix. This working paper reveals that the priorities of people around autonomous vehicles differ from those of policy-makers and developers. The Institute for Transport Studies at University of Leeds have been researching public views of CAVs. In particular, we explored views of privately-owned and shared CAVs, as the highest carbon reduction benefits of CAVs arise from their being shared. Shared vehicles can transport many more people throughout the day, requiring a smaller vehicle fleet. The latter can include ‘taxis’, car clubs, and public transport modes. This research used three investigative methods to gather information, being: a choice experiment, deliberations, and a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) exercise. This Working Paper shares their qualitative work package. The findings appear to offer support for shared CAVs over privately-owned modes. For policy-makers, there are warnings that people do not really understand CAVs, and that people want the inequalities of current transport systems to be avoided in the future.

This project explores how industry, policymakers and researchers understand the Government's proposed Reformed National Pricing model following the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements decision.

To understand how major stakeholders are considering these future changes, the UCL Centre for Net Zero Market Design and the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) co-convened a workshop to understand stakeholders' perspectives and opinions on RNP.

Bringing together 65 senior leaders from industry, policymaking, and academia, the full-day workshop held on November 13, 2025 at the University of London's Senate House reflected on the implications of retaining a single national electricity price. The workshop aimed to understand participants' views of RNP and how it should be applied to maintain the pace of system investment, ensure operational efficiency, and protect affordability and fairness for electricity consumers.

From this workshop, a briefing paper and a Full Report were published (View the full report here).

This briefing paper summarises the main points discussed throughout the one-day workshop and analyses key themes. Ahead of the Reformed National Pricing Delivery Plan, the briefing illustrates how market participants and observers understand the coming reforms and their impact on the functioning of the electricity system.

This project explores how industry, policymakers and researchers understand the Government's proposed Reformed National Pricing model following the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements decision.

To understand how major stakeholders are considering these future changes, the UCL Centre for Net Zero Market Design and the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) co-convened a workshop to understand stakeholders' perspectives and opinions on RNP.

Bringing together 65 senior leaders from industry, policymaking, and academia, the full-day workshop held on November 13, 2025 at the University of London's Senate House reflected on the implications of retaining a single national electricity price. The workshop aimed to understand participants' views of RNP and how it should be applied to maintain the pace of system investment, ensure operational efficiency, and protect affordability and fairness for electricity consumers.

From this workshop, a briefing paper and a Full Report were published (View the briefing paper here).

The full report details the intentions of hosting this workshop and the full day's agenda. It also contains specific topic-by-topic explanations collating participants' perspectives on each reform addressed in the REMA Summer Update.

This information is supplemented by methodological information including a description of the pre-workshop survey undertaken and tools provided by the UCL Climate Action Unit to aid the collection of information from participants throughout the workshop.

Covid-19 has forced countries around the world to make massive adaptations to the normal way of life to reduce the risk of the spread of the virus. This briefing sets out new insights into how people's travel patterns have adapted over time and why. It draws on national data sources and a major panel survey of over 6000 people conducted in July and December 2020. It calls for a major realignment of investment and policy to ensure that we do not return to the overcrowded, congested, polluting and unhealthy transport system that people had come to accept as inevitable.

This report sets out the key energy priorities for the new Labour Government and explores how action can be galvanised across a number of key areas, including electrification, renewable heat, industrial strategy, equity and nature.

The UK is seeing renewed interest in social energy tariffs as a route to providing more predictable and adequate support to households struggling with high energy costs. As part of a UKERC project on social and flexible tariffs, this brief assesses how different tariff designs, namely direct bill support, unit price discounts and rising block tariffs, can improve affordability while remaining deliverable and aligned with wider energy system goals.

The UK Gigafactory Commission was established with the purpose of assessing the UK's current position and setting out, as clearly as possible, the steps required to secure further UK gigafactory investment and strengthen the UK's battery supply chain. The Commission's remit was to determine key priorities for policy action with a view to ensuring that the UK is competitive, resilient and prepared to seize the economic growth opportunities.

The Commission brought together expertise from across industry, policy, academia and public service. The recommendations formulated are intended for His Majesty's Government, for industry leaders, for investors and for all those concerned with the future direction of this vital sector. The findings of the Commission are based on analysis of industry data, consultation with stakeholders and a thorough review of international trends.

The Commission sets out ten priority recommendations that together build on existing interventions to form a coordinated strategy to secure UK gigafactory investment, strengthen supply chains and protect automotive competitiveness.

To secure long-term automotive competitiveness and energy security, the UK must adopt an interventionist mindset, acting decisively with financial incentives and proactive engagement. A tripartite strategy focused on OEM, battery plants and active material investment is central to achieving this.

The report identifies key strengths, opportunities, issues and, most importantly, actionable interventions that could see the sector thrive as it faces the challenges thrown up by climate change, and the goals of ensuring energy security, reaching net zero and delivering economic growth.

The IOP commissioned the expertise of its membership to provide robust scientific evidence on priority technology advancements for nuclear and renewable energy generation (nuclear power, photovoltaics), energy storage (batteries) and transmission (high-temperature superconductors).

The Faraday Institution was pleased to contribute to the section on battery energy storage via the expertise of Martin Freer and Stephen Gifford.

The report comes to conclusions in key areas, such as R&D, research and scale-up infrastructure, skills development, and recycling and sustainability, outlining the following top priorities.

This briefing highlights the groups of people that academic research has identified as vulnerable to experiencing fuel poverty and transport poverty. Fuel and transport poverty are distributed across the UK, although the groups affected in each place can vary and the characteristics can be different depending on the location and make up of households.

This analysis evaluated a number of questions posed by the Smart Systems and Heat team and used the data from the CRaB Project to explore whether there were relationships between factors. For example whether there was a relationship between house type and form of water heating

In this report we provide a brief overview of the UKERC Whole Systems Networking Fund, before providing summaries from each of the projects awarded during the programme

The Zero-In on NI-Heat project is a multidisciplinary, women-led project that investigates opportunities and barriers on the road towards zero emission targets in heat sector. Zero-In on NI Heat has a focus on the indigenous features of Northern Ireland (NI). This NI-specific study was carried out because of the unique geographical position of NI, prevalence of oil heating (68 % of domestic sector), high rates of fuel poverty (22%), its abundant renewable energy resources (46.8 % contribution to power sector1), and exclusion of NI from the majority of UK wide studies in relation to the subject area. The past political stalemate caused in part by an inefficient Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) highlights the utmost importance of research in relation to decarbonisation of the NI heat sector. Ulster University (UU) has been the lead partner on this project with a

Steering Committee consisting of female representatives from key organisations in the NI heat sector, including the Department for the Economy, the Utility Regulator, a local renewable industry group (NIRIG), the transmission and distribution system operators (NI Electricity Networks and SONI), an energy charity (NEA Northern Ireland), the Consumer Council and a public affairs consultancy (Stratagem).