Fair Rural Energy Futures: Towards equitable energy demand reduction in rural England

Rural areas face unique challenges and opportunities in reducing energy demand and are often overlooked by national decarbonisation policy. This project is exploring insights from the lived experience of rural citizens to assess how to fairly decarbonise rural areas of England.

Drawing on existing analysis through the Our Energy Futures Citizens’ Panel as well as a new workshop with panel members, we are identifying what citizens think about ‘rural-proofing’ energy demand reduction options.

In addition, we are exploring how to go beyond the urban-rural framing to more accurately reflect different capabilities to decarbonise within diverse rural area types (building on the ‘Local low energy futures’ project). The project will finally consider policy perspectives on how energy demand reduction policies can be tailored to rural communities.

The project aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Create a panel-inspired vision of positive low energy futures for rural areas;
• Build a typology of ‘rural capabilities to decarbonise’ through quantitative spatial analysis;
• Generate a series of policy recommendations for rural energy demand reduction, informed by the perspectives of policy stakeholders.

The project takes a mixed methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques.

Thematic analysis of secondary data from the Citizens’ Panel discussions is being undertaken, and a new workshop with a smaller group of panel members (with experience of living in rural areas) is taking place in the autumn.

A rapid review of rural-urban classification systems is being conducted. This will be used to inform the quantitative spatial analysis of ‘rural capabilities to decarbonise’.

Finally, a policy workshop will convene a variety of rural stakeholders to review the fairness and feasibility of energy demand reduction policies for rural areas.

The challenges facing rural communities are well known, both in terms of reducing energy demand and emissions as well as more general socioeconomic challenges. But it is important to recognise the heterogeneity of rural places. This work therefore aims to provide place-sensitive, actionable insights to address energy demand across a diverse range of rural areas.