Our energy futures: public support and engagement for low energy futures

Working with public participation charity Involve, the EDRC has convened a long-term citizens’ panel. The panel consists of 40 people, selected to be broadly reflective of the UK population. They will test the social mandate for reducing energy use and emissions through social as well as technological change.  

Panel meetings are arranged in eight discrete ‘blocks’ over two years. Each block focuses on a specific theme: 

• Climate and modelling basics 

• What we eat 

• What we buy 

• Where we live 

• How we travel 

• Integrating the sectors 

• Trade-offs, synergies and wider implications 

• Overall conclusions and recommendations  

The project combines qualitative deliberation with quantitative modelling, enabling the generation of socially-informed model scenarios. It explores novel ways of bringing very different forms of evidence together to provide a more robust basis for policy development.

The project seeks to answer the overarching question, “As a nation we need to use less energy, to meet our climate targets, increase energy security, and save households money. How can we do this in ways that work for everyone?”. It does this by: 

• Exploring informed public opinion on the acceptability of various aspects of energy demand reduction 

• Exploring the underlying conditions needed to support people to make changes that could deliver a low energy future while also improving quality of life 

The starting point for the panel’s discussions is the Positive Low Energy Futures (PLEF) model, which assesses the potential for energy demand reduction to contribute to UK climate targets.  

In each block, the panel hears information from expert speakers. They are then guided through a series of conversations by professional facilitators, enabling them to draw conclusions informed by high quality evidence and their diverse values, views, and lived experience.  

The outcomes of the panel’s discussions in each block are used to develop new ‘panel-inspired’ model scenarios. This new modelling is then tested with the panel and further refined as necessary. 

Early findings indicate that most people are willing to make changes to various aspects of their lives in order to reduce energy use and emissions. This needs to be underpinned by consistent and sustained government leadership, and adequate support to ensure that people, especially those already marginalised or vulnerable, are not negatively affected. There is, however, scepticism about the ability of government to achieve this.  

Panel members broadly support change being enabled and facilitated, but not imposed. In some aspects (eg dietary change), members showed significantly less willingness to change than was modelled as technically possible in the PLEF model. In other aspects (eg changing product consumption patterns) the results show a willingness amongst some to go beyond even the most ambitious PLEF scenarios. 

We will continue to work with the panel to generate in-depth insights relating to key sectors and to the UK energy system as a whole. The project provides particularly valuable evidence for policymaking by producing technical modelling that better reflects the ways that real people think and act, when properly informed and with space to exchange views with people with different perspectives. This can help overcome the increasing polarisation of public and political debate, steering away from simplistic headlines towards thoughtful consideration of difficult trade-offs. 

It also opens avenues for future research by demonstrating one way that citizen deliberation can be combined with quantitative modelling, which we hope will lead to wider consideration of ways in which models can be better informed by social intelligence.