Community Energy Literature Review

The previous post addressed the topic of sea level rise with a focus on a single area of southwest England. This post looks at a wider range of climate adaptation issues which may affect all the UK. Greenpeace (2024) lists present-day effects of climate change such as heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, spells of unusually cold weather, sea level rise and coastal erosion, loss of species’ habitats and threats of extinction. It predicts that future floods in the UK “could impact two or three million people across the country if temperatures reach 2 ° C or 3 ° C above pre-industrial levels”, and notes that despite this, “thousands of new homes are still being built within high-risk flood zones, and thousands of flood defences are in poor condition.” A detailed approach to climate change adaptation is provided by Hodgkin and Rutter (2024), who begin with climate change as an existing problem for the world, citing wildfires in Canada, flooding in Libya, and drought which reduced shipping

In an address to the UN Security Council, Secretary-General António Guterres described the phenomenon of sea level rise as a “threat multiplier” which jeopardizes access to water, food and healthcare. He also referred to the potential damage to agriculture, fisheries and tourism, and to infrastructure, such as transportation systems, hospitals and schools, and to the possibility of the “mass exodus of entire populations”. He warned that “under any temperature rise scenario, countries from Bangladesh to China, India and the Netherlands will all be at risk” ( UN News, 2023 ). This post will focus on the risk to a single UK region, but some of the resources cited will be of much more general interest. Climate Central describes itself as “an independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about our changing climate and how it affects people’s lives.” Its work is organised into several programs, one of which is Sea Level Rise, which aims to provide accu