Community Energy Literature Review

The relationship between the cost of electricity and that of gas in the UK is a subject of current debate. Domestic prices have been quoted recently as 26.32 pence per kWh for electricity and 7.97 pence per kWh for gas (CSE, 2026). Some of the reasons for the wide difference in the cost of energy from these two sources will be explored in this post, but first an example will be given of the effect that this price difference can have on the adoption of modern technology. In the UK many homes use gas boilers as their main source of heating, while only about one home in 25 has a heat pump installed. The performance of installed heat pumps listed in a UK guide indicated that owners can normally expect at least 3 kWh of heat for each kWh of electrical energy supplied to the pump (HHPG, 2026). While resistance to new technology and the capital cost of installation can partly explain the low take up of heat pumps, a comparison of running costs using the above figures shows that there is lit...

 An article entitled Finding common ground amid climate controversy explored polarisation of opinion but noted that “climate change also offers tantalizing opportunities for finding common ground” (Kirk, 2018). The author cited the need for energy efficiency as “something few argue against” along with the general notions of stewardship of the planet. This post examines two areas of common ground underlying debates between those who believe that human activity is the main cause of climate change and those who believe that the cause is largely natural. The first area is scientific evidence and the second is uncertainty. The same evidence and the same measures of uncertainty can be used differently on opposite sides of the debate. As an example, evidence of the past climate of Earth provided by the science of paleoclimatology can be used to support both sides of the argument. There is scientific evidence that earth’s climate showed large temperature changes in the past, but also th...

Three different approaches to the impacts of climate change are briefly described in this post. The first focussed on public views about five climate issues of wide interest in the UK. The second presented to a UK audience the views of a panel of experts on a wider range of climate issues, with the aim of stimulating interest and action. The third concentrated on the ways in which the benefits from climate mitigation tend to be overlooked in the European context, and how this might be remedied. Citizens’ Panel A recent publication by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) described the work of a Citizens’ Panel on climate adaptation in the UK. The aim of the project was to understand public views on the subject, and so to guide the CCC’s future advice to the UK Government (CCC, 2026). There were two key questions: “Which of the impacts of climate change are you most concerned about and why?” and “What do you think should be done to adapt to these impacts?” The panel worked on five aspe...

  State of climate action 2025 is the title of a research report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), and is the subject of an article by the C40 Knowledge Hub. Here the report is described as setting out how to close “the global gap in climate action” so as to keep the Paris Agreement goals within reach. It “grades collective efforts … across key sectors” and finds that in each sector climate action has not been adequate to “achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.” Forty-five indicators are assessed in the report and none are on track to meet their targets by the end of this decade. The report sets “actionable targets for 2030, 2035 and 2050 across the world’s highest-emitting sectors  – power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, and food and agriculture” and assesses recent progress and the rates of progress needed for the future. A few examples of the targets are: to phase out coal at least ten times faster than at present; to reduce deforestation ...

Some online resources with climate change content are outlined below. Many are blogs or include blogs. They vary in geographic scope from global to regional: many are US based, and some of the views expressed oppose the current climate change consensus. Resources are listed alphabetically and are drawn from the Feedspot online reader, which interacts with media outlets such as blogs, podcasts, magazines and news websites. URLs or web addresses for all the resources mentioned are listed in the References section. List of Resources   Carbon Brief is UK-based and covers developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. Topics covered include Carbon Offsets: their history and impacts, with a glossary and Q&A; China Policy: its growing solar power, continued use of coal, clean-energy exports and low-carbon transition in cities; and UN Climate Talks: a carbon-pricing system for international shipping, missed deadlines for 2035 climate pledges, COP 29 outcomes ...

The subject of the previous post was Daniel Susskind’s book Growth : A Reckoning . Its author outlined measures that he believed could enable continued economic growth that did far less harm to society and the environment than has previously been the case. An important factor in this kind of growth would be steering technological progress in desirable directions through measures such as economic incentives. Susskind treats this idea broadly, but a more detailed exploration is found in the paper Environmental Policies and directed technological change by Gugler, Szücs and Wiedenhofer (2024). The authors examine how different environmental policies “can steer innovation towards eco-friendly technologies”, and produce numerical estimates of their effectiveness. The policies evaluated are those “designed to address environmental market failures”. Economists have seen climate change as a type of free market failure: a failure to maximise society’s welfare, since greenhouse gas emissions ar...

Daniel Susskind’s 2024 book Growth: A Reckoning has received some enthusiastic reviews. Kate Barker described it as “an excellent book, developing a clear argument and not afraid to look really big questions squarely in the eye” (Barker 2024).  Susskind is a professor at King’s College, London, and Robert Bellafiore Jn. wrote that his book “considers the debates over growth’s causes, its recent elevation as a priority for governments, policies for promoting it, and rising concerns about its downsides” describing the work as “a concise and informative study of the idea, its past, and its potential future” (Bellafiore, 2024).  Alexander Bishop wrote at greater length in his article “Why not degrowth?” He noted that for Susskind growth “is a recent development. For most of the world’s history, from when humans started farming until roughly 1800, there was no meaningful growth. This is the period that Susskind calls “the great stagnation”. It is only since the industrial revoluti...