Climate Challenge #1: Heating and cooling homes

Climate change presents major threats to the UK’s natural environment, our communities, and our way of life. We know that limiting the risks we face means our systems and services need to change. Our homes and workplaces, our schools and hospitals, the infrastructure systems we depend on for transport, food, energy, and water—all need to move away from reliance on fossil fuels.

The first stages of decarbonisation of our energy system, particularly replacing coal with wind and solar, have produced big cuts in the UK’s climate emissions. The next step is to replace all remaining use of oil and gas, particularly in our homes. This means replacing fossil-fuel energy used for heating, cooking, and electricity with renewable energy sources such as heat pumps and solar panels. Although these are effective, they depend on other energy-efficiency measures, such as improved insulation and fuel-efficient appliances. The up-front costs can be a significant barrier, even though switching to renewables is likely to result in savings over the longer term.

The Nowadays project is designed to explore this kind of inequality, where climate change solutions like heat pumps, and the benefits they produce in terms of reduced energy bills, are more accessible to some social groups than others.

In the UK, people from ethnic minority communities are more likely to experience fuel poverty, so could have most to gain from reduced fuel bills. The Energy Price Guarantee, an initiative designed to reduce the impact of rising energy costs, which was introduced by the last government, was more likely to benefit people with higher incomes. When added to fuel rebates, this initiative had greater impact on reducing fuel poverty in white households than in black and ethnic minority households.

Who applies for energy grants?

There is some evidence that, in the past, people from ethnic minority groups have been less likely to apply for government-funded energy-efficiency retrofit schemes. Since coming into power, the Labour government has announced a new scheme to support household energy transition. The Great British Insulation Scheme is a government-funded programme that contributes to the cost of installing loft or cavity wall insulation. It is open to all householders whose home is rated A to D for council tax purposes in England, or A to E in Scotland and Wales, and has an energy performance certificate (EPC) of D to G. Ring-fenced funds are available to low-income households. While renters can apply, they must have their landlord’s permission.

Where new energy efficiency schemes are introduced, word-of-mouth recommendation could be an important way of encouraging uptake among people from minority ethnic groups. A study looking at who applies for domestic energy incentives in the UK found that people in low-income, Asian origin, owner-occupier households living in energy-inefficient terraced housing were twelve times more likely to apply for domestic energy incentives. This relationship was strongest in Bradford (26.6 times more likely), and in other West Yorkshire authorities including Calderdale, Kirklees, and Leeds.

Social relationships shape energy transition

The authors of this study say their findings “challenge conceptualisations of people from ethnic minorities as ‘hard to reach’, ‘unable to access information’, or passive subjects of environmental harm.” And they point to the importance of social relationships within local communities in shaping the way people take up energy transition initiatives:

“These Asian households may have been responding rationally to incentives, but our evidence suggests that their ethnicity, just as their belonging to a particular ethnic minority, and their social ties with others with that ethnicity, was part of what shaped this response.”

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Reference: Owen, Anne, et al. “Who applies for energy grants?.” Energy Research & Social Science 101 (2023): 103123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103123.