Scaling up local energy action: the role of partnerships, networks and policy

Panel: 3. Local action and national examples

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Ruth Mayne, ECI-CREDS, University of Oxford - Environmental Change Institute
, United Kingdom
Yael Parag, The Interdisciplinary Centre (IDC),, Israel
Noam Bergman, ECI, Oxford - Environmental Change Institute, United Kingdom
Jo Hamilton, ECI, Oxford - Environmental Change Institute, United Kingdom

Abstract

The transition to a low carbon society requires action at different levels, from the local and regional to the national and international. Achieving the carbon emissions reductions needed requires a scaling-up of energy action at all levels.

The UK Government has recognised the contribution and potential importance that local government and LCCGs can play in catalysing energy actions (energy efficiency, behaviour change and renewable energy generation). However, how actors work at the local level to implement energy action, the barriers and opportunities for effective action and how collaborations emerge and function, are not well understood. This paper aims to shed new light on these issues by assessing the development of local and regional low carbon and energy action through the story of local actors in Oxfordshire.

In this paper we explore the dynamics of action on energy and climate change in the city of Oxford and the surrounding county of Oxfordshire, UK. Over the past ten years the county has seen an increase in grassroots, bottom-up action, such as the formation of a dense network of Low Carbon Community Groups (LCCGs) working at neighbourhood or community levels, wider partnerships working at the middle (meso) level, alongside top-down action directed from central and local government through policy instruments and funding.

We first explore LCCG’s influence on energy governance at a community level, and the role that networking and learning between the LCCGs plays in the local governance of energy. We then consider how partnerships which bring together different sectors (community, business and public), such as Low Carbon Oxford, arise and how such partnerships can build on local action in order to scale up carbon emission reduction at the community and local levels. We conclude with some remarks on the interaction between national and local level energy action.

Our analysis draws on network theory, partnership theory and transition theory.