The Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies
Showcasing Policy Research across Sheffield Hallam University
In the UK, as with many other developed countries, domestic energy use is a major contributor to our carbon emissions – accounting for around a quarter of all emissions in the UK and heat generation is a huge part of this (representing 78% of non-transport related energy consumption in the UK- Greenpeace, 2018).
The Covid-19 pandemic and related social and economic crises have prompted calls for governments to catalyse a green recovery. This blog aims to complement these proposals, drawing on a recent article written with Aidan While about the differential capacity to act on low carbon goals across people and places.
The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting low income energy consumers hard. Short term policies have provided temporary help. However, in the long term we need policies to improve home energy standards.
Energy policy is not a key General Election battleground. There were some flickers of it early on in the campaign, but since then it has barely been mentioned in the final phase of election campaigning as the major parties double down on the repetition of their key campaign phrases.
