Energy Research & Social Science最新文献

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European governments have deployed targeted and untargeted financial support to protect vulnerable households from the impacts of the recent energy crisis. However, there is little knowledge of income elasticity of energy expenditure among households experiencing energy poverty. We therefore examine the link between energy expenditure and household income levels, considering a spectrum of factors including energy poverty status, energy efficiency of homes, and socio-demographics. We use England's official energy poverty definition, ‘Low-income, low-energy-efficiency’, and analyse the government's ‘Fuel Poverty Dataset’ from 2019. We find that, for all income groups, by far the greatest impact on energy expenditure is the dwelling's energy-efficiency rating, followed by floor area. An increase in income has negligible effects on energy expenditure for all income groups, but greatest for those in energy poverty, suggesting that even though most of their energy-oriented financial support is used for other pressing needs, this still offers some relief from energy poverty. We conclude that energy-efficiency improvements in homes would yield the most substantial and enduring financial benefits for these households, highlighting the need for targeted retrofitting policies. Additionally, older homeowners in energy poverty may need help to move into smaller, energy-efficient homes that are less expensive to heat.

This paper proposes the concept of the informality- energy innovation- finance nexus, as a theoretical framework to analyse micro-grid based urban off-grid energy access. The provision of energy access in urban informal settlements has received increased attention by scholars working on informality and energy in recent years. Recently, scholars have looked at the off-grid-urban informality nexus and have argued for the integration of off-grid electrification technologies in South Africa's informal settlements. Concurrently scholars have argued for more user centric business models for off-grid contexts. Off-grid technologies like micro-grids and stand-alone solar home systems have become an integral part of the energy landscape of energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa and can fill a key gap for unelectrified urban informal settlements. However, there remains a gap in the literature linking user-centric off-grid business, financing models and urban informality. This paper fills this gap and argues for greater contextual embeddedness and attention to the local context when implementing off-grid business models in settings of urban informality. This paper draws on the findings of the Umbane project, a pilot study on solar powered refrigeration for women owned enterprises connected a micro-grid in an informal settlement Qandu-Qandu in Cape Town, Khayelitsha. This paper uses mixed research methods, including semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurship project participants and a survey. This paper offers key insights from our practice-based work on implementing solar micro-grids in settings of informality and the contextual factors and drivers that shape the informality, energy-innovation and finance nexus.

The global green hydrogen rush is prone to repeat extractivist patterns at the expense of economies, ecologies, and communities in the production zones in the Global South. With a socio-ecological risk analysis grounded in energy, water, and environmental justice scholarship, we systematically assess the risks of the ‘green’ hydrogen transition and related injustices arising in 28 countries in the Global South with regard to energy, water, land and global justice dimensions. Our findings show that risks materialize through the exclusion of affected communities and civil society, the enclosure of land and resources for extractivist purposes, and through the externalization of socio-ecological costs and conflicts. We further demonstrate that socio-ecological risks are enhanced through country-specific conditions such as water scarcity, historical continuities such as post-colonial land tenure systems, as well as repercussions of a persistently uneven global politico-economic order. Contributing to debates on power, inequality, and justice in the global green hydrogen transition, we argue that addressing hydrogen risks requires a framework of environmental justice and a transformative perspective that encompasses structural shifts in the global economy, including degrowth and a decentering of industrial hegemonies in the Global North.