Past event
PEPtalk: Tearing down policy barriers on the path to greening the grid Converting proposals to new clean power
The Centre for Energy Ethics is pleased to announce the return of its Policy Engagement Practice seminar series — PEPtalks.
Please join us and our invited speakers as we explore how researchers and policymakers can work together to tackle pressing policy issues. The aim of the seminar series is to encourage academics to engage with the policy realm and equip them with practical skills needed for those engagements.
Tearing down policy barriers on the path to greening the grid: converting proposals to new clean power.
The 19th-century twin energy policy goals have been to improve energy security (plugging the gap between demand and supply) and expand access (making it affordable to all).
Within a century, significant progress has been made in achieving these goals. But as the outcome of these goals powered the Gilded Age-driven Industrial Revolution, a third problem emerged: the climate crisis — the harm being inflicted on the environment and consequently the well-being of those who consumed the available energy. The air we breathe now has become less healthy than the air breathed by the generations that preceded us.
Some of the main stakeholders in the UK energy sector — transmission and distribution companies — often operate as natural monopolies and are therefore heavily regulated through government policies. There are sweeping and discrete policy changes on the horizon. Our Peptalk focuses on what these policies are, how key players in the sector (e.g. Northern Gas Networks) are responding to the policies and how academics can be engaged in shaping the glide path to a robust British energy system.