I realise that I’ve never really explained my research/work to Twitter before, but I think it can be good practise for communicating clearly and I would like to get it out there more. So here goes (if you follow me for politics only, feel free to scroll on!)

My research is about the social and economic inequalities of local energy technologies, and how to fix them. Who benefits most from solar panels on their houses, or community energy projects? Can we make these technologies work to fight poverty and inequality?

Installing household solar panels or small, locally-owned wind turbines can reduce energy bills and help to tackle fuel poverty, as well as reduce emissions. This makes them powerful technologies with diverse benefits beyond energy/emissions alone.

Yet installing solar panels on your house etc can be expensive. There are government incentive/subsidy schemes available which effectively pay people to do this, but the process typically requires time, know-how, home-ownership and (you guessed it) money.

Because of this, higher income groups are much better placed to reap the benefits of these technologies and subsidies than people on lower incomes/in poverty. Given the financial benefits of solar panels etc, this opens the door for inequalities to emerge and grow.

My research finds that this has been the case in Scotland. Higher income households have made thousands of pounds in some cases from solar panels and wind turbines through government subsidy, while people in lower income groups have gone largely excluded.

Community energy projects, particularly community solar, have done well to bring some of that benefit into lower income areas. But this has been on a much smaller scale and with less immediate benefit for people in their pockets.

This means that those technologies and their associated subsidies have broadly made existing socioeconomic inequalities worse. Clean energy = great, inequalities = need to be addressed if the transition to clean energy is to be just.

Given the benefits of these technologies for reducing bills etc, however, could we make them work specifically for lower income/higher deprivation/vulnerable groups who stand to benefit most? Could solar become a policy tool to fight poverty?

This is the final part of my PhD, looking at innovations in local energy in affordable housing and flats, to see how benefits can be brought to those typically excluded and how to scale it up. I will let you know by shouting from the rooftops what I find when it’s done. /