Until relatively recently, public attitudes to micro-generation has been neglected as a research topic. Yet micro-generation features in UKERC 2050 energy system modeling and its deployment, in conjunction with energy efficient design, will be essential for the achievement of lower carbon buildings.
This project is using both citizens’ panels and a large scale questionnaire survey to examine public attitudes to micro-gen and related demand reduction in the city of Manchester.
Both strands of work are integrated with the European project PEPESEC, which is trialing a Swedish approach to community energy planning across Europe. The citizens’ panels combine the GRIP energy scenarios process, which has a proven ability to take stakeholders through a learning process relating to energy supply and emissions, with a mental models approach to decision-making. The results will provide information on attitudes, understanding and conceptions. Further work using the same methods will allow comparison with different stakeholder types and nationalities.
The large scale, online questionnaire survey will be offered to individuals in the Greater Manchester region who have made a personal pledge to reducing their carbon emissions. The survey will investigate the conditionality of environmental attitudes and values, specifically in relation to micro-generation and demand reduction options.