Net Zero Innovation Seminar: working at the academic-policy boundary
By Dr Isabel Bennett
Across the UK, local authorities are declaring a climate emergency, seeking to lead action at a local level to reduce carbon emissions, increase biodiversity, transition to net zero and ultimately improve the quality of life of their residents and the local environment.
UCL is collaborating with the Local Government Association to create the Net Zero Innovation Network to bring together local authorities, universities and other stakeholders to address climate challenges at the local level and seek routes to achieve council’s net zero commitments.
The Network’s Programme — The Net Zero Innovation Programme (NZIP) — brings together partnerships of researchers and policy professionals from councils across all the regions in England, providing support to work collaboratively to define and co-create challenges, and the time and funding to work on their problems towards achieving local net zero targets.
In January, the NZIP launched a seminar series to provide local authorities, universities and their local partners with insights and tools to advance their net zero aims, and facilitate discussion around the challenges and opportunities of working across the academic-policy boundary on climate action. TThe first session offered a unique opportunity to hear about the work of experts in their field, and for them to have a discussion with one another about how we can work together to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The panel was chaired by Kate Richardson, Strategy and Partnership Lead- Sustainability at Lewes District and Eastbourne Borough Councils. The panellists were Professor Tadj Oreszczyn, Professor of Energy and Environment at the UCL Energy Institute and Chris Nicholls, Senior Economist, Home Energy Analysis and Research at BEIS.
Panel discussion
How can you initiate an academic- local government partnership?
Chris discussed the importance of considering the nature of the relationship between government and the academic institution. For some bigger questions, government will need to put the project out to competitive tender. However, if there is a clear academic who government is already aware of working in this then they may engage with the academic to adapt their current work to incorporate the question. Chris highlighted that he had worked with Tadj on such questions, which Tadj was able to take into consideration for his research outputs. This route is an easy and efficient mechanism to get government questions answered.
Tadj reflected that the connection can be initiated from either the government or academic side, there is a range of mechanisms which he has been involved in. These include sending academic papers to those in government, distilling research into policy briefs, organising workshops, responding to government consultationsor tenders for government projects, and mutual representing on government or project advisory boards. However, the most successful mechanism is being available at the end of the phone, as a quick source of information for government officials. This highlights the different timeframes which government operates on when compared to academia — information is needed very quickly to influence policy.
Have you had any experiences where a partnership hasn’t worked well, perhaps because of some issue of trust?
Rather than a breakdown of trust, Chris reflected on the fact that the nature of policy develop means that subsequent discussions regarding the information provided by academics must happen behind closed doors of the government department. This can mean that government cannot say exactly how the research was used.
Tadj reflected how, by providing evidence to government, there can be tensions of confidentiality, the academic desire to publish, and not wanting to communicate results ahead of peer review. There is also a tension around maximising impact, whilst also maintain independence — the fear that academics may be influenced by government, and compromising quality to create impact using the media. Chris highlighted an example of when a piece of research was commissioned to look at the energy company obligations and the Green Deal. He reflected that because the policy motivations for the options for the scheme were not communicated to the researchers, the conclusions of the research, which were critical for lack of value for money, missed that important aspect to the scheme and it would have been better to have had that conversation earlier in the development of the research to give more policy context to the academic work.
At a local level, academics will more be more likely to engage directly with the counsellor and politicians — whereas at a national level, it’s less likely. Would it be useful to have more politician and MPs engage with academic researchers and what role can policy professionals play?
Chris stated that ministers do not meet with academics very often. They get submissions from their officials about particular issues, an answer to a question that they’ve raised, or a recommendation for a policy in development. So, it is the officials who engage with academics more than ministers.
Tadj has had interaction with ministers, but mostly via advisory boards or workshops where the minister had been present.Some academicshave developed a reputation for ministerial engagement, but building such a reputation takes many years of engagement, being a phenomenal communicator, being politically impartial and being very straight talking with your views.
How have you overcome the challenge of working with traditionally siloed departments and faculties? How do we ensure that we’re not duplicating work?
Scientific disciplinary siloes have improved over the past two decades, especially in the research funders’ perspective where problems of energy demand are now viewed as multidisciplinary — including behavioural and socio-technical. One of the roles Tadj has found in his engagement work is actually highlighting work across different parts of BEIS to officials. There are also structures across government to bring together strands of net zero work, for example BEIS and MHCLG.
Chris reflected that there is some merit to have a certain amount of duplication, with different teams having slightly different approaches and generating different insights as a result. This is an issue when there are conflicting sets of advice sent up to ministers in different departments, or even to the same minister, which can cause problems with effective policy decisions. Good evidence synthesis can aid this, for example the Committee on Climate Change is good at engaging with the evidence base and synthesising evidence, and engaging with government departments. Their independence gives authority to their reports.
Often local authorities use old contacts for informal discussions when developing a research project, which then leads to projects — how can we widen the scope for new voices and ideas to be heard?
Tadj discussed how there can be an issue of ‘groupthink’ in a particular area, and breaking down barriers to bring more voices into the discussion is important. Secondments of early career researchers to enter policy organisations and workshops are some effective mechanisms to bring new voices into these areas. Also the natural churn of the civil service is a good thing from this perspective as it is constantly bringing in new people and perspectives.
What would a useful research output look like from a policy maker’s perspective, in terms of format, length, traditional policy recommendations versus generic recommendations?
Chris stressed the importance of outputs which very clearly answer the questions which policy makers have — an elevator pitch on the applications of the research is very useful, as this can be put into a recommendation document.
Tadj agreed that the most successful outputs are usually those which are short and succinct, delivered when the policy makers need it (not necessarily when the researcher thinks they do!). Tadj reflected on the limited impact he has found for policy briefs of varying length, but highlighted that good research which is picked up by the media will often find its way into policy.
Does academic research go beyond policy to look at the most effective delivery mechanisms and ensuring real world change? For example the green homes grant, offering a great opportunity and a large amount of funding, but it is proving very challenging for Local Authorities to access and deliver installations.
Tadj highlighted that ‘deployment’ of research will become more and more important as an aspect of academic research, because this is such a key aspect of net zero research. This requires a fundamental change to how academics think about both research and engagement. Also it can take many years to generate the evidence to evaluate government policy, and this needs to change because we do not have this time for net zero policy.
How do you make sure all the knowledge that you’re collecting at the moment, isn’t lost?
Chris stressed that in order to avoid loss of corporate knowledge, it is important for those conducting the policy evaluation to consider the clarity of their work — will future policy makers be able to understand how the policy was developed and the key benefits and pitfalls of the policy that the evaluation covered.
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More about the Panel
Chair: Kate Richardson
Strategy and Partnership Lead- Sustainability at Lewes District and Eastbourne Borough Councils. Kate has been working in organisational environmental management for nearly 15 years having started her career as the manager of an ISO14001 system at Lewes District Council. 9 years later she returned via energy, sustainability and transport work in London, New York and East Sussex. Kate has recently completed the separate Climate Change Strategies for both Lewes and Eastbourne both of which have a Net Zero target of 2030 and is working with the University of Sussex’s Donal Brown on the LGA’s Net Zero Innovation Fund project ‘Alternative Financing for net zero projects’.
Professor Tadj Oreszczyn
Professor of Energy and Environment at the UCL Energy Institute. Tadj has for 34 years undertaken energy and building research with a particular focus around the performance gap between theory and practice and the unintended consequences (health, comfort, etc.) of building energy efficiency. Tadj was the founding Director of the UCL Energy Institute, Principal Investigator of the EPSRC funded Smart Energy Research Lab (SERL) and Buildings theme lead for the Centre for Research in Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS).
Chris Nicholls
Senior Economist, Home Energy Analysis and Research, BEIS. Chris leads a team of analysts responsible for advising on optimal design for policies aimed at improving the energy efficiency of domestic residential buildings. He has also worked on understanding energy use and abatement opportunities in non-domestic buildings, and renewable heat policies. Most of his career has focussed on the built environment. Before moving into central government he was an economic consultant and the economist for the Construction Confederation, a construction trade association. He also co-authored the Barker Review of Housing Supply, an independent review of the UK’s new housing market.
