As the focus of decarbonising the UK economy moves from electricity to heat and transport, both devolved and local administrations will have greater roles. The Scottish Government already has a Climate Change Plan, and many local authorities are following suit. This could lead to some tensions if local policy deviates from national policy.
The UK TIMES model is used by the UK Government to identify decarbonisation strategies for the UK. It represents the UK as a single region, which means that the impacts of divergent regional and local decision-making cannot be explored.
We are creating a new version of UK TIMES that splits the UK into political regions. This will, for the first time, enable us to explore the consequences of divergent policy decisions made by the various UK administrations. The scenarios will examine how local, regional and national energy system contributions and costs affect energy system transitions. The insights from the scenarios will complement the more qualitative analysis of institutional frameworks that is planned in the Devolution and local energy system development and Economic & industrial transitions projects.