Current Research: Public Engagement Observatory
7The Observatory for Public Engagement with Energy and Climate Change is a core capability of UKERC.
A key element of the Observatory is their dedicated website and associated open access, public engagement database. Access the website here.
The UKERC Public Engagement Observatory maps the many different ways that people are engaging with energy, climate change and net zero on an ongoing basis.
It openly shares, experiments with, and undertakes these mappings with others to help make energy and climate-related decisions, innovations, and participation more just, responsible, and responsive to society.
Through its network, the Observatory makes connections and encourages learning across wider systems of public engagement in the UK and internationally.
Low carbon energy transitions depend on the meaningful engagement of society. This is key to achieving urgent social transformations and decarbonisation in ways that are responsible, just and publicly accountable. Forms of public engagement with energy and climate change are rapidly multiplying – ranging from communication, behaviour change, deliberation and citizens’ assemblies through to activism, protest, digital participation and grassroots community action.
Yet, existing engagement approaches are piecemeal, often occur in isolation, and narrowly focus on discrete forms of participation in particular issues, technologies, decisions or parts of the energy system. In response, UKERC has pioneered whole-system approaches to better understand and map the diverse ways publics are engaging with energy and low carbon transitions and how multiple forms of engagement interact in wider systems. This work underpins the Observatory capability.
The Observatory comprises three interlinked areas of activity and research.
A core activity of the Observatory is to develop and carry out new approaches that map diverse forms of public participation and engagement with energy and climate change on an ongoing basis. The Observatory is advancing three kinds of method for mapping participation: comparative case analysis, crowdsourcing and digital methods. These mappings are regularly updated and openly shared via the Observatory’s website.
The Observatory connects UK and international actors interested in public engagement with energy and climate change from different disciplines, approaches and sectors. It serves as a platform for learning and reflection about publics, participation and energy-climate related issues. This is facilitated through a series of events, webinars, workshops and shared online resources.
The Observatory’s mappings are being put into practice in collective experiments with partner organisations in government, business and civil society. Here the Observatory is actively exploring how novel approaches to mapping public engagement, and the additional insights they produce, can contribute to energy and climate-related decisions, innovations and new forms participation.
The Public Engagement Observatory is based in the Science, Society and Sustainability Research Group (3S) at the University of East Anglia. It is led by UKERC Co-Director Professor Jason Chilvers, supported by Dr Helen Pallett (as deputy lead), Dr Tom Hargreaves, Dr Phedeas Stephanides and Dr Laurie Waller.
The Public Engagement Observatory reports on the findings of a collaborative experiment on public engagement with home energy decarbonisation.
The Public Engagement Observatory reports on the findings of a major new analysis of public engagement with energy, climate change and net zero in the UK.
This briefing note introduces the Public Engagement Observatory, a core capability of UKERC. It accompanied the launch of the Observatory’s new dedicated website and open access database.
The survey is on public engagement with energy, climate change and net zero in the UK.
Through a series of collaborative experiments with partners, the UKERC Public Engagement...
This blog outlines how the Public Engagement Observatory is making a difference to policy-making,...