Written evidence submitted by Paul Merchant, University of Bristol, Daniela Schmidt, University of Bristol and Claire Cox, Independent Researcher (BSE0094)
Introduction
We are responding to this call for evidence as researchers who carried out the ‘Keywords for Environmental Research and Engagement’ project at the University of Bristol in 2023 and 2024, funded by a grant from the University’s Policy Support Fund. This project co-created workshops with climate-engaged community partners in the city of Bristol to explore public understandings of frequent terms in environmental policy and research. The project assessed the extent to which abstract terms (including ‘transition’ and ‘net zero’) hinder collaborative decision-making and progress, and published a policy brief proposing a simple, replicable model for enhanced community engagement in environmental policy development.[1] We would be pleased to further discuss any elements of our response.
Our work has clearly shown that communities in Bristol have partial and conflicting understandings of the meaning of net zero, energy transition and other wider climate change adaptation and mitigation terminology. Communities’ key concerns are the cost of living, and especially energy prices, and the need for job creation. These concerns are often accompanied by scepticism towards the energy transition and net zero due to the perceived associated costs.
Specific to the energy transition: the fundamental design of the national grid, the ability to feed renewable energy into the grid, and challenges associated with other forms of energy were not clear to the participants of the workshops we conducted, thereby creating impatience with a perceived lack of action on energy costs. In participants’ lived experience, increasing renewable energy production does not mean consumers pay less.
Communication around net zero too often focuses exclusively on the costs and the changes required to current habits and lifestyle choices. The co-benefits to health, energy bills, and biodiversity from cities of green infrastructure, energy-efficient buildings and construction (Berry et al., 2015) are not the focus of prevailing narratives around the energy transition, despite their clear ability to reduce illness, save lives, reduce costs and support nature’s contribution to people (Bednar-Friedl et al., 2022; Dasgupta, 2021).
Furthermore, as transition is seen as cost, many infrastructure investment lifecycles in our cities and beyond are not communicated as potential transformation opportunities linked to net zero activities such as transport infrastructure, housing, or land use. The cost avoided by these actions, in relation to both adaptation and mitigation costs, is not communicated clearly.
Previous analysis has shown that local climate plans [Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, section 19, subsection 1A, 2008.] (Reckien et al., 2018) do not clearly communicate the benefits for marginalised communities. This resonates with our experience in conducting workshops in Bristol, as outlined below. Adaptation options such as new parks and ponds in cities reduce the average temperature, thereby reducing needs for cooling, improving air quality, and providing recreational space linked to enhanced mental health and well-being (Kumar et al., 2024; Tomson et al., 2021).
However, prevailing narratives of the energy transition focus on the production of energy rather than on measures to reduce current and projected energy consumption. Changing materials for roads, increasing reflectivity of building materials, green roofs and building construction measures can reduce heat risks and costs for adaptation for vulnerable communities. These are initiatives which will be needed in response to warming climates.
One of the workshops we conducted in 2023, with Eastside Community Trust in the Bristol neighbourhood of Easton, was themed explicitly around the keyword ‘energy’. In this case, discussions during the workshop showed that not all participants had clear and accurate information about household energy consumption and options for saving energy. We used cards with simple drawings of electric household appliances and images reflecting the journey that energy takes from production to our homes in order to generate a discussion around current costs and challenges (e.g. the stress caused by prepayment gas and electricity meters) as well as potential future costs and savings associated with the energy transition.
We also held a focus group session with local Bristol businesses, facilitated by the sustainability consultancy Future Leap, in March 2024. In this session, a clear feeling emerged that greater education was needed around the rationale behind the energy transition, as well as its costs, particularly for adults in positions of responsibility and influence. Subsequent discussions with Future Leap representatives around their involvement with projects supporting retrofitting in the West of England moreover suggested that the need for education was particularly acute among those most directly engaged in retrofitting processes (i.e. tradespeople).
At the same time, our business focus group members were conscious that ‘over-education’ on costs and risks might lead to feelings of hopelessness or apathy. There was felt to be a need for a greater focus on co-benefits of measures undertaken as part of the energy transition.
Our project findings indicate that an important reason behind the spread of the ‘anti net zero narrative’ is the abstract and hard-to-understand nature of the term ‘net zero’ itself. The workshop we co-organised with the Heart of BS13 community group in the deprived Bristol neighbourhood of Hartcliffe, for example, was initially themed around ‘net zero’. Once the workshop with local residents got underway, however, it quickly became apparent that while net zero is an often-used concept, participants did not engage with the term but instead emphasized that their concerns were much more about the lived experience of the cost of living crisis and ongoing social marginalisation, despite their acute vulnerability to climate change risks in the future. The focus of the discussion therefore moved to the use and upkeep of open spaces, the lack of reliable public transport connections, the need to generate more biodiversity, growing food, nature corridors, safe leisure space, and green employment.
It is important to note that all of these concerns could be reframed as co-benefits of a transition to net zero, but government communication has not yet achieved this. As things stand, conversations with workshop participants emphasized barriers to engagement, such as perceived lack of local authority council support to enable adaptations and improvements.
Taken as a whole, our series of workshops and focus groups led us to conclude that top-down, large-scale communication campaigns on the energy transition are often ineffective, especially when they fail to communicate co-benefits or related positive developments (e.g. the new national forest in the West of England). Wherever possible, engagement campaigns should draw on local lived examples, in line with the now broadly recognised value of local knowledge and its importance in climate change responses (IPCC, 2018), in order to present the co-benefits of energy transition initiatives in concrete and meaningful ways. This may well mean avoiding the language of ‘net zero’ entirely.
Some of the most effective mechanisms for engagement and education on the energy transitions are networks and partnerships that bring together grassroots community organisations and allow them to scale up their work. An example from our region is the Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership, which connects over 1,300 organisations, and was instrumental in the development of Community Climate Action Plans by six local organisations in March 2022. Networks of this kind make productive use of existing relationships of trust at a local community level. Our work suggested that awareness of and engagement with Community Climate Action Plans was much greater than engagement with plans produced by local authorities themselves. A positive role for government (at local or national level) could therefore be the promotion and funding of local climate and nature partnerships.
An important strand of our work related to the methods used in environmental consultation and engagement. We made use of creative tools such as collaborative art-making and ‘walkshops’ (workshops conducted along a walking route outside, engaging with the local environment), which have been shown to help reduce perceived power inequalities and facilitate more open and productive conversations (Heseltine Institute, 2022). Government bodies should consider implementing in-person methods with local community groups and networks in lieu of paper-based or online surveys.
Where we faced barriers to engagement, this stemmed from previous over-consultation without clear results, a wider consultation fatigue, and concern about “extractive” over-consultation of certain vulnerable groups. It is therefore crucial that engagement activities are adapted to their specific audiences, and that meaningful follow-up and communication of outcomes is built into engagement activities from the outset.
Our project led to the following principal recommendations to improve the quality of public consultation and engagement on environmental policy initiatives:
. Start meaningful engagement and community-led input at the earliest opportunity in the policy development consultation process, working with local community champions.
. Approach consultees with a participatory framework and not a top-down agenda.
. Recompense participants and their time as an acknowledgement of their value.
April 2025
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[1] https://www.bristol.ac.uk/policybristol/policy-briefings/environment-inclusivity-community/