Nottingham Business School has been selected to lead a European-wide project to tackle energy poverty.
The four million Euro scheme will involve 15 PhD researchers working across the continent, exploring different Positive Energy Districts (PEDs), which aim to tackle poverty by generating local and decentralised energy ecosystems.
Evidence from the research will be used to create tools, systems and policies to be used by cities and councils to transition into PEDs.
In Nottingham, the business school, part of Trent University, will collaborate with the city council and energy efficiency experts to explore how new technology could be implemented into the area's existing infrastructure.
The overall aim of the project, funded by research and innovation programme Horizon 2020, is to support communities produce more energy than they use.
It is being coordinated by Dr Kostas Galanakis, from the Business School, with a team of co-investigators from the school’s human resource management and economics departments.
Dr Galanakis said: “A centralised system of energy creation is not working for large parts of the population who are experiencing fuel poverty and it is not environmentally sustainable.
"This project will consider policy, technology and the needs of society and citizens to explore how we can transition to local, carbon neutral systems of energy production which meet the needs of all energy consumers.”
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Wayne Bexton, head of energy services at Nottingham City Council, added: “Horizon 2020 has enabled accelerated research within energy innovation across Nottingham.
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"In conjunction with Nottingham Trent University, we have already piloted a variety of new low carbon technologies, which we hope will become commonplace as we move to a carbon neutral future.
“We now look forward to the latest programme helping identify the tools, systems and policies that allow us and other cities to meet carbon neutral aspirations in a just manner through creating citizen focussed positive energy districts.”
The PhD researchers will be selected at a recruitment event at Nottingham Trent University in July. The project will also inform future developments in the NBS PhD programme.
Co-investigator and principal lecturer in human resource management and PhD programme leader at NBS, Dr Néstor Valero-Silva, said: “We are bringing together a national and international community of researchers, and other relevant stakeholders, to identify how we can generate a shared vision, with actions that have a real impact on energy production and consumption, using a systems thinking approach.”