The Department for Energy and Climate Change aims to reduce UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by 2050. To achieve this, people living in the UK will have to radically and permanently change their behaviour to use significantly less carbon-intensive products and services and to reduce overall energy demand
Energy overuse at the national level is both a direct and an indirect result of the millions of decisions made in homes across the UK. Directly through things like household energy and transport choices (how much gas and electricity we use, whether we take the car or travel by public transport) and indirectly through the consumption of goods and services provided by the industrial and service sectors.
Until now, the almost total absence of large scale longitudinal data in this field means that we know very little about the way in which attitudes, behaviours and actions change over time in the context of changes in a household, changes such as retirement, moving house, the birth of a child or the introduction of new ‘green’ technologies.
This project aims to see how these events and changes shape and influence environmental attitudes and actions, through analysis of data from Understanding Society , the UK’s biggest panel study of individuals and households over time.
The event will present new findings and conclude with a policy panel discussion.
Registration is open and early booking is advised as we anticipate this event will be very popular.
Lead researcher Dr Simonetta Longhi discusses the project in this podcast for our award-winning podcast series
More information on the research project The distribution and dynamics of UK citizen’s environmental attitudes, behaviours and actions