Background
Both the media and academic scholarship frequently frame decarbonisation of the energy system in terms of nation states’ policies, corporations’ actions, or individuals’ behaviour. Analysing decarbonisation in these terms fails to consider the role that local governments might play. Various Include projects have sought to correct this significant oversight by both studying and partnering with Norwegian local governments to address decarbonisation.
However, what happens in a famously centralised nation, like the United Kingdom, where local governments often lack the funds necessary to fulfil their core functions? Do British local governments consider inclusivity as they strive to decarbonise? Might such organisations have anything to teach their Norwegian counterparts? Include researchers at Durham University seek to answer these very questions by studying Durham County Council process for planning decarbonisation.
About the project
The Durham Climate Action Plan project draws on a mixture of methods to develop a detailed account of one English local government’s efforts to plan and implement a variety of decarbonisation strategies. One of the methods employed is participant observation. This signature anthropological method involved long-term, embedded fieldwork with Durham County Council over the course of fourteen months between October 2020 and December 2021. The project also gather data by conducting a series of interviews with key figures. Together these methods enable the careful exploration of the ideas, values and imaginaries that inform the council’s efforts to decarbonise. The mixed methods approach also provides insight into the role that the council has envisaged for residents in these decarbonisation efforts.
Durham County Council, the selected case study, administer Non-Metropolitan County Durham – a large rural, local area in the North-East of England that is home to more than half-a-million people. Owing to the presence of the Durham Coalfield the county has been a centre of coalmining in England for more than seven hundred years, but since the shuttering of the mines it suffers from a variety of socio-economic problems. Like a number of English local governments, Durham County Council declared a climate emergency in 2019. However, its efforts has been quite successful and won it plaudits from various parties.
The project focuses its efforts on the work of Durham County Council’s Low-Carbon Economy team. The council has made them responsible for planning its decarbonisation strategy. Research involves observing and participating in their various team meetings, shadowing individual members of the team as they give presentations and meet with colleagues, and conducting lengthy interviews with individual team members and other parties outside of the team involved in their various projects.
In the process of this research several discoveries has been made. These include:
- A reliance on extra-mural funding. European Regional Development Funding had been a key part of the team’s strategy for decarbonising, and the post-Brexit shift to a reliance on funds provided by central government created anxiety. The team regarded central government funding as inferior to European funding due to the former’s short-term nature.
- A strong emphasis on running a local government as if it were a corporation. This was a legacy of the 1980s and it meant that for much of the team’s existence decarbonisation had been framed not just as carbon-cutting but money-saving.
- A short-term approach to planning. The team developed comprehensive plans on a regular basis, but these plans were focused on short-term goals i.e. periods of less than half a decade. There was no real scope for long-term planning.
- A persistent loss of staff. Once employment with local government had meant stability, or, to use vernacular language, a job for life. However, many of those working on decarbonisation were precariously employed.
- A dependence on outside expertise. The constant loss of staff and the tight budgets meant that there was an exceedingly heavy reliance on consultants who took a fiscally conservative approach to project evaluation.
- A belief in communication as a solution. Initially the decarbonisation process had focused on cutting the council’s carbon footprint. However, as it broadened the team made alliances with other significant actors in County Durham. With respect to the wider public the team viewed decarbonisation as a communications issue. There was little consideration of developing a participatory approach involving bottom-up planning.
