Research
Many UK coastal regions have flourished then suffered from the growth and decline of marine energy industries. This generates profound environmental and socio-cultural change for the associated coastal communities. In particular, the exhaustion of natural resources, or their imminent decline present challenges to community sustainability (the balance between economic growth, social well-being, and environmental care) and resilience (adapting to change, adversity and new opportunities). Despite this, previous research has tended to focus primarily on technical and economic assessments and not on the environmental or social-cultural impacts.
With the transition to marine renewable energies, we are interested in how historical marine energy transitions can inform our move in a way that assists communities to develop strategies to increase their resilience and that of the coastal and marine ecosystems that they depend on.
We will be looking at three specific energy transitions across our three geographical areas. The UK’s transition to marine renewable energies is partially replacing our reliance on late 20th Century North Sea oil and gas, itself preceded by whale oil (for lighting, prior to coal in the 18th-19th Centuries). These earlier marine energy transitions transformed many of Britain’s coastal regions and TRANSECTS explores how they can inform the current transition.
The TRANSECTS project has four interlinked research areas:
The TRANSECTS project has four interlinked research areas:
1. Natural Capital Stocks, Flows and Values
The marine environment comprises stocks of natural capital (including habitats, species and processes), which provide flows of ecosystem services, which can result in a range of societal benefits.
TRANSECTS will take a natural capital approach to ensure that society’s dependence on natural resources for energy is considered when assessing the impacts of marine energy transitions. We will identify natural capital stocks, flows, and associated benefits (and disbenefits) linked to Marine Energy Transitions, how they are interlinked, and how they have affected coastal community resilience.
Conceptual framework showing the total social value of natural capital stocks, ecosystem services flow and societal benefits (after Burdon et al. (2022) Environmental Science & Policy, 134, pp. 85-99).
2. ‘Re-Peopling’ the Past
In addition to the environmental, economic and social data that normally articulates industrial shifts, TRANSECTS will use an interdisciplinary place- and time-based approaches to encompass the voices, emotions, memories and identities that are impacted by marine energy transitions – ‘re-peopling’ the past for the present and future.
We will use approaches drawn from arts and humanities – integrating archaeology, historical geography, and cultural heritage (both intangible and intangible) with creative practice - to articulate how communities understand and interpret energy transitions. Heritage values are linked to a sense of place and collective identity, impacting on the health and wellbeing of coastal communities. Archaeology - fundamentally the study of the relationship between people, places, and things through time - plays a key role in understanding transitions and change. The way in which cultural heritage has been affected by, and has adapted to, past energy transitions contributes to the strengthening of community resilience. Visual and artistic responses to marine energy transitions in the past will provide starting points for contemporary creative exhibitions and outputs, through collaboration and dialogue with creative practitioners and wider publics.
We will explore these aspects through place-based and participatory methods including archaeological and archival research, participatory mapping, walking workshops, and collaborative creative practice. By integrating these different approaches, we will help coastal communities to explore their roles and responses to energy transitions, in the past, present and future.
Venn diagram showing how arts and humanities approaches complement the scientific data to help empower stakeholders and communities to foster resilience during marine energy transitions.
3. A Just Transition
We will examine the impacts of marine energy transitions on people and places, with an emphasis on just and unjust transitions. This concept refers to ensuring that shifts towards sustainable energy systems are equitable, inclusive, and do not disproportionately burden vulnerable communities. Whilst we cannot compare justice over time (because our understanding of what this means has changed) but we can compare social and political economy change.
We will focus on a range of indicators including employment patterns, unemployment, skills, earnings, housing, deprivation, life expectancy, access to green space, sustainable travel, community owned energy, perspectives on climate change and trust in local government. Such indicators, as proxies for evaluating progress, can be used as decision support tools, a means of informing policy, and supporting stakeholder dialogue and action as we collectively progress a Just Transition for coastal communities.
4. A Theory of Change
Finally, we will bring all the empirical data (in the form of an ‘Energy Transitions Atlas’) together to assist communities to develop strategies to enable future marine energy transitions that increase the resilience of coastal and marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
We will help communities to define desired outcomes, and strategize the necessary steps to achieve them, to address barriers and co-produce shared solutions to enable transformative change in future transitions. A key focus here is empowerment and capacity-building.