Envisioning smart energy transitions with institutional innovations

Full project title: Envisioning smart energy transitions with institutional innovations: a comparative study of Hong Kong, Seoul and Bristol

Duration: 8 April 2024 to 31 December 2025

Other UWE Bristol researcher: Dr Kwok Chun

Funder: Hong Kong Baptist University

This is a co-developed project with Hong Kong Baptist University. 

Globally, achieving ambitious net-carbon goals by the mid-century necessitates rapid transformation of increasingly interconnected energy systems through digitalisation, decarbonisation, and decentralisation. Existing supply-side decarbonisation efforts mostly led by governments and utilities expose limits in achieving targets in time. To complement supply-side efforts, demand-side solutions embedded in smart energy community systems emerge as a crucial net-carbon strategy.  New possibilities offered by big data-driven smart metering technologies, the importance of engaging households in data sharing to foster energy saving, shifting demand to off-peak time, and producing renewable electricity on a large scale have attracted growing attention worldwide. However, public distrust regarding the sharing of smart energy data at community, market, and institutional levels, has hold households from adopting more environmentally friendly energy behaviours.

The research is a comparative study of four cities, Hong Kong, Seoul, Lyon  and Bristol. We aim to develop and apply a digital trust framework to understand and conceptualise critical trust gaps and trust-building mechanisms in engaging households in smart community energy systems. We will adopt Urban Living Labs as an engagement space for co-learning, co-experiment, and co-create to test a variety of trust-driven data sharing initiatives in smart energy communities. 

This study focuses on community-based sharing of household electricity consumption and solar electricity generation data. Our integrated framework has a focus on digital trust, and it will guide us to understand and explain the co-evolution of household energy behavioural change with data collection and data sharing in response to smart grid technological advancement and socio-institutional processes. The Asian-European comparative perspectives obtained will help enhance the robustness and applicability of the framework in different nations and cities, and in both western and Asian contexts. These four cities are chosen to represent cities which show distinct digital trust models, as well as at different stages of electricity market liberalisation with varying relationships between end-users and utilities. Our case studies will range from Hong Kong’s completely monopolistic market to Seoul’s partially liberalised market and Bristol’s completely liberalised market.

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers (laura.foggrogers@uwe.ac.uk).