Professor Matthew Hannon

Personal statement

Matthew works as a Professor of Sustainable Energy Business and Policy at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strathclyde Business School. His research examines the business models, policies and technologies necessary to accelerate the transition to a socially equitable, net-zero economy.

He has (co-)led major research projects, including the Scottish Universities Insight Institute’s Carbon Offsetting for Communities, UKRI’s £10m EnergyREV consortium on smart, locally led energy systems, as well as both the UK Energy Research Centre’s ‘Whole Person - Whole Place’ net-zero neighbourhood retrofit and Community Energy Finance projects. His work has been published across ‘Financial Times 50’ ranked journals and two books on innovation to accelerate the energy revolution. His work has also enjoyed extensive media coverage (e.g. BBC, Forbes) and he has also provided commentary for national media outlets like the i newspaper and The Conversation.

His work has led to him providing expert witness testament to parliamentary committees and been cited in government and parliamentary reports. He has written reports on behalf of the World Energy Council and sat on Scottish Power Energy Networks’ Customer Engagement Group to inform their five-year business plan for Ofgem’s RIIO-ED2. He is also a member of the BSI/Defra advisory group for Nature Investment Standards, USwitch’s Green Tariff Accreditation Panel and was paired with a senior local MP for the Royal Society Pairing Scheme. He is a council member of the British Institute of Energy Economics, chair and trustee of the community energy charity South Seeds. Finally, he is co-founder and host of the Local Zero podcast, which champions local action to tackle climate change and profiled as the Times Pod of the Week.

Projects:

• Principle investigator of the Scottish Universities Insight Institute funded project - Carbon Offsetting and Communities: co-developing alternative place-based voluntary offsets in Scotland
• Principle investigator on an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account project, titled Community energy at a crossroads: Co-developing a path forward for South Seeds and the UK community energy sector.
• Principle investigator on an Energy-REV flex-fund project titled Smart local energy systems for a ‘just transition’
• Co-Investigator on a UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) funded project titled ‘Whole Person - Whole Place’ energy solutions for net-zero neighbourhoods, which explores how social relations impact energy retrofitting decisions.
• Co-Investigator for the UKRI £8m Energy Revolution Research Consortium to support a smart, locally led energy system. Co-I for work packages on: (1) business and finance; and (2) policy and regulation (commenced Dec 2018).
• Co-Investigator on UK Energy Research Centre funded Community Energy Finance project (2017-2019). Lead on community energy case studies work package.
• Co-Investigator on Political hyping of new energy technologies project to explore how parliamentary processes fuel or deflate expectations surrounging low-carbon technology innovations. We focus in particular on tipping-points between political support or opposition to new technologies.

PhD supervision:

• Kristine Heimdal - An ecosystem approach to establishing Glasgow as a centre of net-zero innovation.
• Josh Oxby - Jobs, innovation and the net-zero energy transition: employment opportunities for Scotland and their equitable distribution
• Finlay Kerr - Low-carbon heat for low-income communities: Locally owned business models to capture mine water geothermal heat for Scotland’s ex-mining communities (ETP Industrial Doctorate, co-funded by Scottish Enterprise).
• Horacio Gonzalez - The role of intermediaries in supporting absorption and desorption of novel energy innovations (completed 2023).
• Rui Hu - The Chinese innovation system for wind energy: structure, functions and performance (completed 2017).

Selected journal publications:

• Hannon, M., Cairns, I., Braunholtz-Speight, T., McLachlan, C., Mander, S., Hardy, J., Sharmina, M. (2023) Carrots, sticks and sermons: Policies to Unlock UK Community Energy Finance. Energy Research and Social Science, 100.
• Cairns, I., Hannon, M., Braunholtz-Speight, T., McLachlan, C., Mander, S., Hardy, J., Sharmina, M., & Manderson, E. (2023) Financing grassroots innovation diffusion pathways: the case of UK community energy, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 46.
• Knox, S., Hannon, M. J., Stewart, F., Ford, R., (2022) The (in)justices of smart local energy systems: A systematic review, integrated framework, and future research agenda, Energy Research and Social Science, 83
• Braunholtz-Speight, T., McLachlan, C., Mander, S., Hannon, M. J., Hardy, J., Cairns, I., Sharmina, M., & Manderson, E. (2021). The long term future for community energy in Great Britain: a co-created vision of a thriving sector and steps towards realising it. Energy Research and Social Science, 78
• Braunholtz-Speight, T., Mander, S., Hannon, M., Hardy, J., McLachlan, C., Manderson, E. & Sharmina, M. (2020) Business Models and Financial Characteristics of Community Energy in the UK, Nature Energy 5 pp: 169–177
• MacKenzie, N., Knox, S., Hannon, M. (2020) Fast Reactor Technology and the Entrepreneurial State, Business History
• Skea. J., Hannon, M. J., van Diemen, R., Rhodes, A., Gazis, E., Hu, R. (2019) Energy Innovation for the 21st Century: Accelerating the Energy Revolution. Edward Elgar Publishing: Cheltenham
• Hannon, M. J., Topham, E., MacMillan, D., Dixon, J. Collu, M. (2019) Offshore wind, ready to float? Global and UK trends in the floating offshore wind market, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
• Hannon, M. J., van Diemen, R., Skea. J. (2017) Lost at sea or a new wave of energy innovation? Examining the effectiveness of UK wave energy innovation policy since 2000, University of Strathclyde
• Hu, R., Skea, J., Hannon, M. (2017) Measuring the energy innovation process: An indicator framework and a case study of wind energy in China, Technological Forecasting and Social Change 127 pp: 227-244
• Bolton, R. P. G., Hannon, M. (2016) Governing sustainability transitions through business model innovation: The case of UK local authority application of the energy service company model, Research Policy 78 (9) pp. 1731–1742