Postgraduate research opportunities Household Decarbonisation

There is a vital role for household decarbonisation in the broader climate change mitigation agenda. The residential sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly through energy consumption for heating, which underscores the necessity for targeted interventions to reduce its carbon footprint. In the UK, where the government has committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the Residential sector accounts for approximately 20% of total emissions. Policy is necessary to achieve emissions reductions in this sector, yet it is in this sector that the policy and technological pathway to Net-Zero is least clear.

The importance of this topic, and the policy background to this project, is thus clear. The aim and objectives of this studentship are to ground the search for appropriate policy for household decarbonisation in the UK in both the economics and the technological landscape of the issue, using the Glasgow City Region as a case study. Glasgow is expected to be one of the first net zero city with the goal of achieving this by 2030 thus household decarbonisation is an important issue in this context. Overall, this research is expected to have two main strands:

1. the macroeconomics of the household decarbonisation transition, under which examination is made on how the economy must change, in terms of economic structure and the goods and services produced, assuming the household decarbonisation transition does indeed happen; and
2. the microeconomics of incentives for households to decarbonise, which studies the policy instruments needed in order for households (or others) to choose to implement decarbonisation.

The training opportunities provided during the PhD will not only allow the candidate to upskill in subject-specific skills, they will also provide them with an opportunity to acquire highly marketable and transferable skills. The student will have accesses classes provided by Strathclyde as part of both the MRes in Research Methodology in Business and Management and the Researcher Development Programme. The student will also receive specific training through the Department of Economics in Input-Output analysis and Computable General Equilibrium modelling. The department has a growing population of people working in applied and environmental economics who will be able to guide the student in addition to the supervisory team.