Unpacking energy equity: a UK expert and public elicitation scoping study

Peer-reviewed paper 1-046-26

The UK energy system continues to transform in response to attempts to mitigate climate change. Growing scepticism towards the energy transition has prompted calls from researchers, practitioners and political bodies for equitable, inclusive and just transitions to overcome existing inequities and avoid future unfair distribution of costs and benefits of attempts to reach net zero greenhouse gases. While energy poverty, justice and sufficiency are established terms in energy research, energy equity is not clearly defined. This is despite equity being a core part of other disciplines including public health and environmental research.

We undertook 15 semi-structured interviews with two subsamples (eight members of the public and seven academic experts) in 2025 to better understand meanings of energy equity, its conceptual value, the impact of equity approaches, and how these might be measured in the UK context. This work additionally serves as a scoping study for a wider Delphi study to create consensus on energy equity.

Participants outlined meanings of energy equity separate to energy justice, centred around equitable needs-based distribution of energy services. Energy equity was defined by a range of energy activities wider than simply demand, and temporal, spatial, societal and political scales. Participants also outlined a range of impacts of, and factors that might influence, inequities and approaches to addressing them, as well as metrics to measure these in the UK context. Findings from this study offer insight into the conceptual potential of energy equity as a goal, process, analytical framework and tool for fair, inclusive energy transitions.