Meeting the UK’s 80% carbon reduction targets (HM Government, 2008) depends on reducing energy demand, of that there is no doubt. There is much less clarity about the types of changes this entails, or how these might come about.
This cross-cutting DEMAND research insight reviews alternative methods of conceptualising and steering changes in energy demand. Each of the five approaches we describe has practical consequences – favouring, or cautioning against specific types of policy intervention. Before outlining these strategies we begin with a few words on the fundamental meaning of ‘energy demand’, that is, on what it is that is or ought to be changing.