ECI lead: Dr Jake Barnes
The Pathways to Flexibility project explores how households can play a more active role in the UK’s transition to a low-carbon energy system. By examining how everyday routines, technologies and behaviours shape energy use, it identifies practical ways to support more flexible demand. The project aims to inform fair and effective strategies that work for real households.
As the UK moves towards a low-carbon future, households are playing an increasingly important role in transforming how energy is produced and used. Instead of being passive consumers, many households are now generating their own electricity – such as through solar panels – and adjusting when and how they use energy to better match renewable generation. This kind of flexible energy use could save the UK up to £10 billion each year by 2050. However, we still know too little about how to support and encourage households to become more flexible in their energy use.
The Pathways to Flexibility (P2F) project explores how everyday household routines and decisions shape changes in energy demand over time. Rather than focusing on one-off measures like price incentives or smart technologies, the project takes a broader, longer-term view that considers social, behavioural and technological factors together.
Using a mix of methods – including detailed ethnographic interviews with households and analysis of their energy use data – P2F will examine different pathways through which household energy behaviour evolves. These insights will then be tested at a national scale to identify ways of encouraging flexible energy use behaviours that fit real household lives across diverse household types and circumstances.
The project will provide evidence-based recommendations for policymakers, energy providers and communities to design fairer, more effective strategies for achieving flexibility – helping the UK meet its net-zero goals whilst supporting households in the transition to cleaner, smarter energy systems.
The project is led by Dr Jake Barnes and is a collaboration between the University of Oxford, University of Exeter and the Centre for Sustainable Energy. Key collaborators include Chloe McLaren Webb, Emily Cox and Julian Woodward, at the Centre for Sustainable Energy, and Dr Joerg Weber, University of Exeter Business School. The project is funded by Behavioural Research UK, via ESRC as part of UK Research and Innovation.
