News & Comment

Policy should pay closer attention to the increasing body of research on the links between energy, climate and health.

Energy plays a central role in responding to emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, from ensuring adequate healthcare services to supporting households during lockdowns. Protecting the renewable energy industry and its contribution to providing sustainable energy access for all must be an urgent priority in the current crisis.

Digital and physical games are now widely used to support learning and engagement, including in the domains of climate change and energy. We believe games have a further, underappreciated role: helping us as researchers to reflect on our own research, generating deeper understanding and, hopefully, more impactful research projects.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated changes in social and economic conditions may affect the prevalence of energy insecurity. Essential relief must be provided to the growing number of households that are energy insecure and protect them from even more dire circumstances caused by utility disconnections and unpaid energy bills.

Recovery efforts in the wake of COVID-19 must invest in energy systems that will prove cleaner and more resilient in the face of future disasters.

Energy is consumed in social environments and in the presence of social peers. But social interactions do not just happen alongside energy behaviour — the two are intrinsically linked.

The smart home technology industry promises energy savings and lifestyle improvements. However, there is little evidence that smart home technologies will reduce home energy use overall, and there are a range of emerging detrimental social impacts that require further attention from researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

More frequent and graver extreme events continue to remind us of the perils of climate change, but systematic consideration of these extremes in energy systems studies and full accounting of their impacts remains a challenge.