Zaenhaer Duman (p), Ruoshui He, Andreas Kontoleon

Weizhao Huang

This study examines the impact of Ultra-High Voltage (UHV) grid expansion on household energy consumption in China, leveraging a quasi-natural experiment framework. We analyze a sample of 27,511 households across 25 provinces. Our results indicate a significant increase of 6.8-7.0 percent in electricity consumption following the UHV grid expansion, with the effect being most pronounced in the input provinces. Specifically, households in these regions demonstrate a notable shift in energy usage, with a marked transition from traditional energy sources—such as coal and fuel oil—to cleaner energy alternatives. The findings suggest that UHV grid expansion plays a crucial role in enhancing access to electricity, thereby influencing household energy choices and contributing to the broader transition toward cleaner energy consumption. These results provide implications for energy policy, particularly in promoting sustainable energy consumption and reducing reliance on polluting energy sources in developing economies.

Weizhao Huang (p), Nazmiye Ozkan

Melek Gökmeydan Söyler

The UK is at a critical juncture in its energy transition as it strives to meet ambitious decarbonisation targets and achieve net zero emissions by 2050. With the government’s commitment to scaling hydrogen as a low-carbon energy carrier, understanding the capital and operational expenditures needed for hydrogen infrastructure is essential. The transition from natural gas to hydrogen presents complex challenges related to technology costs and infrastructure readiness. This paper presents the initial step in developing a comprehensive regional model aimed at quantifying the investment requirements for facilitating a gradual replacement of natural gas with hydrogen in the UK’s energy mix.

The model integrates elements of hydrogen production and end-use demand, while accounting for regional factors such as local renewable energy availability, industrial consumption patterns, and infrastructure capacity. Empirical data are drawn from historical UK industrial gas consumption patterns, regional renewable energy potential, and existing cost estimates for hydrogen production technologies. By leveraging insights from recent techno-economic analyses and open energy system models, the model explores a range of investment scenarios to assess the impact of cost uncertainties and policy environments. The study provides policymakers and investors with critical information on the scale of infrastructure investments required to support a regional hydrogen-dominant energy system. As an initial step, the study informs future strategic planning for hydrogen adoption across the UK.

Melek Gökmeydan Söyler (p), Elif Alkay

Krzysztof Janc

It is widely recognised that reducing the impacts of global climate change requires a fundamental change and transformation in the way we produce, distribute and consume energy. Energy transitions occur in different ways at different spatial scales. However, spatial scales have been ignored in sustainability transitions studies and the national scale has generally been the focus of the studies. In particular, although there are debates on how energy transition processes occur in regions, our knowledge on this topic remains limited. This has resulted in a lack of competence to understand why energy transitions occur heterogeneously in different places, by different institutions and actors.
This study analyses the regime structure and niche development in regional energy transition processes in the context of the shifting roles and interactions of actors. In the energy transition process, both in the transformation of the regime structure and in the emergence of innovations, actors' capacities for action, power relations, visions, competences and responsibilities, and their relations with other actors differ at the regional level. The research takes a qualitative approach and applies a comparative case analysis of the energy transition experiences in two regions of Turkey. In the choice of cases, İzmir and Balıkesir provinces have been considered suitable for the study since they are two provinces with similar development levels, have a high potential in terms of renewable energy resources, are considered as strong investment regions, and prominent in the location preferences of companies producing renewable energy technologies. The research used a semi-structured interview technique in addition to document analysis. Primarily, desk research is conducted and then interviews have been conducted with the private sector, public institutions and NGOs related to the energy sector (interviews are ongoing).
The (tentative) results show that in İzmir region, the development agency has developed visions for energy transformation (Wind Capital and Clean Energy Production Centre) and strengthened the relationship between actors by developing collaborative projects with the private sector, universities and other public institutions in order to transform İzmir into a brand city in renewable energy. However, Balıkesir province lacks strong actors to undertake this role, and the limited number of local firms and their resistance to change are viewed as obstacles to the development of this process. In summary, the activities of various local institutional actors and their interactions reveal that they play an important role in shaping the regional energy transition.

Krzysztof Janc (p)

Philip McCann

As the Internet continues to evolve both technically (in terms of access methods) and practically (in terms of the use and application of network tools), limited or poor-quality access, characterized by low technical parameters, excludes certain groups from fully participating in social and economic life. From a spatial perspective, residents of peripheral areas, particularly rural areas, are often the most excluded, not only due to lack of Internet access but also due to inadequate connection quality that prevents them from fully utilizing the Internet.
This research aims to identify local-level Internet quality and explore its correlation with socio-economic development, using Poland as a case study. The investigation assumes that spatial differentiation in Internet speeds represents one facet of the digital divide. The socio-economic data employed includes various indicators such as community prosperity, entrepreneurship, migration patterns, and investment expenditures from the European Union. Understanding the relationship between Internet speed and local community characteristics is crucial for formulating development strategies that facilitate both digitization and broader developmental processes. The primary data sources for this study include fixed broadband and mobile Internet performance data obtained from Ookla via crowdsourcing, complemented by data from Poland's Central Statistical Office.
The research results confirm that the regularities known from other spatial dimensions (countries, regions) are also evident in the case of Internet quality at the local scale in Poland. Notably, Internet quality is associated with features describing important spheres of local community functioning. However, these correlations are not sufficiently strong and do not always indicate easily interpretable patterns of spatial differentiation, preventing the formulation of categorical conclusions regarding universal rules affecting Internet quality in local systems. This underscores the relevance of local conditions, which often vary significantly among individual municipalities, aligning with the principles of smart rural development.
Regarding practical issues related to laying the foundations for smart growth, the analyses presented, especially in terms of spatial variation, highlight areas with poorer access to high-speed Internet where appropriate investment decisions should be made. The importance of small, local ISPs, highlighted in the study, supports the argument that it is possible to provide high-quality Internet even in rural and peripheral areas.
This research was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland. Grant number 2020/39/B/HS4/00423.

Hadi Arbabi, Steven Bond-Smith, Ming-Wei Hsu, Philip McCann (p)

Zaenhaer Duman

The aim of this paper is to understand the likely productivity-related, sustainability and utility-related features of the work-from-home (WFH) revolution on the evolving UK urban and regional economic system in the post-Covid environment. In particular, we examine the role played by post-covid-19-lockdown changes in transportation and commuting behaviour in shaping this evolution. The lockdown immediately ushered in a fundamental change in working patterns, whereby workers switched to the widespread use of online remote-working technologies, which allowed for major reductions in in-person face-to-face workplace interactions and increases in hybrid or total remote working practices. In order to understand the likely further evolution of the productivity-related and sustainability-related features of the UK urban and regional economic system, we propose to frame our empirical analysis on the basis of models that capture exactly these nuances, and then to use the theoretical framings to interpret the empirical findings. The two analytical frameworks we employ are the Bettencourt (2013) urban scaling framework and the hybrid work-from-home model framework of Bond-Smith and McCann (2022). We employ fine-grained data from both the census and also the UK travel surveys, combined with the newly available small area gross value-added data through the ONS in order to empirically frame our theoretical models. This will allow us to identify the currently key drivers of local productivity and to understand how they are related to new forms of hybrid WFH patterns.