We are pleased to announce our first talk for the CRES Webinar Series 2021.
This event will take place online. Please sign-up through Eventbrite to participate.
A link will be sent to you to join the Zoom meeting 30 minutes before the event is due to start.
“A Participatory Approach for Visualising Energy Resilience in Nepal from a Whole-System Perspective”
Understanding how and in what ways to foster resilience within energy systems is a complex issue, encapsulating a diversity of factors. This complexity creates barriers to effective decision-making towards resilience, where a whole-systems approach is required amidst a relatively siloed governance landscape.
This talk will discuss how a bottom-up participatory approach can be valuable in enabling decision-makers and key stakeholders to visualise the complexity of energy systems resilience, and in turn help facilitate the application of a whole-systems approach to the design of sustainable policy interventions towards more resilient systems. The talk will also outline the participatory causal loop mapping approach, highlight the method’s value in identifying the variables and visualising interconnections affecting energy resilience in Nepal, as a case study. Nepal has experienced energy supply disruption from both long-term energy supply deficiency and short-term shocks. The outcomes of our bottom-up participatory workshop with key stakeholders show the significant benefit of using this approach to enable participants visualising the complexity of energy systems resilience and creating a shared understanding of ways in which resilience can be improved.
About the speakers
Xinfang Wang is a senior interdisciplinary researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Cooling, Birmingham Energy Institute in University of Birmingham. Xinfang has a strong background in whole systems research, energy policy, economics and social practices on energy resilience, sustainable cooling and cold chains. Her research covers both developed and developing countries including Rwanda, Kenya, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Nepal and China. She is the Researcher co-Investigator for UKRI GCRF/Newton Fund project “Fast-track vaccine cold-chain assessment and design for mass scale COVID-19 vaccination in Bangladesh (VaCoBD)” and DEFRA funded “The African Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain (ACES)”. She is also a UKERC Research Committee member and is co-I on the UKERC funded “Sustainable food cold-chains” and “Predicting the uptake of air conditioning in UK households to 2050” projects.
Louise Reardon is Lecturer in Governance and Public Policy at the School of Government, University of Birmingham. Louise’s research is at the forefront of knowledge at the interdisciplinary nexus of governance and public policy, transport, and wellbeing research. In particular, her research focuses on the role of multi-level governance and institutional policy networks in shaping policy agendas and outcomes. She is currently PI of the CREDS funded project Facilitating Policy Change for Low Carbon Mobility. Louise is also co-editor of the leading interdisciplinary journal Local Government Studies, and co-Chair of the Governance and Decision-making Special Interest Group of the World Conference on Transport Research Society (WCTRS).
Long Seng To is an Engineering for Development Research Fellow supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering at Loughborough University, and an Honorary Lecturer at University College London. Her research focuses on enhancing community energy resilience using renewable energy in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. She is also Co-Investigator of the MECS programme where she leads work on modern energy cooking services in humanitarian settings, and Co-Investigator of the CESET project which focuses on community energy in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique. She is a member of the UN Economic Commission for Europe’s Expert Group on Resource Management, Renewables Working Group where she contributed to the first UN standard for solar energy resource classification