This data collections consists of data and documentation produced to examine the spatial and social differences in people’s lack of access to adequate energy and transport services in the United Kingdom (UK). The work responds to the need for developing a differentiated understanding of both the drivers and expressions of this ‘double energy vulnerability’, while seeking to integrate and analyse relevant information from all four UK nations. Using a variety of statistically representative census and survey datasets, the project developed a series of multi-dimensional indices to map transport- and energy-related injustices. This was followed by a cluster analysis to examine broad-level geographical patterns, and a Geographically Weighted Regression model to explore the spatial variation of vulnerabilities related to contingencies such as income, ethnicity and housing. The work corroborates the results of previous qualitative studies, and research within selected UK nations, while revealing a number of unexpected territorial clusters and underpinnings of infrastructural injustice.This proposal responds to a call from the Research Councils for a national Centre on energy demand research, building on the work of the existing six End Use Energy Demand Centres, for which funding ends in April 2018. Energy demand reduction is a UK success story, with a 15% fall in final energy consumption since 2004. Major further reductions are possible and will be needed, as part of a transformation of the energy system to low carbon, to deliver the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UK carbon budgets. Moreover, a low carbon energy system will be increasingly reliant upon inflexible and variable electricity generation, and therefore demand will also need to become more flexible. In short, changes in energy demand reduction will need to go further and faster, and demand will need to become more flexible. These challenges have far-reaching implications for technology, business models, social practices and policy. Our vision is for energy demand research in the UK to rise to these challenges. The Centre's ambition is to lead whole systems work on energy demand in the UK, collaborating with a wider community both at home and internationally. We aim to deliver globally leading research on energy demand, to secure much greater impact for energy demand research and to champion the importance of energy demand for delivering environmental, social and economic goals. Our research programme is inter-disciplinary, recognising that technical and social change are inter-dependent and co-evolve. It is organised into six Themes. Three of these address specific issues in the major sectors of energy use, namely: buildings, transport and industry. The remaining three address more cross-cutting issues that drive changing patterns of demand, namely the potential for increased flexibility, the impact of digital technologies, and energy policy and governance. Each Theme has a research programme that has been developed with key stakeholders and will provide the capacity for the Centre to inform debate, deliver impact and share knowledge in its specific area of work. The Themes will also undertake collaborative work, with our first joint task being to assess the role of energy demand in delivering the objectives of the UK Government's Clean Growth Plan. The Centre will also include Challenges that respond to cross-thematic questions for UK energy demand. These will mostly be developed in consultation over the early years of the Centre, and therefore only one is included in the initial plan: on the decarbonisation of heat. The Centre will function as a national focus for inter-disciplinary research on energy demand. In doing this it will need to respond to a rapidly evolving energy landscape. It will therefore retain 25% of its funds to allocate during the lifetime of the Centre through a transparent governance process. These funds will support further challenges and a 'Flexible Fund', which will be used to support research on emerging research questions, in particular through support for early career researchers. We are working closely with key stakeholders in business and policy to design our research programme and we plan detailed knowledge exchange activities to ensure that the work of the UK energy demand research community has broader societal impact.

The quantification, modelling, and mapping of vulnerabilities to energy and transport poverty undertaken for the purposes of this study were all predicated upon the development of robust energy and transport poverty measurement frameworks. As a first step, a combination of statistical data – including socio-demographics, housing, transport, energy use characteristics of households, and transport accessibility information – were compiled and processed, in order to provide a comprehensive evidence base. We conducted an extensive audit of the UK’s energy, transport, and socio-demographic statistics available at the Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) scale in England and Wales, with Data Zones (DZ) being used for Scotland, and Super Output Areas (SOAs) for Northern Ireland. These are units of a comparatively similar size: on average, LSOAs, DZs and SOAs contain 1614, 784, and 2100 people respectively. Here, it is worth noting that good quality disaggregated data at the neighbourhood scale is difficult to find, with some of the information being outdated, or – in most cases – inconsistent across the four nations of the UK. Moreover, LSOAs, DZs and SOAs themselves contain a great deal of internal variation that remains undetected when considering average values across each unit. Nevertheless, our selection of statistical districts incorporated the highest level of comparative spatial detail that is currently available. It allowed for widening the reach of the analysis, while revealing detailed interactions between energy and transport poverty at the local level. In the absence of consistent energy and transport poverty indicators for the whole of the UK, we constructed two unique metrics for energy and transport poverty covering England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The key constituent datasets for the composite indicators were shortlisted based on a review of previous work on energy and transport poverty indicators in England and Wales. This was accompanied by an extensive data audit, which revealed that the reliability, completeness and representativeness of relevant data in England and Wales were the greatest, although it was possible to obtain sufficient information for Scotland and NI too. Moreover, established fuel poverty metrics that have undergone significant changes and studied extensively in the literature exist for England and Wales. For details on how the data was derived, please refer to the “Data sourcing, processing and preparation” section below.