Supporting renewable energy deployment: exploring routes from research into practice

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This fellowship is based upon my PhD research and provides the platform to build upon the approach developed, contributing to build an independent research profile and exploring routes from research into practice. The PhD investigated the mechanisms that lead to an effective diffusion of renewable energy technologies, exploring their spatial differential (how and where these technologies might be deployed) examining the relationship between energy and materiality. The research highlighted several material dimensions of renewable energy discussing and unpacking why, and in what ways, they matter, and why it is important to give them consideration. The empirical evidence collected shows how the various material dimensions of renewable energy affects its spatial distribution and deployment at the regional level. Conceptually, the work showed that stressing the material dimensions of renewable energy offers an opportunity to explain how particular renewable energy resources come to be fashioned in some areas and not in others. The influence on innovation processes and deployment that natural resources can exert, through their physical properties, their geographical recurrence and their symbolic and discursive values, has been insufficiently captured in the innovation and policy literature linked to renewable energy. Analytically, it provided an empirical framework within which the issues of materiality can be explored. This heuristic approach has been valuable in explaining spatial differences in Italy and the UK and can be adopted for further comparative empirical investigations. This work, while contributing towards a better understanding of the spatial dynamics of energy transition, has offered an opportunity to explore new connections to innovation theory and regional studies and as brought in new empirical data from other countries. The fellowship will explore further the synergies between recent and current research from different scientific disciplines and theoretical perspectives that can improve our understanding of - and how to identify and address- the opportunities that renewable energy deployment and innovation entails. The fellowship will provide the opportunity to share and expand upon my research findings, engaging relevant interdisciplinary academics. This will be achieved through joint publications, presentations and academic exchange and networking activities.The PhD research also stressed that the achievement of higher-level targets will depend significantly upon the successful and rapid implementation of projects at sub-national levels, such as regions and their cities. These are the levels at which decisions about investments in, and the siting of, renewable energy power schemes are crucial. The material dimensions identified in the thesis can provide useful insights into the spatial unevenness and variation of renewable energy deployment at the regional/local levels and what can be done, in policy terms, to redress this unevenness. The novel approach developed can be applied to inform renewable energy policy thinking and decision-making. The framework can help practitioners, developers and policy users to appraise resources and select, develop and more effectively deploy renewable energy technologies (including wind, marine, hydro, geothermal, solar and bioenergy), highlighting the criticality of the electricity infrastructure networks at the regional level. The fellowship will offer the opportunity to share the insights from the PhD and its practical implications with research users, making research findings usable and accessible and exploring routes from research into practice. It will support the refinement of policy advice and recommendations aimed at improving the design of future policy intervention.