TRANSitions In Energy For Coastal Communities Over Time And Space (TRANSECTS)

The current shift to marine renewable energies, with UK investment to top £150bn, will likely transform the sustainability (the balance between economic growth, social well-being, and environmental care) and resilience (adapting to change, adversity and new opportunities) of coastal communities and adjacent seas. History tells us that previous energy transitions have led to profound environmental and socio-cultural change for local communities due to their often boom-and-bust nature. Yet most analyses focus on technical and economic criteria and rarely address environmental, social, cultural, and institutional impacts or whether transitions are just (i.e., that they are as fair and inclusive as possible for everyone concerned). This oversight must be addressed to reduce carbon emissions in a way that also improves outcomes for coastal environments and communities.

TRANSECTS will address this oversight using a novel transdisciplinary approach, co-developed with coastal resilience stakeholder partners and combining sociology, economics and geography with engineering, ecology, history, law, archaeology, and creative arts. We adopt a place- and time-based research design using learnings from the experiences of different coastal communities during past energy transitions. We combine natural and social sciences with arts and humanities to explore the shifts from non-renewable marine energy sources (whale oil in the 1800s through to offshore oil and gas in the later-1900s) to more sustainable renewable energy sources in the early-2000s. We will analyse differences across geographical scales (small areas to large regions), between mainland coastal and island communities and between different UK regions.

The TRANSECTS project has three primary aims:

1) Use historical and current case studies to understand marine energy transitions and their impacts on the sustainability and resilience of coastal communities and adjacent seas

2) Integrate creative methods with community dialogue and scientific research/expertise to enable communities to explore their roles and responses to energy transitions

3) Establish a 'theory of change' for marine energy transitions which will assist coastal communities to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability and resilience, and transform decision-making

To achieve these aims, we will explore three cases: the Humber Estuary, the Orkney Islands and east-coast Scotland. Each has changed their main marine energy economic activity from whale oil via offshore fossil fuels to marine renewable energies and has experienced changing economic fortunes, marginalisation and (often hidden) hardship caused by these transitions. TRANSECTS will examine the raw energy sources (whales, oil & gas deposits, offshore wind plus associated habitats and seabed): how much and where they have been located. It will consider the services provided by these resources. The project will assess how nearby communities have been affected during transitions by analysing - for example - migration, employment, and mental and physical health. TRANSECTS will combine empirical data with human stories (from archives and creative methods) to 're-people the past'. It will investigate the fairness and equity of decisions made during energy transitions ('just transition'). Importantly, it will work with communities to develop strategies to enable energy transitions that increase the resilience of coastal and marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on and interact with them.