Contemporary crises and net zero transitions: Ukraine, COVID, and energy (CANUTE)
This 11-month project, funded by the University of Manchester Research Institute (UMRI), researched three crises, Ukraine, COVID and energy, and their relation to net zero transitions.
It consisted of an international research team involving researchers from Manchester, Melbourne University, and the University of Toronto.
The project explored the question: How are the contemporary crises of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the character of post-COVID recoveries affecting the pursuit of ambitious climate policy towards ‘net zero emissions’?
Both of these crises combined to generate a sharp increase in energy prices, particularly regarding natural gas, and a related increase in the insecurity of supply.
These have already had highly destabilizing effects in terms of social inequalities, state legitimacy, geopolitics, the continued rise of populism, and governments’ economic strategies.
The aim of the project was therefore to establish how these crises manifested in the case of Australia, Canada and the UK.
The implications of these crises were felt at multiple scales (local, municipal, regional, national, and global) and by multiple actors (households, consumers, workers, businesses, farmers, governments). The implications were also experienced in diverse ways, from ‘cost of living’ crises, through supply chain disruption, to opportunities for expanded fossil fuel exports.
Different actors were also seeking to use these crises to shape voting behaviour and policy outcomes to suit their interests.
These implications have important consequences not only for the ambition and strategy for pursuing net zero, but also on the distributive effects of those strategies and the possibilities of a ‘just transition’.
People
Plus a broad team comprising:
Manchester: Joshua Barritt, Pritish Behuria, Joe Blakey, Stefan Bouzarovski, Hannah Charles, Carl Death, Franco Galdini, Alejandro Gallego-Schmid, Helen Holmes, Claire Hoolohan, Saska Petrova, Maria Sharmina, Paul Tobin, Daniel Welch.
University of Toronto: Steven Bernstein, Marc Calabretta, Carley Chavara, Christian Elliott, Matthew Hoffman, Teresa Kramarz, Mary Elizabeth Luka, Kate Neville, Stefan Renckens, Marlene Terstiege.
Melbourne University: Michele Acuto, Justin Alger, Robyn Eckersley, Erin Fitz-Henry, William Hopkinson, Kate McDonald, Andrew Walter.