Local Authorities and Energy Conservation: The Structure of Their Involvement

In this paper, basic concepts of the methodology known as Q -analysis are used to expose aspects of the involvement of local authorities in energy conservation. The involvement of 333 local authorities is examined in respect of 48 different energy conservation activities of potential relevance to them. A great deal of variability is found between different local authorities in terms of the conservation activities they pursue; a variability far exceeding what can be accounted for purely in terms of different statutory functions of different tiers of local government. The Q -analysis brings out this variability quite explicitly and can also be used to suggest where the most useful or plausible modifications in the current pattern of involvement can be sought. Since we invoke only the more elementary aspects of Q -analysis in this paper, we do not explicitly consider notions of so-called traffic—the degree of involvement by each authority in each of the individual conservation activities, expenditure thereby incurred (or saved), or net energy requirements thereby reduced. This is on the agenda for future work.