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Achieving ambitious climate change mitigation targets requires a comprehensive transformation of the energy system. As part of this transformation, early, rapid, and full decarbonisation of the electricity sector is essential. Residential buildings contribute substantially to electricity consumption, so pathways for electricity system decarbonisation similarly depend on accelerated change in the residential sector. Delivering further and faster reductions in emissions from residential buildings requires not only reductions in electricity demand but also more responsive demand. Flexibility in the residential sector can support the supply-side transition to renewable energy while also helping reduce the costs of electricity provision during times of peak demand. Understanding the potential contributions of residential buildings to ambitious mitigation pathways through demand reduction and flexibility requires more detailed characterisations of demand. In particular, it necessitates stronger evidence on the structural and occupant factors that shape electricity demand and its resulting emissions. This thesis contributes to these research areas and is guided by three primary research questions. The first focuses on improving methods for characterising residential electricity consumption, the second considers advancing our knowledge of factors influencing consumption, and the third relates to the policy implications of having deeper insight into the temporal aspects of demand. The three research questions are: • What statistical learning approaches can improve efforts to characterise residential electricity consumption patterns? • What factors explain electricity consumption in residential buildings at annual, daily, and hourly temporal resolutions? • How does a more detailed understanding of the temporal aspects of residential electricity consumption inform energy efficiency and flexibility interventions? This thesis consists of four original research papers, each of which makes methodological, empirical, and policy contributions in answering these research questions. The papers’ methodological contributions are the development and application of methods from statistical learning and the sub-fields of regularisation and sparsity. These techniques are the subject of a rich literature in statistics disciplines but are not commonly used in energy research. The papers show the utility of these techniques for analysing complex data sets and addressing challenges inherent to building energy modelling. The papers make empirical contributions to the literature on determinants of electricity consumption through statistical analyses of factors that influence consumption at different temporal resolutions in households. The variety in types of data considered, such as interval electricity, household-level survey, and time-use data, facilitates a deep investigation of the factors that shape residential electricity consumption. In this way, the papers contribute to the evidence base on effective intervention policies for achieving further demand reduction and flexibility in the residential sector. Demand-side solutions are underrepresented in the literature on climate change mitigation, but these solutions have considerable potential to achieve ambitious emissions reduction targets. They therefore require a more thorough assessment. This thesis research presents new analytical methods, data, and evidence to investigate how residential buildings can contribute to accelerated decarbonisation pathways.

This thesis focuses on the relationship between the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) economies and global climate change mitigation policies with a view to determining the energy exports demand security risks of OPEC member states. The successful implementation of a universally adopted climate regime has been marred with controversies as different interest groups have raised their concerns about all the options presented so far. OPEC as the major crude oil exporting group in the world has been in the forefront of these debates and negotiations. OPEC’s major concern is the envisaged adverse impacts of the industrialised countries carbon reductions on its members' economies. Several studies have shown that when industrialised countries adopt carbon dioxide emissions reduction policies in line with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as carbon taxes and energy efficiency strategies, OPEC’s net price of crude oil decreases at the same time as a reduction in the quantity of crude oil products sold. OPEC believes that such climate change policy-induced fall in crude oil exports revenues would have a significant negative effect on its members' economies. With the limitations related to the assumptions of the existing energy economy models on the impacts of climate change mitigation policies on OPEC’s economies (Barnett et al, 2004), this study opts for a risk based model. This model quantifies the energy exports demand security risks of OPEC members with special interest on crude oil. This study also investigates the effects of carbon reduction policies on crude oil prices vis-à-vis the impacts of crude oil prices on OPEC’s economies. To address these three main issues, this thesis adopts a three-prong approach. The first paper addresses the impacts of climate change mitigation on crude oil prices using a dynamic panel model. Results from the estimated dynamic panel model show that the relationship between crude oil prices and climate change mitigation is positive. The results also indicate that a 1% change in carbon intensity causes a 1.6% and 8.4% changes in crude oil prices in the short run and long run, respectively. The second paper focuses on the impacts of crude oil prices on OPEC economies using a panel vector auto regression (VAR) approach, highlighting the exposure of OPEC members to the volatile crude oil prices. The findings from the panel VAR model show that the relationship between OPEC members’ economic growth and crude oil prices is positive and economic growth in OPEC member states respond positively and significantly to a 10% deviation in crude oil prices by 1.4% in the short run and 1.7% in the long run. The third paper creates an index of the risks OPEC members face when there is a decline in the demand for their crude oil exports. To show these risks, this study develops two indexes to show the country level risks and the contributions to the OPEC-wide risks exposure. The results from the indexes show that OPEC members that are more dependent on crude oil exports are faced with more energy exports demand risks. The findings from this thesis are relevant for the development of a new OPEC energy policy that should accommodate the realities of a sustainable global climate regime. They are also useful to the respective governments of the countries that are members of OPEC and non-OPEC crude oil exporting countries. Finally, the outcomes of this thesis also contribute to the climate change and energy economics literature, especially for academic and subsequent research purposes.

Global food production is currently contributing to numerous environmental challenges including anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity loss and widespread declines in soil health. Regenerative Agriculture (RA) is an emerging paradigm which proposes that restoring soil health, by adopting a suite of management practices that align with so-called 'regenerative' principles, will not only improve agricultural productivity but also contribute to climate change mitigation through increased soil organic carbon (SOC). Despite a plethora of policies and suggested practices emerging over the past decade to support the introduction of RA across the world, there is still remarkably little scientific evidence to quantify potential improvements in soil organic carbon or agricultural productivity as a result of adopting 'holistic' RA systems. This represents a large knowledge gap that I set out to address in my DPhil thesis using currently available evidence for individual management practices. Research for my thesis was divided into four parts. First, I used gold-standard systematic review methods to collate the state of current knowledge and assemble datasets from published studies of management practices forming part of a RA approach. My study area was temperate oceanic regions and I examined papers that considered the following RA approaches: reduced tillage intensity, cover cropping and ley-arable rotations in arable systems, and rotational grazing, multi-species or herbal leys, and agroforestry in pasture systems. Second, using the datasets obtained from these published studies, I conducted Bayesian meta-analyses of the impact of these practices on SOC and agricultural productivity (crop yields, herbage production, livestock growth). I found that adoption of rotational grazing and herbal leys can increase herbage dry matter production and livestock growth rates in pasture systems, but there is currently insufficient evidence to determine their impact on SOC. Conversely, my results identified clear potential for RA practices in arable systems to increase SOC but no evidence of a SOC-yield win-win. Third, using this finding I simulated adoption of these arable RA practices across Great Britain using the soil carbon model RothC, and found that in the UK there is the potential to mitigate 16-27% of current agricultural emissions through soil carbon sequestration. Finally, I conducted semi-structured interviews with industry representatives and livestock farmers in England to further understand advantages and disadvantages of implementing rotational grazing, herbal leys, ley-arable rotations and trees on farms. This final part of my research highlighted potential constraints on the ability to realise the theoretical advantages demonstrated from my earlier analyses.

The issue of climate change is high on the global agenda, and the hydrocarbon-rich countries of the Gulf region are no exception. While the Gulf countries initially resisted the drafting of an international climate agreement for many years, they have now finally realized that decarbonization is not only necessary for their continued existence due to the threat of climate change, but that it would assist in reducing their hydrocarbon demand and meeting their economic diversification goals. This research focuses on how Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar could achieve the decarbonization goals of their Paris Agreement (COP 21) pledges by analyzing the potential impact that various carbon reduction frameworks, such as carbon trading, carbon taxation, and command and control regulations, would have on their economic development. The key questions posed in this paper are whether carbon reduction mechanisms could be a viable way to reduce domestic hydrocarbon demand, and if so, which carbon reduction model would be preferable, and how it should be optimally designed to meet the Paris Agreement commitments? These questions are answered by examining the contours of the energy sectors of the three selected countries, the evolution of their negotiating positions during the various international climate negotiations, and an analysis of the various carbon reduction frameworks and how they might best be designed to optimally decarbonize their macroeconomies. My principal findings are that Saudi Arabia and the UAE would be best placed to implement national carbon markets in their respective jurisdictions, due to their large industrial bases and downstream sectors, as well as their relatively mature economies and growing populations. In Qatar's case, my research discovered that a command-and-control carbon reduction framework would work optimally because Qatar's small size, both in population and industrial base, would more efficiently allow direct regulation. This research is an important contribution because as it showed that the Gulf countries may have taken a circuitous route to recognize the importance of combatting climate change, but now they are investing billions of dollars in alternative (nuclear+renewable) projects, implementing robust energy efficiency codes, and announcing, in the case of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, ambitious net-zero goals. As a result, understanding how they may arrive at their Paris Agreement pledges is critical for understanding the potential evolution of the region's development and the contours of the future global energy market.