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UK average summertime temperatures have increased over the last 20 years. Climate change is also projected to cause increases in average and extreme summer temperatures. High temperatures have a number of associated negative impacts for individuals. Heat stress among humans can cause both mortality and morbidity. The UK experiences regular heat related excess mortality. Moreover, warm temperatures have also been associated with a lack of sleep and lower productivity at work. Overheating in homes, contributes to these negative effects by exposing individuals to higher temperatures. Overheating is an emerging problem for the UK housing stock, which is maladapted for rising temperature. Furthermore, cities are a place of elevated risk due to the added pressure of the Urban Heat Island effect. A number of adaptation measures can be used to reduce the negative impacts associated with heat. However, vulnerability to heat varies significantly among individuals and is a result of many interlinking factors. Socio-demographic characteristics, health, economic status, an individual's home, and where that homes is located can all modify their vulnerability. Understanding this vulnerability is paramount to successful adaptation and building resilience. Tools such as Heat Vulnerability Indexes or other spatial vulnerability assessments can help to identify spatial patterns of vulnerability and where the most vulnerable people reside for prioritisation of adaptation and responses during high temperatures. This thesis improves the process of developing such assessments by addressing three specific gaps which are identified in past studies and using Greater Manchester as a case study. It firstly improves the way in which intra-urban outdoor exposure variation is spatially represented in these assessments. Land use regression modelling is used to replace past over reliance on land surface temperatures. Empirical air temperature data and 14 different land use and land cover variables were used to create statistical models of air temperature. These were used to predict air temperature; these predictions were in turn used within the Heat Vulnerability Index. This greatly improved the way in which local variations of outdoor exposure are assessed. Models with an R2 of over 0.9 and RMSE of as low as 0.13 °C were developed. Next the work addresses a second gap, namely the underrepresentation of homes as a modifier to heat vulnerability within indexes. To do this, firstly a specific review of overheating in homes is presented, this provides a concise overview of the current knowledge of overheating in homes, and identifies characteristics of homes which have been highlighted by other studies to increase the homes propensity to overheat. These characteristics are then used to assess the risk of overheating spatially across the area. Here, a novel method of mapping these characteristics is presented and the results for GM are discussed. Finally, improvements are made upon past methods of constructing composite indexes, presenting a method that better and more transparently deals with co-variance within the indicators, and used an evidence-based approach to indicator weighting. Overall, a Heat 18 Vulnerability Index for Greater Manchester is developed and presented using novel indicators and an improved method of index construction. The index assesses vulnerability at the census unit of Lower Super Output Area, across the metropolitan region of Greater Manchester. This index shows large spatial variation in overall vulnerability across the region, as well as spatial differences in the drivers of vulnerability. The local authorities of Manchester and Salford are highlighted as particularly vulnerable.

Rice straw is one of the largest agricultural by-products globally. However, only a small portion of this is utilised and majority continues to get burnt in open field, causing local pollution with negative impacts on the environment and farmers' health. Harnessing energy from straw could offer an alternative to open field burning while also addressing energy challenges of rural communities and potentially providing wider socio-economic benefits. To understand how this potential could be met, this study explored the case of selected rice farming communities in the Philippines and Vietnam -- two of the top rice producing countries in the world, where at least 80% of rice straw continues to be burnt every year. While most research on bioenergy focuses on technical aspects, this project offers a different perspective by focusing on the role of farmers and their communities, who, to date, remain marginalised in the bioenergy development process. Furthermore, with the increasing importance of social innovation in rural development, exploring the social aspects of bioenergy allowed for an understanding of how farmers could co-design solutions that meet their development needs. This research, therefore, answers a two-fold question: first, how can bioenergy offer an alternative to rice straw burning; second, how can farmers and their communities be engaged in this process? In doing so, this research proposes a social innovation pathway in order to engage critical actors in rice straw bioenergy development. Using a qualitative network approach in social network research, a mixed-method approach that combines participant observation and in-depth interviews with social network analysis, this study mapped how farmers make decisions during rice postproduction. This allowed the development of both an understanding of the needs, preferences, and motivations of farmers, and the identification of the relevant actors and resource movers within their communities. Thus, providing insight on how actors in farmers' networks can support a bioenergy social innovation and help deliver wider sustainable development benefits in rural communities. This research also explored the potential of rice straw as feedstock by comparing rice straw management practices, energy uses, and challenges in the Philippines and Vietnam. The results also show that despite differences in rice straw management in the Philippines and Vietnam, farmers' practices are mostly driven by social factors, especially since farmers greatly value relationships within the community. Together, these results suggest that: first, potential bioenergy solutions need to be integrated in current community activities; second, resource-sharing within communities could be further developed to support farmers in adopting alternatives to burning; and third, influential actors to farmers such as lenders, traders and cooperatives could be relevant in enabling a livelihood-based rice straw management activity around bioenergy. These consequently open opportunities for government and businesses to collaborate with farmers and build capacities to transform their current practices to provide income to the local community, in addition to addressing energy security. The research provides insights into how a prospective rice straw bioenergy system could be shaped -- one that is informed by current needs and considers the preferences and livelihood characteristics of rice farmers. Furthermore, findings of this study offer insights for policy and industry actors on what could be key to deploying rice straw bioenergy; where, ideally the main stakeholders -- farmers -- are not mere recipients of technology but active participants in the process.

The UK government launched the first Community Energy Strategy on the 27th January 2014, which highlighted the importance of community energy development in meeting the 2050 climate change target. This study investigates the link between community ownership and local support of renewable energy in order to prescribe bespoke public communication strategies that lead to widely accepted recommendations for community energy policy frameworks and contribute toward the aforementioned energy security and climate change targets. Studies from the literature showed that public support of renewable energy projects was high. However, this trend was reversed and acceptance was low when the proximity of the projects was local to the publics' households. Meanwhile, further studies revealed that offering community ownership, community involvement and community benefits to local residents could have a positive influence on social acceptance of the project; this link between ownership, involvement and benefits with social acceptance were investigated in this research. A mixed-methodology approach, which included survey questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and members of the local community, was employed at three different solar photovoltaic (PV) energy projects located at Wedmore, Berwick and Woolbridge in the UK, where comparisons were made between three different ownership models: 1) 100% community ownership, 2) shared ownership and benefits, and 3) private ownership with community benefits, respectively. The three aforementioned factors were specially investigated: community ownership, community involvement and community benefits, which revealed that all three had a positive influence on the support from local residents. In terms of community ownership, the three main criteria that impacted their level of support included: 1) producing energy locally i.e. local electricity production, 2) benefiting the community and 3) having community ownership. Four main types of involvement were identified that positively affected support: 1) investing in shares, 2) helping the board of directors, 3) attending council meetings to express opinions about the project and 4) attending community meetings to receive information on the project in addition to being regularly informed on the project status. Regarding community benefits, both direct and indirect benefits, which included financial community funds and reducing community carbon footprint respectively, were identified and linked to positively affecting the level of support by local residents. Meanwhile, for those residents who were initially against renewable energy developments, community ownership and benefits were more likely to make a positive impact on their opinion, particularly if reducing household energy bills was one of the benefits. By contrast, active community involvement had the least influence on residents who were against renewable energy developments, but regularly informing local residents showed a positive influence on local support. The most socially accepted model was 100% community ownership at Wedmore, followed by private ownership with community benefits at Woolbridge and finally the shared ownership project at Berwick. Notable differences in the social acceptance trends were attributed to the 100% community ownership and benefits at Wedmore, support for renewable energy development and the availability of a community benefit fund at Woolbridge, while failure to identify that it was a community project and disagreements for how any community benefit fund would be spent contributed to the reasoning why Berwick was the least favoured.

As fossil fuel usage has been proven to have a negative impact on human health and the environment, the world has embraced the usage of renewable energy sources, mainly for energy production. In Cyprus, solar energy is the most potent renewable source and this can be seen by the vast majority of the population using solar water heaters in their households. This thesis explores the usage of solar energy for electricity and domestic hot water production at a residential level by presenting the designs of three solar-thermal concept systems for achieving this task; the first being the basic design of all three without any form of storage, the second is fitted with thermal latent heat storage and the third is fitted with a natural gas boiler instead. The optimal solution is the second concept system that is capable of storing thermal energy around the year thus having a nearly uninterrupted operation, reducing the dependency on fossil fuel produced electricity and emissions. The thesis also explored the usage of siloxane organic compounds as working fluids for a low temperature Rankine cycle, which had a significant impact in the increase of the thermal-to-electrical efficiency of the cycle, raising it to nearly 25%, greater than the efficiency of best acclaimed photovoltaic collector currently available. Lastly, taking into account a typical household’s demand profile and by allowing the optimal system to operate as part of the national electrical network continuously, the size of the system’s components could be reduced significantly making it more feasible for installing in a typical household’s premises. However, due to the non-existence of these components in the within the project’s specifications, the thesis could not include a useful economic analysis for a more realistic comparison with a similar sized photovoltaic system.

If new build nuclear reactors are built in the UK they will provide a large low carbon thermal resource that can be recovered for heating services through heat networks (district heating). There are however questions about the geographic location of nuclear sites relative to heating demand and public/user interpretations of a potentially controversial technology to consider. This thesis includes three research themes that explore these issues. The first is an assessment of potential non-technical barriers to nuclear heat network development. The second is a focus group approach to studying local resident responses to nuclear heat network technology both as potential users, and as public groups. The third theme considers the technical potential for a heat network connecting the Hartlepool nuclear site to local heating demand centres. The research finds that there is potential for nuclear heat networks to take 70,000 existing users off the natural gas in the Hartlepool area. Following series of expert interviews it finds no non-technical barriers that would be unique to nuclear heat networks as opposed to other heat network types. It also suggests that the technology could be acceptable to local residents if it is framed as a local resource that benefits the local area. These findings indicate that there could be similar potential at Heysham and Oldbury nuclear sites.