The potential for a transdisciplinary systems approach to improve national policy analysis: learning from UK cases of home energy transitions

The urgent imperative to decarbonise societies requries effective decisions to neogotiate interconnections of people, technology and policies. In this theory paper, we hypothesise that integrating transdisciplinary engineering with systems approaches can provide useful principles and tools to support effective sustainability policymaking. We consider this hypothesis in the context of a historic and current UK energy sector transition: (a) the transition from ‘town-gas’ to natural gas in the 1960–1970s and (b) the current shift from natural gas to low carbon domestic heating, focussing on heat pump deployment. Through these case-studies, we find that transdisciplinary and systems approaches are apparent in the successful historic transition, while remaining largely absent in the present low carbon heating transition, which is currently stalled. We argue this is caused by policy analysis being siloed and economically focused. We present two systems approach examples to show how they might be applied to begin addressing current UK policy failures for low carbon heating. We identify benefits while recognising some key limitations of this approach, including the resource requirements on officials. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research to continue developing the conceptual and practical basis and therefore lead to improved decision making in national sustainability policymaking.