Abstract
Spatial economic change is an energy justice issue (Bouzarovski and Simcock, 2017) - an essential consideration in how we choose to re-wire the economy for a carbon-free future. Nothing like the conscious system-wide change required has been attempted before. Rapid policy decisions risk embedding existing injustices or creating new ones unless steps are taken to ameliorate those risks. We present a model that takes a whole-system view of the UK spatial economy, examining how increasing distance costs (e.g. through fuel tax hikes) have unequal impacts on regions and sectors. The model establishes an important carbon transition policy principle: change in spatial flows of internal trade, which are certain to occur rapidly during transition, have measurable energy justice implications. Peripheral economic regions, in rural and coastal areas and many city outskirts are most vulnerable, as are petrochemical, agricultural and connected sectors. Policy must go beyond identifying places and sectors most affected: it is the connections between them that matter most. The "push" of spatially aware fiscal policy needs to be combined with the "pull" of targeted interventions designed to promote low-carbon intermediate connections. This is not only just, but would help make (potentially costly) transition more politically acceptable.
Highlights
The UK economy is a network with millions of physical connections goods moving between production sites, working their way from primary processing through to inal production and sale, often back and forth across national boundaries
Distance costs become a much more urgent factor to understand because transitioning to a low carbon economy - if done successfully - is a radical break in spatial economic history
This paper has analysed how changes in distance costs impact on money lows between UK economic sectors and places
Summary
The UK economy is a network with millions of physical connections goods moving between production sites, working their way from primary processing through to inal production and sale, often back and forth across national boundaries. The necessity of this is starting to make its way into national policy (Committee on Climate Change, 2019) - but the spatial implications remain little understood Without careful policy, this revolution may create new inequalities. Our modelling approach takes the UK’s existing spatial economic layout - the location of irms, their turnover and money lows between sectors - and examines how those money lows change across a sweep of distance cost scenarios that bound likely present-day values. This paper’s model shows that higher-level change in intermediate trade lows have vital energy justice implications Our approach makes it possible to identify those sectors and places where impacts are likely to be consistent, those more affected at particular distance cost steps and others that change from gaining to losing out (or vice versa) over the full range of model values.
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