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Lookup NU author(s): Dr William Otchere-DarkoORCiD, Dr Michael Crilly
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
District heating (DH) forms part of decarbonised energy pathways, potentially offering decentralised, cheap heating for dense urban areas. Offering both carbonised and decarbonised heat sources, with multiple and overlapping technologies, DH is situated within the milieu of energy and urban planning. This presents questions as to how local governance arrangements and practices are created/emerge to respond to/(co)produce the spatial, energy and technological materialisations of DH. Utilising mixed methods, the study focuses on selected DH projects in Northeast England – a region with historic coal infrastructures and recent heat network projects. Findings first show forms of partnership, outsourcing and subsidiarising as governance arrangements surrounding the DH projects in sharing expertise, resources and risks. These arrangements are implemented through legal agreements, negotiations, reporting mechanisms as well as infrastructure and heat co-production practices. Secondly, these diverse governance arrangements also reflect attempts to address funding, energy security and regulatory issues increasingly refracted through local geothermal endowments and incumbent gas incentives. In effect, the research notes that the policy and governance practices should be responsive to a heterogeneous, hybrid and co-produced heatscape, challenging the ideal of transitioning to a uniform DH.
Author(s): Otchere-Darko W, Crilly M, Jenkinson T, Harper C, Ingall-Tombs E, Bryson-Harris E, Ritchie E, Siu R, Wightman S, Kearns A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Sustainability Science
Year: 2025
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 16/07/2025
Acceptance date: 18/06/2025
Date deposited: 19/06/2025
ISSN (print): 1862-4065
ISSN (electronic): 1862-4057
Publisher: Springer Nature
URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01716-5
DOI: 10.1007/s11625-025-01716-5
Data Access Statement: The interview data that supports the findings of this study are not publicly available in order to protect participant confidentiality. Participants were assured that their responses would remain confidential and would not be shared outside the research team. De-identified excerpts relevant to the study’s conclusions are available from the corresponding author upon request and would be subject to further ethical approval.
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