ABSTRACT

Leicester City Council has long been considered a front-runner in local environmental policy, and in this chapter we examine how the issue of climate protection has been interpreted and acted upon in policies for energy management in the built environment. Located in the East Midlands, Leicester is the tenth largest city in the UK (Figure 7.1). The city has a tradition of manufacturing industry, including the chemicals and clothing sectors, and has experienced problems of unemployment as these industries have declined. More recently, it has developed as a commercial and shopping centre for the region, in competition with the nearby cities of Nottingham and Derby and out-of-town shopping centres. In the first section, we outline the history of Leicester’s involvement with energy management, and consider the impact of its membership of the CCP programme on local policy development. We then turn to the built environment. Improving the energy efficiency of the housing sector in the UK has been seen as a key means through which to act on climate change, while simultaneously addressing the issue of fuel poverty. We outline the background to these debates, and examine Leicester’s strategies for increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and changing individual behaviour in order to reduce energy use, as well as in-house initiatives taken to address the Council’s energy consumption. We argue that, despite the relative success of Leicester’s strategies for energy efficiency in the housing sector and its in-house initiatives, progress has been piecemeal and limited by dependence on external sources of funding and limited powers of local authorities to affect energy efficiency or energy conservation within the domestic sector. In conclusion, we reflect on the implications of these findings for understanding how the governance of global environmental issues takes place.