‘What Works’ is based on the principle that good decision-making should be informed by the best available evidence. If evidence is not available, decision-makers should use high quality methods to find out what works.
Proposal summary: A ‘What Works’ Centre for Net Zero
The legal requirement for the UK to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 presents society with a wide-ranging and demanding set of challenges whose solutions require holistic and cohesive systems thinking across all sectors of activity. Social, technical, political and policy considerations need to be taken together and solutions evolved that are applicable and acceptable for the whole of UK society. The November 2021 COP 26 meeting to be hosted by the UK, throws all this into sharp focus and suggests that the government needs to clearly demonstrate methods by which the 2050 objectives can be achieved.
The sectors of the economy that need to be engaged include; buildings (construction), transport, industry (manufacturing and process), the utilities (particularly energy), service industries (office, retail and finance) and agriculture. By viewing these through a wide-angle, systems-orientated and socio-technical lens, and not via ‘stove pipes’, it should be possible to see where solutions in one sector can be applied in another, and where there are key sectoral interdependencies. This will enable achievement of the maximum economic benefits of scale and standardisation, while minimising unintended consequences. Moreover, outcomes should be of benefit to UK GDP if exported as products and services, and deployed in a global marketplace. However, strong focus is required on meeting the disparate needs of the recipients of Centre outputs, whether they be policy advice to central and local government, best practice guides for industry associations and procurers, or practice notes for installers. Broad communication of outcomes will also be paramount to gain support from civil society, so partnerships will be sought with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the professional institutions and the media, to leverage this.
In this document, the case is made for using a ‘What Works’ Centre model, proven to be highly effective[1] in synthesising unbiased coherent social and technological understanding with market and policy insights, to evolve advice on the interventions needed to achieve Net Zero. This is important as Net Zero is a socio-technical challenge fraught with self-interests, expert views that don’t always align, and a lack of coherent evidence.
Particular relevance of a WWC model for Net Zero
- Independence & transparency – unbiased, verifiable sources of evidence and advice
- Rigor – tested, peer-reviewed deliverables, assured by balanced communities of experts
- Practicality with pragmatism – ‘vertical mode’; from strategy to demonstration and practice
- Accessible and Capacity-building – ‘horizontal mode’; sharing common learning across sectors, training capability at all levels.
By using a hub and spokes model, the proposed Net Zero What Works Centre (NZWWC) will engage with public, private, Research & Technology Organisations (RTOs), Public Sector Research Establishments (PSREs) and academic networks to achieve coherence and obtain and synthesise impartial and balanced systems-orientated views supported by evidence-based advice that can be interpreted into policy by central and local government, and best practice by the private sector. A core team with RTO, PSRE and academic members will coordinate this. The Hub will focus on generic methods, and communication with government and society, while the Spokes deal with specific sectoral challenges.
The Centre will operate with independent governance and executive coordination groups, ensuring that cross-disciplinary systems thinking is consistently applied, neutrality ensured, and that science and engineering content together with economic and behavioural analyses and impact studies, are properly balanced, synthesised, interpreted and communicated. Sub-groups marshalling policy, impact, practice and academic research will interact with a set of representative sectoral sub-groups (the ‘Spokes’) to identify and explore the available degrees of freedom to act, and to understand the impacts and interdependencies of particular interventions.
Design for scale-up needs to be considered from the outset – this is an enormous cross-sectoral challenge that spans the whole of society. A continuum of development in spoke activity is required, and a degree of decoupling, so that activity can proceed concurrently.
The Built Environment – an immediate and accessible challenge
Given the immense breadth of the challenge area it seems logical to develop and demonstrate the NZWWC approach by tackling an immediate, accessible, yet demanding challenge – Decarbonising the Built Environment. In this, a significant contributor to greenhouse gases are domestic homes (25% of UK CO2 emissions are due to residential property). Moreover, 80% of existing property requires thermal retrofitting, including zero carbon heating. In the process of tackling the decarbonisation of homes, operational experience gained will help shape methodologies subsequently used by the Centre in other sectors. Further sectoral spokes (e.g. transport, utilities, retail and supply chains) will be added in phases that follow, with concurrent analysis and advisory workflows. For example, the carbon interdependencies of the built environment, transport and energy sectors are significant, and will present an early opportunity to demonstrate the systems approach.
Partnership approach
The proposal is to form and kick-off the Net Zero What Works Centre, initially though a collaboration between NPL, BRE, AIRTO and UCL. UCL will additionally use its convening power to bring in other universities. The span of capability provided by the consortium will support the development of a cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral hub, plus importantly, the ‘spoke’ expertise to address its first focus on the Built Environment. NPL is a government owned, government operated PSRE[2]. It is responsible for the UK’s National Measurement System, and has expertise in emissions and atmospheric monitoring, among a world-leading range of other expertise areas. BRE has a strong track record in sustainable engineering solutions with buildings research at the heart of its mission. Owned by a trust, it uses retained margin to build capability and to fund contributory academic research. AIRTO is the association for Innovation, Research and Technology organisations, whose ~60 members deliver business-to-business and government services such as R&D, validation and testing, multi-client project inception and management. University College London (UCL) is a premier world-ranking university with true disciplinary breadth, having areas of excellence that include science, engineering, building physics and national energy modelling, alongside social sciences, behaviour change, and public policy. UCL has excellent connection to a large number of other university collaborators.
All the partners bring world-class social and physical sciences expertise, with demonstrated ability to co-work across these disciplines. As other sectors are addressed, the core partners will be expanded to ensure balance and neutrality across the growing community. The corresponding specialist spoke consortia will be convened to address sector-specific challenges, while drawing on the systems view and generic learning from the Hub and other sectors.
A draft architecture for the NZWWC is given in Annexe 4.
Principles of What Works Centres
The network is currently made up of nine independent What Works Centres, three affiliate members and one associate member. Together these centres cover policy areas which account for more than £250 billion of public spending. What Works Centres differ from standard research institutions. In that each centre is committed to increasing both the supply of, and demand for, evidence in their policy area, and their output is tailored to the needs of decision-makers.
What Works Centres operate under IMPACT principles:
Independence: Providing independent, unbiased advice to users, retaining editorial control over all research and products.
Methodologically Rigorous: Using a clear and consistent process for evidence generation and synthesis; engaging with the wider academic and policy community to assure the quality of evidence products (for instance, through peer reviews); and giving primacy to findings from high-quality impact evaluations through a robust system for ranking evidence.
Practical: Playing a leading role in driving the use and generation of evidence in a specific, predefined policy area across the United Kingdom; committing to the principle that it is both possible and useful to compare the effectiveness of different types of intervention and practice; and making practical steps towards evaluating and improving the Centre’s own impact.
Accessible: Putting the Centre’s target user group at the heart of all activities; sharing evidence with users at no cost in formats that are easy to understand and that enable them to make practical decisions based on ‘what works’.
Capacity-building: Mobilising evidence and working to ensure that it is put into practice by decision makers; building user groups’ understanding of how and when to use and generate evidence so that they can make better use of the Centre’s evidence products and add to the international evidence base.
Transparent: Providing comprehensive, easy-to-understand information about the methods and limitations behind the Centre’s output; publishing both the research generated and the evidence around the impact of the Centre’s work.
Each centre operates in its own way, but all centres:
- Generate evidence on what works in a defined policy area;
- Translate evidence for specific user groups in a user-friendly format;
- Encourage the adoption and intelligent use of evidence, as well as contributions to the evidence base in their policy area.
The nine + three What Works Centres have proved valuable to UK government in providing focus and impartial advice on a variety of matters of concern in Civil Society. Examples of the Centre for Clinical Excellence (NICE), the College of Policing and the What works Centre for Local Economic Growth. See ANNEX 2.
NZWWC meeting the IMPACT criteria
Why should the systemic Net Zero challenge be addressed by a What Works Centre?
The key answer is the need for a strong focus on evidence, both in developing sources, processes and content, and in helping stakeholder communities in the public and private sector create agendas that proportionately and equitably embody Net Zero thinking and interventions. In this, the NZWWC will be strongly committed to increasing both the supply of, and demand for, high quality socio-technical evidence.
In response to the IMPACT criteria, the Net Zero WWC will operate under a governance mechanism that ensures independence and impartiality. Residual biases and organisational self-interests will be minimised by the balance of the executive partnership, and independent governance oversight will assure this. All outputs of the Centre will be ‘owned’ by the partnership and subjected to quality control processes, including (for non-contingent, urgent responses) peer review. Scoping the challenges will be a starting point for the Hub; it will require preliminary evidence from the sectors to begin its cross-domain systems view.
The Centre will operate to the highest levels of rigour, recognising the economic importance and societal impact of its advice on policy. The combination of core partners brings to the Centre a complementary mix of strong quality cultures that jointly respect validated research and tested evidence. Quality assurance processes will be applied to research outcomes generated within, as well as outside (i.e. in the Spokes) the core partnership. These processes will be further developed to provide stratified confidence rankings, and will be tested and modelled before deployment. All processes and outputs will be transparent and publicly available.
The involvement of executive partner organisations whose core businesses include the provision of practical solutions for clients, will maximise the effectiveness and ‘close to market’ (late TRL[3]) impacts of the NZWWC. Recommendations will be based on comparative (geo and economically –clustered) studies of best approaches from organisations around the world, avoiding any proprietorial or ‘not invented here’ prejudices. It will be important to consider proven interventions at all relevant scales ranging from international collaboration to local government action. All four partners have very clear track records of providing high-quality policy deliverables to HMG; NPL strategic and operational contributions to Science and Innovation policy for BEIS, BRE the Building Regulations for MHCLG, AIRTO as a representative body of RTOs and most PSREs, while UCL contributes across a wide range – from the provision of MARKAL[4] for the 2003 Energy White Paper, to advice to SAGE and digital security policy for DCMS, to name but a few. This collective experience of a variety of intervention types within the executive partners will strongly support the delivery of this ‘What Works’ Centre.
Accessibility, and a balanced, closely blended socio-technical and socio-economic understanding is essential to obtain societal buy-in for Net Zero policies. All of the executive partners have an existing baseline need to communicate with their stakeholders. A stratified approach is typically used that ranges from rapidly assimilated awareness pieces via web infographics, through ‘popular science’ briefings for non-experts, to in-depth peer-reviewed technical papers. As the policy-making community is a key client for WWCs, is is highly desirable to have NZWWC staff with an understanding of policy needs, with fluency in the language of policy-making. BRE, NPL, AIRTO and UCL have this expertise, with UCL’s Bartlett School hosting the UCL Energy Institute, and the Institutes of Sustainable Resources and Environmental Design and Engineering. The UCL Engineering Sciences Faculty hosts the Science, Technology & Public Policy department (STEaPP).
Building capacity in the UK to achieve a Net Zero society is crucial to secure the 2050 requirement and to ensure a national performance legacy that does not decay. The executive partner organisations currently support academic and technical staff development through funding and supervising doctoral study, hosting students, through apprenticeship schemes and training for staff and external clients. Capacity is built largely through people, but also through the translation of research outcomes into practice guides and notes that can be used by industry. We see a principal value proposition of the NZWWC in the creation of knowledge and practical skills alongside policy advice, providing informed options that can not only help deliver Net Zero for the UK, but also generate valuable exportable assets delivered through products and engineering services.
Transparency is considered vital, both in exposing methods and assumptions as well as explaining outcomes and implications of research, practice development and policy. The governance structure envisaged for the Centre will play a key role in this, requiring all methods and outcomes to be placed in the public domain, in addition to formal publications.
Early deliverables during scale-up
Early deliverables from the Built Environment sector will respond to currently unaddressed areas of demand for advice on Net Zero strategies and approaches. This community of need crucially includes local authorities and landlords. As learning points emerge from common interventions and a better understanding of socio-technical and cross-sectoral interdependencies, these will be tested, curated and used to build a knowledge-base with applications in other sectors.
Partner statements
AIRTO
AIRTO is a member based organisation, representing 60+ organisations in the Innovation, Research & Technology (IRT) sector, which employs approximately 57,000 people and contributing £34bn pa to UK GDP. Members include public sector research establishments, the Catapult network, and private sector RTOs. AIRTO’s role & contribution to the proposed NZWWC would include:
- Acting as a voice for the IRT sector.
- Acting as a convenor of interested parties to both compile thought-leadership work and mobilisation plans with a bias for action.
- Using AIRTO’s unique ability to pool the collective knowledge of the IRT sector to provide a whole system view of the Net Zero ambition, bringing together industry sector initiatives, into a coordinated and integrated plan on a national basis – critical to ‘joining up the dots’ and advancing the nation’s progression towards its’ decarbonisation goals, and positioning the UK as a global ‘science and innovation superpower’.
UCL
UCL uniquely combines a deep theoretical and practical perspective across all of the socio-economic and technical disciplines required to tackle the challenge of decarbonising buildings. This is complemented by a wider set of capabilities in other areas of decarbonisation (e.g. transport and negative emissions), in whole systems energy modelling and in energy and climate economics and policy. UCL has developed and uses some of the leading models required to tackle this complex problem, from individual end uses such as heating in a building, through to the stock of UK buildings, to national and international energy systems models. Plus, detailed real world performance data e.g. smart meter and boiler data, knowledge of skills and the practical challenges of decarbonisation, and expertise in policy design, implementation and evaluation. UCL has the world top rated academic faculty of the built environment, combined with world leading Institutes of energy, sustainability and policy.
Vision: We now have a reasonable technical understanding of the changes to the energy system that are required over the next three decades to meet statutory carbon budgets and the 2050 net-zero target. A number of significant challenges remain, however. There is a need for right policies to be implemented that will drive the deployment of low carbon and negative emissions technologies at the rate required. In some areas, such as low carbon heating, there is also a need to demonstrate some solutions (e.g. hydrogen) to improve the evidence base on technical and economic performance. Decisions are also required about how the energy transition will be paid for, and how potential negative impacts on low income households and declining industries will be addressed. Furthermore, a significant amount of citizen engagement will be required to inform decisions and national and local levels, and to develop detailed implementation plans.
For the decarbonisation of the UK’s buildings, the costs of this transition will be substantial – and this will impact on the lives of every individual in the country who works and lives in these buildings. During the simultaneous transition of multiple elements of the energy system, it is essential we can rapidly assess the technical, economic, social and environmental evidence of what works, why and how we can improve the transition. It is also important that academia government and industry work together to develop a stronger evidence base about ‘what works’, and to deliver the successful systems performance required to deliver net zero by 2050.
Challenges and next steps
Some key challenges to forming the NZWWC are:
- Mustering support for the mission, and commonality of view from the organisations that will form the governance and strategy hub, and Spokes of the Centre.
- Ensuring the mission objectives and methodologies align with central and local government needs, and ‘tuning’ them accordingly.
- Resourcing and scale-up plans, beginning with focus on high-impact addressable challenges.
- Identifying sources of funding for the NZWWC (existing Centres are funded by a mix of ESRC and charitable [e.g. Reclaim Fund] monies). For the strategic purpose of readying the UK for COP26, a proportion of funding from UKRI (SPF) and central government departments might be anticipated.
- Mapping of Sectoral Spokes, in terms of specific need for guidance, systems interdependencies and self-organisation capability.
- Recruiting Spoke communities – public, private and NGO, and establishing local and cross-WWC governance structures
ANNEXE 1
Activity flow for joining the What Works Centre Network
Expression of interest
- Interest expressed to the Cabinet Office in becoming a member, setting out how the initiative meets the What Works Criteria and fills a significant gap in the Network
- If setting up a new initiative the What Works Team should be asked for advice on the proposed work programme.
Initial feedback
- Initial feedback is given on whether the initiative adequately meets What Works Network membership criteria
- Cabinet Office provides regular updates to the What Works Council and Ministers on membership requests and how they are being supported
- Some applicants may join as ‘affiliate members’ before being admitted as full members, with provisional approval from the National Advisor.
Council decision
- If an initiative, institution or ‘affiliate member’ fits the What Works membership criteria, they will be invited to present their case to the Council and to seek advice on developing the initiative further
- The Council will have a closed discussion to decide whether to admit the new member. If any existing members have a conflict of interest, they will declare this and leave the discussion.
Public announcement
- Ministers, No. 10 and other stakeholders will be updated on decisions the Council makes to admit new members
- An announcement of any new members will be made to the public by the Council, facilitated by the Cabinet Office.
ANNEXE 2
Current What Works Centres
Centre for Ageing Better: www.ageing-better.org.uk
College of Policing: www.college.police.uk
Early Intervention Foundation: www.eif.org.uk
Education Endowment Foundation: www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence: www.nice.org.uk
Wales Centre for Public Policy: www.wcpp.org.uk
What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth: www.whatworksgrowth.org
What Works Centre for Wellbeing: www.whatworkswellbeing.org
What Works Scotland: www.whatworksscotland.ac.uk
Affiliates:
Youth Endowment Fund: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/
Youth Futures Foundation: https://youthfuturesfoundation.org/
Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education: https://taso.org.uk/
Associate:
Wales Centre for Public Policy: https://www.wcpp.org.uk/about/
ANNEX 3 – Potential funding sources
| ORG | LINK | NOTES |
| BEIS | Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) | Academic/private sector applications Small/Medium/Large -scale |
| ESRC | Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – UKRI | Academic applications Medium-scale |
| Happold Foundation | Home – The Happold Foundation | Academic/private sector applications Small-scale |
| Lloyds Register Foundation | Foundation Home (lrfoundation.org.uk) | Academic/private sector applications Medium/Large-scale |
| MHCLG | Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) | Academic/private sector applications Small/Medium/Large -scale |
| National Lottery | Funding | The National Lottery Community Fund (tnlcommunityfund.org.uk) | Private sector applications (?) Small/Medium/Large -scale |
| Ove Arup Foundation | Ove Arup Foundation | Academic/private sector applications |
| Reclaim Fund | Reclaim Fund Ltd | Academic/private sector applications (?) Medium-scale |
| UCL IAAF | Innovation networks funding | Innovation & Enterprise – UCL – University College London | Academic (UCL staff only) applications Small-scale |
| UKRI | UKRI – UK Research and Innovation | Academic/private sector (Innovate UK) Medium/Large -scale |
ANNEXE 4 – Draft architecture for a NZWWC
ANNEX 5 – Biographies
UCL
Jim Watson is Professor of Energy Policy and Research Director at the UCL Institute of Sustainable Resources. He was previously Research Director and Director of the UK Energy Research Centre from 2013 to 2019. Jim has over 20 years’ research experience on climate change, energy and innovation policy. He frequently advises UK government departments and other organisations, and has been a Specialist Adviser with three UK Parliamentary committees. He is a judge for the Queens Awards (on sustainable development), an executive committee member of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and a member of the UK government’s fossil fuel price projections expert panel.
Tadj Oreszczyn FCIBSE, PhD, CEng is Professor of Energy and Environment at the UCL Energy Institute. Tadj was founding Director of the UCL Energy Institute and established the RCUK Centre for Energy Epidemiology. Tadj currently leads the building theme for the UK Centre for Research in Energy Demand Solutions and is Principle Investigator of the research council Smart Energy Research Lab. Tadj has, for 34 years, undertaken energy and building research with a particular focus around the performance gap between theory and practice and the unintended consequences (health, comfort, etc.) of building energy efficiency. His first degree was in Applied Physics followed by a PhD in Solar Energy.
Jeremy Watson CBE FREng FIET DPhil CEng is Professor of Engineering Systems in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy at UCL. He is Director and Principal Investigator for the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for the Cybersecurity of IoT Systems, a partnership of 16 universities led by UCL. Concurrently, he is Chief Scientist and Engineer at the Building Research Establishment (BRE). A past MHCLG Chief Scientific Adviser, he has worked as a Director in industry (BOC and Arup) as well as government. Jeremy is a Fellow and Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering (recent past Chair of the National Engineering Policy Committee), and is a past President of the IET (2016-17). His specialties include systems thinking, sustainable engineering, the design of organisational structures, emerging technology identification, cybersecurity, research strategy and innovation processes.
ANNEX 6 – Maryland Scale
In order to produce our reviews, we screen an initial long-list of evaluations on relevance, geography, language and methods, keeping impact evaluations from the UK and other OECD countries, with no time restrictions on when the evaluation was done. We then screen the remaining evaluations on the robustness of their research methods, keeping only the more robust impact evaluations. We use the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale (SMS) to do this. The SMS is a five-point scale ranging from 1, for evaluations based on simple cross sectional correlations, to 5 for randomised control trials (see Box 2). We shortlist all those impact evaluations that could potentially score 3 or above on the SMS. The levels on the SMS are detailed below. or more detailed information on how we score evaluations, read the scoring guide.
Level 1:
Either (a) a cross-sectional comparison of treated groups with untreated groups, or (b) a before-and-after comparison of treated group, without an untreated comparison group. No use of control variables in statistical analysis to adjust for differences between treated and untreated groups or periods.
Level 2:
Use of adequate control variables and either (a) a cross-sectional comparison of treated groups with untreated groups, or (b) a before-and-after comparison of treated group, without an untreated comparison group. In (a),control variables or matching techniques used to account for cross-sectional differences between treated and controls groups. In (b), control variables are used to account for before-and-after changes in macro level factors.
Level 3:
Comparison of outcomes in treated group after an intervention, with outcomes in the treated group before the intervention, and a comparison group used to provide a counterfactual (e.g. difference in difference). Justification given to choice of comparator group that is argued to be similar to the treatment group. Evidence presented on comparability of treatment and control groups. Techniques such as regression and (propensity score matching may be used to adjust for difference between treated and untreated groups, but there are likely to be important unobserved differences remaining.
Level 4:
Quasi-randomness in treatment is exploited, so that it can be credibly held that treatment and control groups differ only in their exposure to the random allocation of treatment. This often entails the use of an instrument or discontinuity in treatment, the suitability of which should be adequately demonstrated and defended.
Level 5:
Reserved for research designs that involve explicit randomisation into treatment and control groups, with Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) providing the definitive example. Extensive evidence provided on comparability of treatment and control groups, showing no significant differences in terms of levels or trends. Control variables may be used to adjust for treatment and control group differences, but this adjustment should not have a large impact on the main results. Attention paid to problems of selective attrition from randomly assigned groups, which is shown to be of negligible importance. There should be limited or, ideally, no occurrence of ‘contamination’ of the control group with the treatment.
Note:
These levels are based on but not identical to the original Maryland SMS. The levels here are generally a little stricter than the original scale to help to clearly separate levels 3, 4 and 5 which form the basis for our evidence reviews.
[1] There are mixed views on this, with more WWC effectiveness to be demonstrated in local government. See: https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Portals/0/PDF%20reviews%20and%20summaries/UK%20what%20works%20centres%20study%20final%20report%20july%202018.pdf?ver=2018-07-03-155057-243
[2] Public Sector Research Establishment
[3] TRL = Technology Readiness Level
[4] A numerical model used to carry out economic analysis of different energy related systems at the country level to represent its evolution over a period of usually of 40–50 years (MARKetALlocation)
ProfJDMcKW 