On 28 June 2021 a group of us representing The Young Foundation, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Leeds, and the University of York had confirmation from the Nuffield Foundation that we had received funding to undertake a project that would seek to ‘Understand Family and Community Vulnerabilities in the transition to Net Zero’. The project proposed to explore how disadvantaged people and communities might be affected by the UK's Net Zero policy agenda, and to consider how risks might be mitigated, and communities included and empowered during this period of change.

By the midway point of the project we had produced a 60,000 word report that explored the likely policy changes that were expected to occur over the next 30 years, existing inequalities within these broad areas of policy change, for example fuel poverty and housing, and what had already been written on these areas of policy change from a climate justice perspective – for example changes to home energy systems as a result of low carbon policies and their impacts on different households. Drawing this material together and reflecting on theoretical work around capabilities and social inclusion, our research led to the development of a framework that outlined the challenges that exist for households, and the actions that might be taken to enable a transition to Net Zero that leaves no one behind.

Once we had completed our report, we realized what we had done – rather than reviewing existing literature, we had actually brought together material that had simply not existed in the same place before. Indeed, no one to date had tried to consider the impact of Net Zero-related policies on people as a whole.