Alex Owens
Biographic Data
| ID | 161956 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alex Owens |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alex |
| FAMILY NAME | Owens |
| SIGNATURE | OWENS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3872-9900 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 87 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Completing the SME carbon profile: Scalable prediction of scope 3 emissions
Despite growing recognition of significance, a business’s Scope 3 emissions remain rarely measured and as a result are poorly understood. This situation is particularly common amongst small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which face additional obstacles to emission measurement. With this paper, we present a transaction-based approach to facilitate SME Scope 3 engagement. Using financial transaction data for 150,000 + UK SMEs, we produce spen…
Bridging the SME reporting gap: A new model for predicting Scope 1 and 2 emissions
We present a novel statistical model for predicting Scope 1 and 2 emissions for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Trained on financial transaction data from over 100,000 UK SMEs, the model targets a business segment excluded from formal emissions reporting and often under‐engaged in sustainability efforts. By leveraging scalable, objective data, our approach offers an accessible alternative to existing methods that rely on either coarse …
A scalable tool for farm-level carbon accounting: Evidence from UK agriculture
Accurately quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the farm level is crucial for agricultural decarbonisation, yet doing so remains challenging—particularly for smaller farming operations that lack resources for comprehensive data collection. To address this gap, we present a new framework to predict farm-level direct emission intensities (tCO 2 e/£) from a minimal set of input variables. Our approach leverages a unique and comprehensive da…
Towards a Relational Sociology of Retrofit
Decarbonisation of residential buildings ('retrofit') is vital if nations are to meet declared net zero targets. This challenge is especially acute in the UK, which has some of the least energy efficient homes in Europe. Yet, to date, sociology has paid relatively little attention either to the urgency of this challenge or to its potential solutions. This article uses concepts from relational sociology to propose a complete reframing of the retro…
Examining changes in household carbon footprints across generations in the UK using decomposition analysis
To meet climate targets, consumption‐based household emissions need to fall rapidly. An important but still poorly understood question is whether generational change could contribute to decreases in emissions. It is sometimes assumed that younger generations such as Millennials and Generation Z are more concerned about climate change and have greener lifestyles than previous generations of the Silent Generation, Baby boomers, and Generation X, bu…
Developing a relational approach to energy demand: A methodological and conceptual guide
In a recent review of research on the role of social relations in shaping energy demand, authors documented increasing interest in relational approaches to energy [1]. Relational approaches to energy conceive of human behaviour as produced and reproduced by social relations and interactions, placing relationships at the centre of inquiry, as well as understanding these relationships in the context of infrastructure and the built environment. In t…
Landlords' accounts of retrofit: A relational approach in the private rented sector in England
Climate change commitments and the current global energy and living cost crises require investment into energy efficiency in buildings. With one of the oldest housing stocks in Europe, the energy intensity of buildings in the United Kingdom remains high compared to other countries. The adoption of energy retrofit measures can support tackling several social, economic, and environmental objectives. Scarce uptake of these is particularly evident wi…
Rethinking retrofit: Relational insights for the design of residential energy efficiency policy
The ‘retrofit’ of energy efficiency, low carbon heating and renewable microgeneration measures in homes is a major focus for energy and climate policy. Yet despite policy interventions, few countries are achieving their residential decarbonisation targets. In this paper we argue that a core reason for this failure is the mainstream ‘rational actor’ framing of households, which guides energy efficiency policymaking. We introduce an alternative ‘re…
Place‐based and people‐centred: Principles for a socially inclusive Net Zero transition
The transition to Net Zero marks a radical reshaping of many aspects of everyday life in the effort to reduce human‐caused climate change. It also has the potential to influence positively a number of social challenges: improving public health, reducing the effects of poverty, increasing well‐being and bringing neighbourhoods together. However, these positive outcomes are by no means a given. Households on low incomes are less resilient than ever…
Luxury-focused carbon taxation improves fairness of climate policy
Equitable climate policies are required for a just and rapid energy transition. A widely discussed climate policy instrument is carbon taxes. Previous studies of the distributional implications of carbon taxation focused on uniform carbon taxes across sectors. Differentiated tax rates across goods and services received less attention. Here we model an alternative carbon tax design accounting for the distribution of household consumption and carbo…
Eco-labels, conspicuous conservation and moral licensing: An indirect behavioural rebound effect
Who applies for energy grants
Most domestic energy retrofit policies in the UK are designed to incentivise economically rational consumers. Logically, this should mean that applicants to domestic energy incentives are those who can financially benefit the most from these subsidies. Here, we test this logic by asking the question ‘what types of households apply for domestic energy incentives in the UK?’. To answer this question, we systematically assess the characteristics of …
Achieving emission reductions without furthering social inequality: Lessons from the 2007 economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic
To meet global climate goals, such as limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius, urgent and substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are needed. From a consumption-based perspective, such measures include a radical reduction of emissions from private households. Despite this urgency, attention must be paid to achieve such reductions without furthering social inequalities. To address these issues, this research looks at consumption-based g…
Conceptualising socially inclusive environmental policy: A just transition to Net Zero
The policy area addressing the climate crisis in the UK, ‘Net Zero’, will affect many aspects of people’s everyday life. Given that policy builds from where we are now, which for some (post austerity, and mid cost of living crisis) means in financial crisis, there is work to be done in enabling a socially inclusive Net Zero. In this article, we modify the Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix’s four forms of participation for social inclusion, drawing …
The relational dimensions of renovation: Implications for retrofit policy
Retrofitting the UK's housing stock is essential if the UK is to meet its climate commitments. Wider research has addressed how weaknesses in the drafting and implementation of retrofit policy have slowed progress in this area, including the tendency to treat homeowners as discrete, isolated decision makers. We contribute to this research by exploring the wider dynamics that underpin decision-making in and around households. We make this contribu…
Social outcomes of energy use in the United Kingdom: Household energy footprints and their links to well-being
Net national metabolism as a fine-scale metric of energetic biophysical size in an industrialised country
The biophysical magnitude of global human economic activity is arguably the defining feature and challenge of the Anthropocene, leading to multiple environmental consequences. Quantifying this magnitude at sufficient resolution remains a challenge. We define and present the first detailed district-level analysis of Net National Metabolism (NNM) - a social metabolism energy metric - for an industrialised country (the United Kingdom), using data on…
Three‐scope carbon emission inventories of global cities
A major challenge for cities taking action on climate change is assessing and managing the contribution of urban consumption which triggers greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions outside city boundaries. Using a novel method of creating city‐level input–output tables, we present the first consistent, large‐scale, and global assessment of three‐scope GHG inventories for 79 members of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. These inventories cover the emi…
Final energy footprints in Zambia: Investigating links between household consumption, collective provision, and well-being
Substantial literature exists on household lifestyles and related energy use and emissions in the global north, but little is known for many countries the global south. We estimate household-level energy footprints for Zambia covering direct (traditional and modern energy carriers) and indirect energy use, and adopting energy extended multiregional input–output. We employ final energy consumption, as it is closer to energy services and thus the p…
Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories
Supply versus use designs of environmental extensions in input–output analysis: Conceptual and empirical implications for the case of energy
Input–output analysis is one of the central methodological pillars of industrial ecology. However, the literature that discusses different structures of environmental extensions (EEs), that is, the scope of physical flows and their attribution to sectors in the monetary input–output table (MIOT), remains fragmented. This article investigates the conceptual and empirical implications of applying two different but frequently used designs of EEs, us…
Household final energy footprints in Nepal, Vietnam and Zambia: Composition, inequality and links to well-being
The link between energy use, social and environmental well-being is at the root of critical synergies between clean and affordable energy (SDG7) and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Household-level quantitative energy analyses enable better understanding regarding interconnections between the level and composition of energy use, and SDG achievement. This study examines the household-level energy footprints in Nepal, Vietnam, and Zambia…
From rational to relational: How energy poor households engage with the British retail energy market
In the sociological tradition, markets are understood to be constituted of social relations: relations of trust, friendship, power and dependence, which have moral and emotional qualities. In this paper, we explore how people in energy poor households construct the energy market and its impact on energy policy. Drawing on secondary analysis of a large collection of qualitative interviews on the lived experience of energy poverty carried out from …
From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas, by Daniel Veidlinger
From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas, by Daniel Veidlinger. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018. 273pp. Hb $68. ISBN-13: 9780824873400
Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions in the sustainable development Goals Agenda
In 2017 the paper ‘The Sustainable Development Oxymoron: Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals’ was published, showing that there is a conflict between socio-economic development goals and ecological sustainability goals using cross-country time-series data. The authors looked at production-based CO2 emissions to measure and model the 13th SDG goal addressing climate change. Their models showed that produc…
A Descriptive Analysis of NBC’s Coverage of the Centennial Olympics: The “Games of the Woman
This study examines the amount of coverage given to women’s events and female athletes by NBC at the Centennial Olympic Games. Content analysis showed that women were covered extensively, but that coverage of women concentrated on individual sports such as swimming, diving, and gymnastics to the exclusion of team events. Men’s team competitions received substantially more coverage than did women’s team events, and women in sports that involved po…
Social outcomes of energy use in the United Kingdom: Household energy footprints and their links to well-being
The relational dimensions of renovation: Implications for retrofit policy
Retrofitting the UK's housing stock is essential if the UK is to meet its climate commitments. Wider research has addressed how weaknesses in the drafting and implementation of retrofit policy have slowed progress in this area, including the tendency to treat homeowners as discrete, isolated decision makers. We contribute to this research by exploring the wider dynamics that underpin decision-making in and around households. We make this contribu…
From rational to relational: How energy poor households engage with the British retail energy market
In the sociological tradition, markets are understood to be constituted of social relations: relations of trust, friendship, power and dependence, which have moral and emotional qualities. In this paper, we explore how people in energy poor households construct the energy market and its impact on energy policy. Drawing on secondary analysis of a large collection of qualitative interviews on the lived experience of energy poverty carried out from …
Rethinking retrofit: Relational insights for the design of residential energy efficiency policy
The ‘retrofit’ of energy efficiency, low carbon heating and renewable microgeneration measures in homes is a major focus for energy and climate policy. Yet despite policy interventions, few countries are achieving their residential decarbonisation targets. In this paper we argue that a core reason for this failure is the mainstream ‘rational actor’ framing of households, which guides energy efficiency policymaking. We introduce an alternative ‘re…
Developing a relational approach to energy demand: A methodological and conceptual guide
In a recent review of research on the role of social relations in shaping energy demand, authors documented increasing interest in relational approaches to energy [1]. Relational approaches to energy conceive of human behaviour as produced and reproduced by social relations and interactions, placing relationships at the centre of inquiry, as well as understanding these relationships in the context of infrastructure and the built environment. In t…
Final energy footprints in Zambia: Investigating links between household consumption, collective provision, and well-being
Substantial literature exists on household lifestyles and related energy use and emissions in the global north, but little is known for many countries the global south. We estimate household-level energy footprints for Zambia covering direct (traditional and modern energy carriers) and indirect energy use, and adopting energy extended multiregional input–output. We employ final energy consumption, as it is closer to energy services and thus the p…
Landlords' accounts of retrofit: A relational approach in the private rented sector in England
Climate change commitments and the current global energy and living cost crises require investment into energy efficiency in buildings. With one of the oldest housing stocks in Europe, the energy intensity of buildings in the United Kingdom remains high compared to other countries. The adoption of energy retrofit measures can support tackling several social, economic, and environmental objectives. Scarce uptake of these is particularly evident wi…
Who applies for energy grants
Most domestic energy retrofit policies in the UK are designed to incentivise economically rational consumers. Logically, this should mean that applicants to domestic energy incentives are those who can financially benefit the most from these subsidies. Here, we test this logic by asking the question ‘what types of households apply for domestic energy incentives in the UK?’. To answer this question, we systematically assess the characteristics of …
Conceptualising socially inclusive environmental policy: A just transition to Net Zero
The policy area addressing the climate crisis in the UK, ‘Net Zero’, will affect many aspects of people’s everyday life. Given that policy builds from where we are now, which for some (post austerity, and mid cost of living crisis) means in financial crisis, there is work to be done in enabling a socially inclusive Net Zero. In this article, we modify the Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix’s four forms of participation for social inclusion, drawing …
Hello Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz: Auto/Ethnographic Improvisation as Educational Event in Doctoral Supervision
Through exchanges within a doctoral supervision, the authors explore a range of dilemmas and challenges for reflexive inquiry. These include the problematic business of naming, the impossibility of objective separation of self from research, the merging of researcher subjectivities, and differences between performance and performativity. We note the educational potential in what can conventionally be considered "unprofessional" approaches to qual…
Place‐based and people‐centred: Principles for a socially inclusive Net Zero transition
The transition to Net Zero marks a radical reshaping of many aspects of everyday life in the effort to reduce human‐caused climate change. It also has the potential to influence positively a number of social challenges: improving public health, reducing the effects of poverty, increasing well‐being and bringing neighbourhoods together. However, these positive outcomes are by no means a given. Households on low incomes are less resilient than ever…
Soil Sensitivity to Acidification in Asia: Status and Prospects
Exceedance of steady-state critical loads for soil acidification is consistently found in southern China and parts of SE Asia, but there is no evidence of impacts outside of China. This study describes a methodology for calculating the time to effects for soils sensitive to acidic deposition in Asia under potential future sulfur (S), nitrogen (N), and calcium (Ca) emission scenarios. The calculations are matched to data availability in Asia to pr…
Borderland Forms: Arthur Conan Doyle, Albion's Daughters, and the Politics of the Cottingley Fairies
Journal Article ‘Borderland Forms’: Arthur Conan Doyle, Albion's Daughters, and the Politics of the Cottingley Fairies Get access Alex Owen Alex Owen Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar History Workshop Journal, Volume 38, Issue 1, AUTUMN 1994, Pages 48–85, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/38.1.48 Published: 01 October 1994
The Darkened Room. Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England
A highly original study that examines the central role played by women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian era, Darkened Room is more than a meditation on women mediums-it's an exploration of the era's gender relations. The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead, offered female mediums a new independenc…
Borderland Forms: Arthur Conan Doyle, Albion's Daughters, and the Politics of the Cottingley Fairies
Journal Article ‘Borderland Forms’: Arthur Conan Doyle, Albion's Daughters, and the Politics of the Cottingley Fairies Get access Alex Owen Alex Owen Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar History Workshop Journal, Volume 38, Issue 1, AUTUMN 1994, Pages 48–85, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/38.1.48 Published: 01 October 1994
A Descriptive Analysis of NBC’s Coverage of the Centennial Olympics: The “Games of the Woman
This study examines the amount of coverage given to women’s events and female athletes by NBC at the Centennial Olympic Games. Content analysis showed that women were covered extensively, but that coverage of women concentrated on individual sports such as swimming, diving, and gymnastics to the exclusion of team events. Men’s team competitions received substantially more coverage than did women’s team events, and women in sports that involved po…
Soil Sensitivity to Acidification in Asia: Status and Prospects
Exceedance of steady-state critical loads for soil acidification is consistently found in southern China and parts of SE Asia, but there is no evidence of impacts outside of China. This study describes a methodology for calculating the time to effects for soils sensitive to acidic deposition in Asia under potential future sulfur (S), nitrogen (N), and calcium (Ca) emission scenarios. The calculations are matched to data availability in Asia to pr…
Decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth: Scenarios for energy use, materials use and carbon emissions
Evaluating the Use of a Carbon Footprint Calculator: Communicating Impacts of Consumption at Household Level and Exploring Mitigation Options
Through an increasingly globalized supply chain, local consumption of goods and services has impacts around the world. The carbon footprint can be used to link local consumption to global greenhouse gas emissions. This study describes the development and use of REAP Petite, a household‐level footprint calculator. We describe how the tool integrates geodemographic information with user‐inputted data; allows users to compare their footprint with ot…
Towards Robust, Authoritative Assessments of Environmental Impacts Embodied in Trade: Current State and Recommendations
Global multiregional input‐output databases (GMRIOs) became the standard tool for tracking environmental impacts through global supply chains. To date, several GMRIOs are available, but the numerical results differ. This paper considers how GMRIOs can be made more robust and authoritative. We show that GMRIOs need detail in environmentally relevant sectors. On the basis of a review of earlier work, we conclude that the highest uncertainty in foot…
Hello Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz: Auto/Ethnographic Improvisation as Educational Event in Doctoral Supervision
Through exchanges within a doctoral supervision, the authors explore a range of dilemmas and challenges for reflexive inquiry. These include the problematic business of naming, the impossibility of objective separation of self from research, the merging of researcher subjectivities, and differences between performance and performativity. We note the educational potential in what can conventionally be considered "unprofessional" approaches to qual…
Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions in the sustainable development Goals Agenda
In 2017 the paper ‘The Sustainable Development Oxymoron: Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals’ was published, showing that there is a conflict between socio-economic development goals and ecological sustainability goals using cross-country time-series data. The authors looked at production-based CO2 emissions to measure and model the 13th SDG goal addressing climate change. Their models showed that produc…
The impacts of data deviations between MRIO models on material footprints: A comparison of Exiobase, Eora, and Icio
In various international policy processes such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, an urgent demand for robust consumption‐based indicators of material flows, or material footprints (MFs), has emerged over the past years. Yet, MFs for national economies diverge when calculated with different Global Multiregional Input–Output (GMRIO) databases, constituting a significant barrier to a broad policy uptake of these indicators. The objective of t…
Bridging the climate mitigation gap with economy‐wide material productivity
Projections of UK greenhouse gas emissions estimate a shortfall in existing and planned climate policies meeting UK climate targets: the UK's mitigation gap. Material and product demand is driving industrial greenhouse gas emissions at a rate greater than carbon intensity improvements in the economy. Evidence shows that products can be produced with fewer carbon intensive inputs and demand for new products can be reduced. The economy‐wide contrib…
Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories
Supply versus use designs of environmental extensions in input–output analysis: Conceptual and empirical implications for the case of energy
Input–output analysis is one of the central methodological pillars of industrial ecology. However, the literature that discusses different structures of environmental extensions (EEs), that is, the scope of physical flows and their attribution to sectors in the monetary input–output table (MIOT), remains fragmented. This article investigates the conceptual and empirical implications of applying two different but frequently used designs of EEs, us…
Household final energy footprints in Nepal, Vietnam and Zambia: Composition, inequality and links to well-being
The link between energy use, social and environmental well-being is at the root of critical synergies between clean and affordable energy (SDG7) and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Household-level quantitative energy analyses enable better understanding regarding interconnections between the level and composition of energy use, and SDG achievement. This study examines the household-level energy footprints in Nepal, Vietnam, and Zambia…
From rational to relational: How energy poor households engage with the British retail energy market
In the sociological tradition, markets are understood to be constituted of social relations: relations of trust, friendship, power and dependence, which have moral and emotional qualities. In this paper, we explore how people in energy poor households construct the energy market and its impact on energy policy. Drawing on secondary analysis of a large collection of qualitative interviews on the lived experience of energy poverty carried out from …
From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas, by Daniel Veidlinger
From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas, by Daniel Veidlinger. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018. 273pp. Hb $68. ISBN-13: 9780824873400
Three‐scope carbon emission inventories of global cities
A major challenge for cities taking action on climate change is assessing and managing the contribution of urban consumption which triggers greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions outside city boundaries. Using a novel method of creating city‐level input–output tables, we present the first consistent, large‐scale, and global assessment of three‐scope GHG inventories for 79 members of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. These inventories cover the emi…
Final energy footprints in Zambia: Investigating links between household consumption, collective provision, and well-being
Substantial literature exists on household lifestyles and related energy use and emissions in the global north, but little is known for many countries the global south. We estimate household-level energy footprints for Zambia covering direct (traditional and modern energy carriers) and indirect energy use, and adopting energy extended multiregional input–output. We employ final energy consumption, as it is closer to energy services and thus the p…
The relational dimensions of renovation: Implications for retrofit policy
Retrofitting the UK's housing stock is essential if the UK is to meet its climate commitments. Wider research has addressed how weaknesses in the drafting and implementation of retrofit policy have slowed progress in this area, including the tendency to treat homeowners as discrete, isolated decision makers. We contribute to this research by exploring the wider dynamics that underpin decision-making in and around households. We make this contribu…
Social outcomes of energy use in the United Kingdom: Household energy footprints and their links to well-being
Net national metabolism as a fine-scale metric of energetic biophysical size in an industrialised country
The biophysical magnitude of global human economic activity is arguably the defining feature and challenge of the Anthropocene, leading to multiple environmental consequences. Quantifying this magnitude at sufficient resolution remains a challenge. We define and present the first detailed district-level analysis of Net National Metabolism (NNM) - a social metabolism energy metric - for an industrialised country (the United Kingdom), using data on…
Luxury-focused carbon taxation improves fairness of climate policy
Equitable climate policies are required for a just and rapid energy transition. A widely discussed climate policy instrument is carbon taxes. Previous studies of the distributional implications of carbon taxation focused on uniform carbon taxes across sectors. Differentiated tax rates across goods and services received less attention. Here we model an alternative carbon tax design accounting for the distribution of household consumption and carbo…
Eco-labels, conspicuous conservation and moral licensing: An indirect behavioural rebound effect
Who applies for energy grants
Most domestic energy retrofit policies in the UK are designed to incentivise economically rational consumers. Logically, this should mean that applicants to domestic energy incentives are those who can financially benefit the most from these subsidies. Here, we test this logic by asking the question ‘what types of households apply for domestic energy incentives in the UK?’. To answer this question, we systematically assess the characteristics of …
Achieving emission reductions without furthering social inequality: Lessons from the 2007 economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic
To meet global climate goals, such as limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius, urgent and substantial reductions of greenhouse gas emissions are needed. From a consumption-based perspective, such measures include a radical reduction of emissions from private households. Despite this urgency, attention must be paid to achieve such reductions without furthering social inequalities. To address these issues, this research looks at consumption-based g…
Economics (20 works) · Business (13 works) · Environmental Impact and Sustainability (13 works) · Engineering (11 works) · Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies (10 works) · Greenhouse gas (10 works) · Natural resource economics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Environmental economics (9 works) · Environmental Science (8 works)