Katy Roelich

A chartered engineer with 10 years' industrial experience. Now researching climate change and energy policy.

My current research centres on the governance of sustainable transitions and in particular transitions in energy systems and consumption. More specifically my interests are related to the constraints created by policy and regulation on sustainable transitions; how governance of sustainable transitions can be more adaptive and dynamic; and the role of communities and municipalities in governance of sustainable transitions.

I was appointed Senior Research Fellow in 2011, jointly with the Institute of Resilient Infrastructure in the School of Civil Engineering and have experience in environmental and engineering consulting in the UK and overseas and, more recently sustainability research. While working in consultancy I provided environmental and sustainability advice to a wide range of industries including, utilities, nuclear, oil, mining, rail, road and housing working for the private sector, government agencies and utility companies.

Following nine years in consultancy I moved to the Stockholm Environment Institute to work in the field of sustainable consumption and production research, predominantly in the application of environment-economy models to policy analysis and development. My work at SEI involved producing scenarios for sustainable consumption and production in Europe and investigating our reliance on scarce metals for low carbon transitions.

Current research projects include:

UK INDEMAND, EPSRC-ESRC: an End-Use Energy Demand centre for reducing industrial energy and material use in supplying UK needs. Researcher and work package convener investigating governance of transitions in consumption and production and development of methods to enable more adaptive, dynamic governance pathways.

Infrastructure Business Models, Valuation and Innovation for Local Delivery (iBuild), EPSRC-ESRC: centre funded to develop new approaches to infrastructure business models with a specific focus on delivery at a local level. Leading a work package investigating the potential contribution of business models at local scale and the role of governance in enabling local business models.

Alternative Financing for Infrastructure, EPSRC ARCC: PI investigating alternative sources of financing for resilient infrastructure, in partnership with ClimateXchange and Adaptation Scotland, to inform Scottish Government policy.

Land of the MUSCos: EPSRC funded project developing a new business model of multi-utility service provision to integrate end users and reduce resource consumption.

Previous research projects include:

Undermining Infrastructure: EPSRC funded project using an enhanced method of stocks and flows analysis to understand the reliance of future technologies and infrastructure renewal on critical materials and how we can develop infratructure that is more resilient to this scarcity.