Project update by Hailey Bloom, student at Durham University

In addition to our research with the PEOPLE project and Durham County Council, students on the MSc in Energy and Society course participate in an intensive teaching week once a term. Here, professionals from a variety of energy specialties, from both academic and business spheres, give presentations to help expand student understandings on the various fields in the study of energy. Our group was given the chance to present our project aims, objectives, and progress to our fellow course mates; to PEOPLE Project instructors Prof. Sandra Bell and Dr. Maria Şalaru; and to Rosalind Farrow, a carbon and energy analyst from Durham County Council. The core presentation was similar to that given to Durham County Council’s Low-carbon team in December, but with some additions of further project contexts and progress.

For context, we elaborated on how, due to financial and other circumstances, our original topic could not be pursued. This required the Council to source another topic and the Durham University team to redesign the project aims and objectives. The new project, described in an earlier project update, required different methods which we went on to describe during the presentation. Specifically, paper leaflets have been designed for the student and council team to attach to electric vehicles as they encounter them within Durham. This has thus far been successful with two completed interviews, one conducted by Jack and Hailey and the second being conducted by Brendan and Hailey, and with several other interviews scheduled for the near future. Additional progress included a shared annotated bibliography between the student team which will help build up sources for a comprehensive literature review. Lastly, during the post-presentation period, we politely answered questions about the project posed from the audience. This allowed us to justify the resilience of our methods and provide some more specific detail about our experiences as researchers.