It’s GOZERO for Richard and the research team

OUBS academic Professor Richard Blundel, Director of the Social and Sustainable Enterprise (SSE) research cluster, and other members of a multi-disciplinary research team have secured approximately £250,000 funding for GOZERO, a 20-month study of the governance of decarbonisation in small businesses, starting this month (September 2022).

Richard’s partners are based at The Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford; University of Edinburgh; and Sheffield Hallam University. GOZERO was one of only three successful bids in a competitive funding call from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) – eight were invited to submit full proposals from 24 expressions of interest.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often struggle to find reliable information on pathways to achieving net zero, while policymakers find it difficult to respond effectively given the sheer diversity of the SME population. The GOZERO project aims to provide a robust evidence base to support the multi-level governance of SME decarbonisation across the four UK nations. I’ll be working with business engagement colleagues in two of the nations – the OU in Wales’ Cardiff office and the OU in Ireland’s Belfast office – to organise consultative workshops and develop a series of comparative, place-based case studies as part of the project.

Richard Blundel
Professor of Enterprise and Organisation