EXPERIMENTS FOR IDENTIFYING NECESSARY AND MISSING COMPETENCES FOR A SMART AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SYSTEM

Abstract

The notion that we can learn from experiments is topical in current discussions on societal transitions for combating climate change. Within a socio-technical transitions approach, strategic niche management (SNM) conceives of local experiments within protected spaces as important initiators of learning and empowerment of new technologies. Transition management –a governance approach– views “local experiments” as central in a societal learning process for sustainability. Several countries – among them Finland – aim to develop a culture of experimentation in order to meet the sustainability and climate challenges of the future. This paper presents a new perspective on experiments and learning. Analytical studies on experiments, pilots, demonstrations and living labs show that experimental uses of new technologies can reveal missing competences. For example, demonstrations of building-applied solar energy technologies show how commissioning, maintenance, operation and use can be problematic due to missing services and missing competences in existing firms and among users (Janda and Parag 2013; Killip 2013; Janda et al. 2014; Heiskanen et al. 2015).We demonstrate our approach with Finnish examples from pilots, demonstrations and experiments in embedding smart energy - solar power and other intermittent energy sources, energy management, smart metering and grids – into real-life environments. Our data consist of 8 case studies, and workshops with the users of research results (public authorities, educational bodies, interaction designers). We show how such experiments can be used to identify missing competences and anticipate future education and usability needs, i.e., how to co-adapt technologies and users to a climate-constrained future world