Socio-Technical and Cultural Approaches to Energy Consumption: An Introduction

Energy consumption inconspicuously bridges nature and culture. Modern societies and cultures depend on intensive energy use from the extraction of natural resources. In fact, the industrialization process required large amounts of energy, but main sources such as oil and coal, have been gradually depleted and found to be heavily polluting the environment. Despite their environmental impacts, these resources have provided cheap and abundant power to fuel technological progress and economic growth

Energy efficiency and using less – a social sciences and humanities annotated bibliography

The challenge: * Technological progress and changes in energy supply are not sufficient for a transition to a low-carbon energy system; demand also needs to be considered. Energy efficiency and reducing total consumption - the topics of this bibliography - are typical elements of a demand side approach. * The uptake of energy efficient technologies, and understanding how we might use less energy, represent big challenges for researchers, policymakers, practitioners and end-users themselves. The aim: * European energy policy has so far mainly relied on research from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Energy-related Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) have been significantly underrepresented. This bibliography aims to discuss different disciplinary perspectives on energy efficiency and using less and to demonstrate their relevance for energy policy. Coverage: * A major focus of this bibliography is on behaviour and behavioural change. The bibliography highlights the diversity of end-users and their needs, the impacts they experience, abilities, as well as the range of sites where energy is consumed. * It also looks at how SSH research addresses more structural elements of demand - such as markets, institutions, and policy - and how these interact. Key findings: * There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach; different disciplines frame the problems of energy efficiency and using less differently, and do not always agree. Economics is very highly represented in research about energy efficiency, closely followed by Sociology. Other disciplines such as Urban Studies and Industrial Design are slowly becoming part of the work. * Most disciplines focus mainly on mainstream types of users and use. Fewer studies focus on the exceptions - deviants, others, non-users or energy poor, excessive users - or low-energy practices such as sleep, music making or sports. * Electricity is the main focus of most social science research on energy use and efficiency, possibly due to a focus on monitoring savings which is more difficult for gas and energy for hot water use. * There is an overrepresentation of work on feedback devices and smart meters, in contrast to more everyday technologies such as water heaters or washing machines. Several studies urge for more study of this everyday material culture because it strongly shapes how users can engage in using less or using more efficiently; some technologies are simply built to have high energy use. * Less research is done on the responsibility of stakeholders (other than the end-user) for the energy transition, especially the market. It is argued that markets are not neutral or depoliticised, but bear responsibility for the energy transition too. * Dominant areas of research include: a focus on the gap between awareness and actual energy behaviour action; and rebound effects, which may arise when increased energy efficiency leads to lower costs for energy which in turn may lead to increased energy consumption. * New areas of research include new demand side initiatives, services/business models and markets such as peer-to-peer, DIY, and community approaches to engagement. * Most demand side approaches in the policy domain focus on cost reduction, education and communication. Insights from Social Sciences such as Sociology, Anthropology, Urban studies, Ethics, and Science and Technology Studies see less uptake in the policy domain

An assessment of experiences in the U. S. A. with power and emissions disclosure information for energy consumers

A new Norwegian electricity directive that will take effect in 2007 will mandate the compliance of Norwegian electricity utilities with the European Unions EL Directive (2003/54/EC, par 6). The EU Directive states that all electricity suppliers will be required to provide their customers with information on the fuel mix and emissions resulting from energy generation. The purpose is to make fuel mix and fuel source pollution more visible. The theory is that this will increase consumer awareness and motivate some consumers to switch to renewable or less polluting energy sources; further, it might lead consumers to take steps to reduce their electricity consumption. It is anticipated that power disclosure labels will also have an effect on suppliers, some of which may be interested in ‘greening’ their profile by increasing their mix of renewables and decreasing fossil fuel or nuclear generated power. The EU Directive contains some minimum standards for the ways that the power disclosure and emissions information is to be provided, but also allows for some flexibility. For instance, the Directive stipulates that at a minimum the information must be up to date (based on last year), must be provided at least once a year and must be controlled by a government regulator. Beyond that, the form for presentation is left up to suppliers. In Norway, minimal guidelines have been announced to steer the ways that energy suppliers implement power disclosure. These allow considerable leeway in adaptation. For example, important issues such as the information’s placement (on bill or as insert), design, layout and some content issues, such as whether or not a comparative ‘average’ power mix for Norway is provided, are all left up to energy suppliers. Left unanswered are a number of questions regarding customer response. Some of these were addressed in a pre-study for the EU Commission (Boardman and Palmer 2003) – these will be discussed in section 6. However, only one EU country (Austria) has thus far fully complied with the disclosure directive and no comprehensive post-implementation assessments have been carried out. Thus there have as yet been no post-implementation evaluations in Europe. The USA, on the other hand, has a decade of experience with the implementation of power disclosure information. A first wave of States implemented power disclosure in the late 1990s. By 2005, more than 40% (21) of the US states had implemented power disclosure and an estimated 60% of the US population received power disclosure information (Delmas et al. 1 2006). The experiences in the USA form a valuable source of insights and information on the pros and cons of various forms for power disclosure. These insights serve as a source for further testing in Norway and as a resource on which Norwegian authorities and energy suppliers can draw in their further development of guidelines and compliance schemes. In this report, the US experiences with power and emissions disclosure are reviewed and their relevance for Norway discussed. The report is based on interviews with key persons and institutions in California in August 2006, as well as a review of journal articles, reports and web-based information provided by researchers, public authorities, power regulators and energy utilities in the United States. Two questions have directed the research: - What insights can be gleaned on the strengths and weaknesses of different U. S. programs and information designs? - What general lessons can be drawn from the US experience on how Norway might go forward to implement disclosure information, accounting for the perspectives of US public authorities, energy suppliers and consumers. Emphasis will be given to the ways that information has been provided to customers, such as whether information should be provided on the energy bill or as a billing insert; whether a graphical or tabular presentation of the information should be used; whether and how to provide a basis of comparison of a given suppliers power mix with that of others, for example providing the average mix of all Norwegian suppliers. The report will also touch on the issues of tracing power sources and insuring the reliability of the information

Gender Implications of Energy Use and Energy Access

The article reviews and consolidates both theory and findings on the gender consequences of energy access in the Global South. The literature shows that women across the Global South have far greater responsibility than men for the work involved in producing essential home energy services such as light and heat, cooking, and cleaning. The most significant impact of electrification is that it enables better time management by women and the reduction of physical work (drudgery). There is evidence from a number of settings that the time saved can be used by women to study, take on salaried work and start new small businesses, and that these benefits can be facilitated by including women in energy governance and planning. A point that is often missed, underestimated or misunderstood from a North American/European perspective is that gendered ideologies and practices in the Global South are deeply anchored in family and kin relations. The joint family is an entity and network through which money, assets and commodities move, creating obligations which are important to understanding the interaction of gender relations and energy access

Refrigerating India

This article examines the powerful change potential embedded in the innocuous looking cold storage box nestled into virtually every kitchen in the rich countries of the world: the refrigerator. For people in these countries, the refrigerator is a taken-for-granted component of food practices. The refrigeration technology and its potentials for affecting home practices are spreading to kitchens in the Global South through increasingly liberal transnational markets. The article explores the meeting of this food storage technology with locally anchored ideas in South India that are at odds with the refrigerator’s purpose. Based on ethnographic research centred in Kerala, India, conducted over a four-year period, the research unearthed how the refrigerator’s powerful time saving and food preserving potentials are eroding deeply anchored ideas about diet and health in India. The infrastructural tentacles of refrigeration are taking root and bringing with them the same dramatic changes in food production, delivery and consumption that we have seen in the rich countries of the world. The energy and environmental consequences of these refrigerator-driven changes are briefly examined