TY - CHAP

T1 - Energy and social practice

T2 - From abstractions to dynamic processes

AU - Shove, Elizabeth

PY - 2017/5/3

Y1 - 2017/5/3

N2 - Energy policies are typically organised around the supply, management and reduction of energy conceptualised as a singular resource and measured in standardised units like KWh or Mtoe. This kind of abstraction enables national and international institutions to collect and compare data on per capita consumption, the effect of efficiency measures, progress towards emissions targets and the like. The problem is that such approaches treat energy, and energy consumers, as topics of analysis in their own right, stripped from the historically and culturally specific situations in which demand arises. In this chapter I make the case for seeing energy demand as something that is intimately related to the conduct of social practices, and thus inseparable from the spatial and temporal ordering of society, and from the infrastructures and institutions involved. I argue that better understanding of the dynamic and recursive relation between supply, demand and social practice is both necessary and important, particularly given the increasing significance of renewable energy and related challenges of matching peaks in provision with those of consumption. This way of thinking has policy implications. Rather than seeking to maintain present ways of life (but with lower carbon energy supplies), I suggest that the longer term goal could and should be that of imagining and promoting technologies, practices and socio-temporal orders that are compatible with greater reliance on renewables and reduced demand, accepting that this is likely to entail the emergence of ways of living that are really very different from those with which we are familiar today.

AB - Energy policies are typically organised around the supply, management and reduction of energy conceptualised as a singular resource and measured in standardised units like KWh or Mtoe. This kind of abstraction enables national and international institutions to collect and compare data on per capita consumption, the effect of efficiency measures, progress towards emissions targets and the like. The problem is that such approaches treat energy, and energy consumers, as topics of analysis in their own right, stripped from the historically and culturally specific situations in which demand arises. In this chapter I make the case for seeing energy demand as something that is intimately related to the conduct of social practices, and thus inseparable from the spatial and temporal ordering of society, and from the infrastructures and institutions involved. I argue that better understanding of the dynamic and recursive relation between supply, demand and social practice is both necessary and important, particularly given the increasing significance of renewable energy and related challenges of matching peaks in provision with those of consumption. This way of thinking has policy implications. Rather than seeking to maintain present ways of life (but with lower carbon energy supplies), I suggest that the longer term goal could and should be that of imagining and promoting technologies, practices and socio-temporal orders that are compatible with greater reliance on renewables and reduced demand, accepting that this is likely to entail the emergence of ways of living that are really very different from those with which we are familiar today.

KW - Energy Efficiency

KW - Renewable Energy

KW - Social Practice

KW - Smart Grid

KW - Energy Consumer

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-33753-1_9

DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-33753-1_9

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85018407096

SN - 9783319337524

T3 - Green Energy and Technology

SP - 207

EP - 220

BT - Complex Systems and Social Practices in Energy Transitions

PB - Springer-Verlag

ER -