Week 1 Flashcards
Household energy consumption
- picture*
- ) peak around 18-24
- ) cooling stays the same during the day while other change like cooking and washing and light
3 main approaches to energy
- Earth System: Modelling and forecasting; greenhouse effect, carbon
cycle, fossil fuels; global data and models; systems thinking - Technological development: sustainable energy production;
systems for transmission and distribution; storage; MLP and
transition theory; futuring; global and national data - Practice Theory: intersection of practices and infrastructures in two
main sectors (built environment and mobility); changing demand
Energy transition
- Resource -> new sources of energy
- Technical -> efficiency
- Commodity -> price
- Services -> practices
What is energy?
Physics
Energy is the ability to do work.
(Work is the ability to exert force
and cause change)
Energy as technical problem (neoclassical economics) Efficiency increases the amount of output that can be produced from a given quantity of resources and thereby increases the amount that can be consumed
World primary energy supply
84% Fossil fuels (27% coal, 24% gas, 33% oil)
- 3% Nuclear
- 4% Hydro
- 2% Wind
- 7% Biofuels, Geothermal and other
- 1% Solar
Why is the peak a problem?
• Electricity grid (infrastructure) • Meeting demand with ‘on-demand’ source of energy (‘carbon intensive) Recall: fossil system is system in which production follows demand • Not economic more expensive energy (market prices)
Global Energy Consumption
29% industry 33% Transportation 27% residental 6% commercial 3% other
Energy Efficiency:
1) ‘more services for the same energy input, or the same services for less energy input’
2) reduce the amount of energy used
3) In relation to buildings and building technologies, more efficient solutions are expected to perform as well if not better than those they replace.
4) Reduce the carbon emissions associated with the design and operation of things like buildings, domestic appliances, and heating and cooling technologies, or with the organization of bureaucratic, business or industrial processes.
Energy Efficiency Criticisms:
1) First, that efficiency strategies reproduce specific understandings of ‘service’ (including ideas about comfort, lighting, mobility, convenience etc.), not all of which are sustainable in the longer run.
2) Second, that concepts and measures of efficiency depend on ‘purifying’ and abstracting energy from the situations in which it is used and transformed
3) Rebound effect
people do not use energy for its own sake
they use it as part of accomplishing social practices at home, at work and in moving around.
Understanding energy means
understanding the sets of practice that are enacted, reproduced and transformed in any one society, and of understanding how material arrangements, including forms of energy, constitute dimensions of practice. (Shove & Walker, 2014, p. 48
Rebound effect:
As is widely recognized, money saved through the adoption of more energy-efficient technologies (a car or central heating boiler) can be used in ways that have negative consequences for energy demand in the ‘system’ or society as a whole, e.g. enabling more travel, or the construction of larger homes.
Similarly, people with better insulated properties might take back ‘comfort’ (higher temperatures) rather than reducing the energy they consume (Hamilton et al., 2016).
Societies become ‘entrapped’ by the material relations of which they are a part, and that over time, forms of energy and resource dependency have become increasingly and perhaps irreversibly embedded.
the effect of improving the efficiency of a factor of production
that the effect of improving the efficiency of a factor of production, like energy, is to lower its implicit price and hence make its use more affordable, thus leading to greater use. (Herring, 2006, p. 10)6
forms of energy production and use are
either the cause or the consequence of changing political, economic and technical systems
definition of energy
‘the ability to do work’, but this time with the possibility of drawing on an appropriately sophisticated account of what that ‘work’ entails and how it changes.
‘Energy and the Evolution of Culture
takes just such an approach, attributing ‘vast social changes’ to methods and techniques of energy conversion
culture develops when the amount of energy harnessed by man per capita per year is increased; or as the efficiency of the technological means of putting this energy to work is increased; or, as both factors are simultaneously increased.’ (White, 1943: 338).
‘A social system may foster the effective operation of its underlying technology or it may tend to restrain and thwart it.
converting energy primarily depend on technological innovation
Instead, Nye contends that techniques of provision and supply are shaped by social conditions and choices, and that while influenced by forms of technological momentum, energy systems are socially constructed: they 5 could be otherwise, and their development is not inevitable.
Economic influences:
processes involved in allocating and converting energy are bound both ‘by a changing growth rate and structure of economic activity’ and by the constraints of the ‘energetic resources’ themselves
Again there are two sides to the coin: whilst the uses of energy are here taken to be outcomes of economic activity, changes in economic activity are sometimes be explained by changes in the ‘fuel mix’ of society.
Whether it is the economy that is thought to drive the energy system or the energy system that is thought to drive the economy, the common contention is that societies are in part defined by the ways in which resources are organised and managed.
Political influences:
This is evidently so for those who focus on the distribution of resources (oil, gas etc.) and the vested interests which surround them.
In their view, fuel switching offers capitalist political economies a possible route to sustainable economic growth.
However, they suggest that such developments are unlikely without ‘scientifically informed, politically-led and long term strategic innovation’, regulation and a strong dose of political will (Harvey and McMeekin, 2010: 11)
energy and social systems are thought to interact with trajectories of sociotechnical innovation; patterns of
urbanisation;
divisions of labour; the
changing significance of industrial and other sectors, an
related forms of state and corporate power.
The Industrial Revolution has run its course
we are now entering upon the second stage, one of profound institutional change, of social revolution. Barring collapse and chaos, which is of course possible, a new social order will emerge. …The key to the future, in any event, lies in the energy situation.
Practice Theory
energy is used not for its own sake but as part of, and in the course of, accomplishing social practices, examples of which might include cooking, commuting to work, watching TV or conducting meetings (Warde, 2005)
rather patterns of energy consumption depend on a series of historically specific conjunctions of technologies (wiring, light bulbs etc.) and practices (illuminating rooms, reading at night) and constellations of practice, many of which are now disconnected from seasonal variations in daylight.
trends and patterns in energy demand (and in provision and supply as well) is in essence a matter of understanding how social practices develop, change and intersect.
“material arrangements”
More straightforwardly, it is vital to remember that material arrangements are themselves made, reproduced and transformed through and as part of happening practices.
understanding energy-society relations depends on
understanding the range of practices, material arrangements and social orders in which energy is immersed, and on showing how material arrangements and energy flows are implicated in the constitution and prefiguring of practices and hence of social order/society. From this point of view an account of energy-society relations is, in effect, an account of how ‘human transformations of nature, responses to nature and artefact maintenance all transpire as moments of industrial, housing, scientific, informational, medical, and hobby (etc) practices’
Energy demand
is consequently dynamic, social, cultural, political and historical: it is bound up with the temporal rhythm of society and with what people do. Second, energy demand is profoundly shaped by material arrangements. In a very literal sense demand and the means to consume constitute each other.
purification
making it more abstract – that way we erase the context
other benefits if energy transition
reduced emissions, health (deaths of PM particulate matter),
How do we deal with elements that are fixed, huge, complex, infrastructural and how do we conceptualise and deal with growing demand?
The potential of citizen participation in energy transition on basis of different models.
• The value and limitations of practice theory to the energy transition.
• The interactions between different infrastructural systems of energy generation,
transmission, and storage, mobility and transportation and housing/the built environment.
What is the problem?
Emission reduction without loss of standards of living
Reduce carbon footprint while preserving current standards of service
Efficiency: critique from practice theory
Based on calculating efficiency, use of energy
Such calculations require purification
Such purification maintains current systems in place
Erase context, erase possibilities for change
Erase what it means to ‘have the ability do work’
Effect of this is crucial
Maintains status quo of services
Abstracts energy, therefore removing it from possibility of acting, changing
A practice is not ‘anything you do’
Must be a recognizable block of activity, or patterns of activity that are
acted out, and through this performance, perpetuate the practice
• Not a one-off
• ‘recognizable’
Different approaches to energy:
“PART AND PARCEL”
Energy as part of social practice
• Practice theory approach to energy; not how many kW but who/what/where/why
“DRIVER”
Energy as cause or consequence of changing political, economic or technological
systems
Societies are defined (in part) by the ways in which energy resources and technologies
are defined
• Socio-economic development and energy
• Technology/technological systems and energy
• Users and energy
Energy: engineering and practice theory approach
Engineering approach • As standardized units • All energy made equivalent • How to deliver the same services • More efficiently • With fewer emissions
Practice theory approach • Types of fuels, their conversions and flows matter • How to rethink the characteristics of practices o
Energy use is strongly related to economic growth &
poverty alleviation
But what is the link?
• Causal relationship?
• Higher GDP through access to energy
• Higher GDP can drive higher consumption
• Energy rarely changes on its own
(health, education, transportation, sanitation, etc)
Energy as “driver”.
trends and patterns in energy demand (and in provision and supply as well)
is in essence a matter of understanding how social practices develop, change and intersect
