Smart energy, smart livingElizabeth Shove, Lancaster University

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The promise:

To give an informed view on how all the different threads of energy generation and use combine for the smart house, workplace and lifestyle.

Energy demand reduction, low carbon emissions

What is energy demand? A consequence of technical efficiency

and conversion (measured in Joules)

A consequence of population, income and some level of technological development/efficiency.

A ‘resource’ that energy/mobility providers can manipulate and mobilise , e.g. in managing load profiles through demand response or demand reduction – negawatts and negumption

An outcome of the social, infrastructural and institutional ordering of what people do.

A more or less predictable ‘need’ which the grid/road/rail infrastructures have to meet

The need for electricity is made one practice at a time. Hughes: Networks of Power, 1983.

Energy is never used in the abstract

Picture of electrified kettle

Energy is used in accomplishing social practices at home, at work and in moving around (e.g. heating, commuting, shopping, laundering, cooling etc.).

Social practices and related systems and infrastructures of provision constitute each other. Generation, provision and use are intertwined.

Energy demand and smarter, lower carbon living are consequence of these arrangements.

Normal room temperature

Patterns of societal synchronisation

Car-dependent practices

Understanding how energy generation and use combine in making and changing

Starting points

From person heating to space heating

Average room temperature of 13° Celsius (55°F) in the UK in 1970.

Social conventions of comfort are changing all the time.

Design and engineering are implicated in making and not just ‘meeting’ needs.

Fanger’s equation There is nothing natural about 22°C.

How energy generation, management and use combine

Picture of shetland croft and of shetland crofter, in jumper

Picture of ole fanger

Picture of thermostat at 22

What would be a ‘smarter’ configuration?

Heating as a system of elements

Waistcoat – representing clothingHeating systemCooling systemBuilding fabric/wallOur skin – the body’s thermoregulatory system

How energy generation, management and use combine

• What are peaks made of?• Societal synchronisation• Sequences and flexibilities• Trends over time• Where does policy influence lie?

• Balancing supply and demand • Decarbonisation/renewables• Smart metering• Future demand• Relation between mobility and

energy in buildings

Smart grids and smart ways of living

Source: MTUS 1974-2005, Ben Anderson’s calculations, weighted

Infrastructures sized for peak

Devices in use make peak

Resources delivered to meet peak

Frequency and synch-ronisation

Temporal relation between practices

How energy generation, management and use combine

Data from the multi-national time use studies, 2000.

Finland

These graphs show what people are doing at different times of day.

They show that France is more ‘synchronised’ than Finland. Especially at lunchtime.

Such patterns matter for what happens when, and hence for peak demand.

Societal synchronisation

France

Again, this is not a matter of individual choice and decision making or about technological . Nor is it about introducing more efficient technology .

Is smarter living a matter of ‘flatter’ living?

Night timeSaturday morningsMonday morningsEvenings

Employment policyand smarter living??

Lunch time

To understand demand we need to understand social practices and how they change

What are cars for?Which practices are car-dependent practices?

Pictures of tesco express, white van, people at a gym, home office, credit cards

• 12% of all distance travelled• Rapidly changing sector with implications for demand and timing of demand

Types of shopping: cars and cargo

mobility intensity from 2005 time use data = likelihood of travelling before and after activity; car modal share: Likelihood of using car; size of circles indicates prevalence of each type

Shop/goods, Shopping trolleySystem of food provisioningUrban planning

Roads, networks of fuelCar design and boot spaceFuel, efficiency

Size, scale, packaging, frequency

How do infrastructures, devices and resources intersect:? E.g. Food shopping, cargo and car-dependence

How energy generation, management and use combine

Focusing on efficiency

• obscures the ways in which technologies constitute demand

• tends to have no history (what is the reference point?)

• isolates technologies – the freezer not the food system, the car not car-dependence

Efficient technologies often help reproduce unsustainable patterns of demand

A+ energy rating

http://ao.com/product/rl4362fbasl-samsung-gseries-fridge-freezer-stainless-steel-27050-28.aspx

Picture of huge fridge freezer

AttitudeBehaviourChoice

DynamicsInfrastructurePracticesRegimesSystemsTransitions

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Strategies for smarter living

Beyond energy efficiency and behaviourShould there be a policy of breaking the cold chain?

Or of changing office life?

Are these energy efficient technologies?

How do employment policies structure energy demand?

Pic of office work

Pic of waistcoat