Research Handbook on Energy and Society 1839100702, 9781839100703

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RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON ENERGY AND SOCIETY

ELGAR HANDBOOKS IN ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE This series provides a definitive overview of recent research in all matters relating to energy, the environment, and climate change in the social sciences, forming a comprehensive guide to the subject. Covering a broad range of research areas including energy policy, the global socio-political impacts of climate change, and environmental economics, this series aims to produce prestigious, high quality works of lasting significance. Each Handbook will consist of original contributions by leading authors, selected by an editor recognized as an international leader within the field. Taking an international approach, these Handbooks emphasize both the widening of the current debates within the field, and an indication of how research within the field will develop in the future. Titles in the series include: Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change Edited by David C. Holmes and Lucy M. Richardson Handbook of Security and the Environment Edited by Ashok Swain, Joakim Öjendal and Anders Jägerskog Handbook of Sustainable Politics and Economics of Natural Resources Edited by Stella Tsani and Indra Overland Research Handbook on Energy and Society Edited by Janette Webb, Faye Wade and Margaret Tingey

Research Handbook on Energy and Society Edited by

Janette Webb Professor of Sociology of Organisations, University of Edinburgh, UK

Faye Wade Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK

Margaret Tingey Honorary Fellow, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, UK

ELGAR HANDBOOKS IN ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Janette Webb, Faye Wade and Margaret Tingey 2021

Cover image: © Anna K. Dickie All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947941 This book is available electronically in the Sociology, Social Policy and Education subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781839100710

ISBN 978 1 83910 070 3 (cased) ISBN 978 1 83910 071 0 (eBook)

EEP BoX

Contents

List of figuresviii List of tablesix List of contributorsx A few words on the creation of the cover imagexviii 1

Introduction to Research Handbook on Energy and Society: why study energy and society? Janette Webb, Faye Wade and Margaret Tingey

PART I

1

ENERGY SERVICES AND THE MAKING OF MARKETS

2

Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story Peter J.G. Pearson

14

3

This land is our land: understanding energy nationalism David McCrone

31

4

The making of energy consumers: from mutual provisioning to mass markets and beyond Hiroki Shin and Heather Chappells

5

Services revisited: what is energy for? Janine Morley

6

Heating system transformation in Europe: accelerating sources of path dependence to escape carbon lock-in Richard Hanna and Robert Gross

69

7

The redesign of electricity markets under EU influence: the capacity mechanism in Britain and France Thomas Reverdy, Frédéric Marty and Ronan Bolton

83

8

Pivoting toward Energy Transition 2.0: learning from electricity Gretchen Bakke

PART II

45 57

97

SOCIAL DIMENSIONS IN ENERGY AND SOCIETY

9

Why rationale matters in energy and climate policy Niall Kerr

10

Access to energy: the contribution of the social sciences to delivering energy equity and justice Julia Tomei and Long Seng To v

112

126

vi  Research handbook on energy and society 11

Gender and solar energy in India’s low-carbon energy transition Karina Standal and Mariëlle Feenstra

12

Contextualizing Nussbaumer via Nussbaum: unveiling a multi-disciplinary, human capabilities-centred approach to energy poverty from Mexico Karla Ricalde, Karla G. Cedano, Harriet Thomson and Tiare Robles

141

154

13

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement168 Bipasha Baruah and Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic

14

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector: personal car ownership and use Karen Lucas, Noel Cass and Muhammed Adeel

184

PART III ENERGY GOVERNANCE, POLICIES AND POLITICS 15

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’? David Tyfield

201

16

Energy transitions and multi-level governance: how has devolution in the United Kingdom affected renewable energy development? Richard Cowell

215

17

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: ambiguity and ambivalence in England and Scotland Faye Wade, Janette Webb and Margaret Tingey

229

18

Energy policy for buildings fit for the future Tina Fawcett and Marina Topouzi

245

19

How non-energy policies shape demand for energy Sarah Royston and Jan Selby

259

20

Debating energy futures on Lewis: energy transition, the politics of land use and law, and the question of the commons Annabel Pinker

272

PART IV CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES AND ENERGY FUTURES 21

Knowledge infrastructures for sustainable energy transitions: marine renewable energy in Scotland Shana Lee Hirsch

22

‘A little self-sufficient town close to the beach’: local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things Nick Pidgeon, Christopher Groves, Catherine Cherry, Gareth Thomas, Fiona Shirani and Karen Henwood

287

299

Contents  vii 23

Disrupting markets with peer-to-peer energy trading 317 Alexandra Schneiders, Anna Gorbatcheva, Michael J. Fell and David Shipworth

24

Making energy futures at the edge of the grid: smart energy innovation in rural communities Heather Lovell

25

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling Antti Silvast

340

26

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present Noam Bergman and Kathryn B. Janda

354

27

Conclusions and new directions for energy and society research Janette Webb and Faye Wade

367

328

Index375

Figures

2.1

Global primary energy consumption 1800–2018 (TWh per year)

21

8.1

Global primary energy production

99

8.2

US energy consumption, 2019

100

8.3

Energy consumption in Kentucky, 2018

101

8.4

Energy consumption in California, 2018

101

10.1

Multi-tier matrix for measuring access to household electricity supply

129

10.2

Illustrating equality and equity

130

14.1

UK’s transport emissions as compared with other sectors (MtCO2e for year 2016)

185

14.2

Energy intensity of different transport modes in OECD countries

186

14.3

Per capita car miles by travel purpose and income quintiles

188

14.4

Inequality in car mobility in England: association between the share of total population and total car mileage

191

14.5

Distribution of per capita car miles by purpose of travel (left) and household income (right)

193

22.1

Pictorial representations of the four scenarios

303

22.2

Public things in Port Talbot showing the four public objects identified by participants

306

23.1

Economic benefits for households participating in P2P trading (A) and conditions required for participation (B), including some illustrative underlying relevant social factors

323

viii

Tables

2.1

Fuel shares, consumption and GDP per capita for five early mover-to-coal countries

24

2.2

Fuel shares, consumption and GDP for five later mover-to-coal countries

25

10.1

Primary indicators of progress toward SDG 7 targets

128

11.1

Forms of capital impact and justice and energy implications

149

12.1

Dimensions and associated values for the MEPI (Nussbaumer et al., 2012) and the Cedano–Robles modifications, plus index weighting systems, with index values shown underneath by bioclimatic region and using the three index versions

157

12.2

Variables associated with each CESI dimension

160

12.3

Deprivation by dimension, calculated by assigning full weight to each dimension at a time

162

14.1

‘Excessive’ car travel defined by cut-off points and the effects of imposing mileage rationing

192

15.1

The quadrant of Chinese (sustainable) innovation

204

16.1

Renewable energy expansion across the UK (installed capacity, MW)

220

17.1

Overview of energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation policies from UK and Scottish Governments

233

18.1

Obstacles to successful uptake of building retrofit opportunities in Europe, by actor

250

18.2

Successful renovation business models, characteristics and key implementation lessons

252

18.3

Proposed guidelines for policy design and development in the building sector, to contribute to net-zero goals

254

19.1

Selected energy-saving measures in the health sector

267

22.1

Summaries of the four scenarios

304

26.1

Four visions of the future based on two worldviews and the corresponding reality

360

ix

Contributors

Muhammed Adeel is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS), University of Leeds, UK. Currently, he works as an Urban Planning Specialist at the Urban Unit, Lahore, Pakistan. Muhammad’s research examines transport mobility and accessibility for a well-planned, fairer and sustainable urban future. Gretchen Bakke is a Visiting Professor at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human–Environment Systems, Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University, Berlin and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. Her work focuses on the chaos and creativity of large-scale cultural, economic, and technological transitions. Books include: The Likeness: Semblance and Self in Slovene Society (2020); The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between America and Our Energy Future (2016) selected by Bill Gates as one of his top five reads of 2016. She is currently writing a cultural history of the end of fossil fuels, with a focus on the North Sea. Bipasha Baruah is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Women’s Issues at Western University, London, Ontario. Her current research aims to understand how to ensure that a global low-carbon economy will be more gender equitable and socially just than its fossil-fuel-based predecessor. Noam Bergman is Lecturer in Energy Policy, University of Sussex, SPRU. He has a BSc in Physics and an MSc and PhD in Environmental Sciences. Motivated to research sustainability, he shifted to interdisciplinary research, working from 2005 to 2007 on the EU project MATISSE studying transitions to sustainable development. His energy and sustainability research continued, working from 2008 to 2013 at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. In 2015 he joined the University of Sussex’s Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), first as a researcher and now as a lecturer in Energy Policy. Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic is a PhD candidate in the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at Western University. Her areas of specialisation include gender and human security, militarisation and peacekeeping, and gender and work. Ronan Bolton is Reader in Science Technology and Innovation Studies, University of Edinburgh. He is an interdisciplinary energy researcher with a background in mechanical engineering and environmental social science. His work examines the interconnected policy, market and regulatory challenges of transforming carbon-based energy systems. He has particular research interests in the areas of energy network regulation and system integration, along with the history and development of liberalisation processes in the energy sector. Noel Cass is a researcher in the Institute for Transport Studies in Leeds, having researched the social science and sociology of climate change and energy-related systems and policy, including transport, buildings, renewables and nuclear waste management, fuel poverty and climate change policies, for more than 20 years. His transport research interests include understanding x

Contributors  xi mobility as social practice, and exploring the links between mobility and social in/exclusion, with the aim of ensuring that decarbonisation is achieved in a just manner. Karla G. Cedano is a multidisciplinary academic in Energy and Social Sciences, Innovation, and Sustainability. She became a feminist after experiencing sexism in masculinised spaces. Now, alongside her academic work, she is an activist and promoter of gender equality. She is Head of Technology Management and Liaison at the Institute of Renewable Energies at UNAM, Manager of the Mexican Centre for Innovation in Solar Energy, Coordinator of the Network on Solar Energy, and President of the National Association of Solar Energy. Heather Chappells is a geographer and instructor, based at the University of British Columbia and at Capilano University in Vancouver, Canada. She has spent over two decades engaged in research on sustainable energy systems, with a focus on understanding how consumers can participate in social and environmental transitions. She has co-authored several books on sustainable consumption in the utility sectors and recently co-edited a special issue on Energizing the Spaces of Everyday Life for the Rachel Carson Center Perspectives Series (2019). Catherine Cherry is a Research Associate at Cardiff University. Working on a range of qualitative projects, her research focuses on exploring public understandings and discourses surrounding climate change mitigation, and how social understandings, values and imaginaries shape and interact with efforts to transition towards low-carbon futures. Methodologically, she is interested in developing and applying innovative participatory, anticipatory and place-based methods that engage publics with such issues and the implications that future energy systems transitions will have for everyday life. Richard Cowell is Professor of Environmental Planning at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University. His research focuses on the relationship between scale, place and transitions to more sustainable energy, including the steering of renewable energy expansion, the dynamics of infrastructure decision-making, and the relationship between infrastructure and host communities. His work has been published widely in international energy and planning journals, and he regularly provides advice on energy and environment issues to the National Assembly for Wales. Tina Fawcett is a senior researcher in energy demand and energy policy, and leads policy and governance work at the Centre for Research on Energy Demand Solutions. Her multi-disciplinary research aims to understand patterns of energy and energy service demand in households and organisations and to identify opportunities and policies for reducing energy use and carbon emissions. She has worked on a wide range of UK, EU and international studies, many focused on energy use in buildings. Mariëlle Feenstra is a senior researcher on gender just energy policy at University of Twente. She analyses engendering energy policy with a North–South perspective. Her contribution has been acknowledged both in academia and in practice by invitations to participate in policy formulation activities. Michael J. Fell is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Energy Institute. His work focuses on the social aspects of energy use, in particular in the context of smart/local energy systems. More broadly he has conducted research on people’s desire and ability to offer flexibility to electricity systems, and on energy services, feedback and education.

xii  Research handbook on energy and society Anna Gorbatcheva is a Doctoral Researcher at the UCL Energy Institute. Her research focuses on the multi-dimensional nature of peer-to-peer trading platforms. More specifically, she is addressing scalability issues of peer-to-peer energy trading systems to understand how these systems can scale in size over time. Robert Gross is the Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, hosted by University College London. He is also Professor of Energy Policy and Technology at Imperial College London, where he was Director of the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology (ICEPT) and Director of Policy at the Energy Futures Lab. He has been a specialist advisor to Parliamentary Select Committees, has extensive engagement with UK policymaking, and has published extensively on energy policy, economics and technological innovation. Christopher Groves is a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He applies perspectives from science and technology studies to research on social futures, risk and uncertainty, the ethics and social impact of technological change, and the relationship between science and society. Richard Hanna is a Research Associate in energy technology innovation and low carbon heating policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. He carries out systematic evidence reviews for the UK Energy Research Centre. His previous review projects have examined energy policy topics including: (1) timescales from basic research to commercialisation of energy technologies and consumer products; and (2) an international review of best practices in heat decarbonisation, focusing on heat pump and district heating deployment. Karen Henwood is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. She has research interests in psycho-social risk, values and identities, environmental issues, socio-cultural change, and the low carbon energy transition. She specialises in qualitative social research methodology. Her RCUK and WEFO funded projects have involved carefully designed longitudinal and community case studies and use of interpretive, temporal and multimodal research methods. She has a track record in methodological innovation and development to engage local communities in research. Shana Lee Hirsch is a Research Scientist in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research uses methods and concepts from science and technology studies and design to understand how to enable innovation for sustainable environmental and energy futures. She also serves as Associate Director for the Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC). Kathryn B. Janda is a Principal Research Fellow in Organisations and Non-Domestic Buildings at the Energy Institute, University College London. Katy’s research explores the relationship between energy demand, organisational decision-making, and socio-technical innovation. She leads projects on energy management in non-domestic buildings; data use and ownership patterns in the commercial real estate (CRE) industry; and electricity and water use in India. She co-developed conceptual models for societal change from the ‘middle-out perspective’, focusing on the agency and capacity of building designers, code officials, builders, CRE businesses, and churches. She also co-leads initiatives exploring the importance of story-telling in energy and climate change research. She has university degrees in electrical engineering and English literature, with a PhD in Energy and Resources.

Contributors  xiii Niall Kerr is an interdisciplinary energy researcher with a background in social and political science, and economics. He is currently a Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Heather Lovell is Professor of Energy and Society at the University of Tasmania, Australia. She is a human geographer with research interests in energy, climate change and the environment. Her research concerns the politics, policies and practices of innovation in response to environmental problems, focused on three empirical strands: smart grids, low energy housing and carbon markets. Heather has previously held positions at Edinburgh, Durham and Oxford universities in the UK. Karen Lucas is Professor of Human Geography at the School of Environment, Education and Development, the University of Manchester. She has 25 years of experience in social research in transport and energy poverty and environmental justice. She is considered a world-leading expert in the area of transport-related social exclusion in the Global North and South. She was previously the social research lead for the four-year RCUK project Evaluating Low Carbon Communities (EVALOC) www​.evaloc​.org​.uk. Frédéric Marty is a CNRS senior research fellow at Université Côte d’Azur. With a PhD in economics, his work focuses on competition law and economics. He is a member of the Group of Research on Law, Economics and Management (GREDEG), a join research unit of the CNRS and of the Université Côte d’Azur. He is also affiliate researcher of the French Economic Observatory (OFCE – Sciences Po. Paris) and researcher at the CIRANO (Montréal). David McCrone is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He co-founded the university’s Institute of Governance, and the Masters’ Programme in Nationalism Studies. His main books relevant to this chapter include: The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow’s Ancestors (Routledge, 1998), Understanding National Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The New Sociology of Scotland (Sage, 2017). Janine Morley is an Early Career Research Fellow at Lancaster University. She is a sociologist whose work in the DEMAND (Dynamics of Mobility and Energy Demand) Centre investigated the growing demand for digital products and services in UK households. She is currently leading a project, funded by the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), that aims to re-invigorate discussion, both in policy and research, of the role of clothing in reducing demand for winter space heating. Peter J.G. Pearson is Honorary Professor, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London. His research addresses long-run energy transitions and their policy implications, aiming to gain insights into prospective transitions. He has led two multidisciplinary research consortia investigating energy transition pathways. He co-founded Imperial College’s Centre for Energy Policy & Technology, headed the Low Carbon Research Institute of Wales, was twice chair of the British Institute of Energy Economics, and has been a Member of the European Commission’s Advisory Group on Energy and an Economic Adviser to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel. Nick Pidgeon is Professor of Environmental Psychology and Risk at Cardiff University and

xiv  Research handbook on energy and society Director of the Understanding Risk Research Group. His extensive interdisciplinary research portfolio looks at public engagement, communication and decision-making for environmental, energy, and emerging technology risks. He has been a science advisor at the UK Energy and Climate, Environment and Transport Departments. He was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to UK climate change awareness and energy security policy. Annabel Pinker is a social anthropologist at the James Hutton Institute. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2011, and her subsequent research explored political experimentation and emerging forms of state power in Peru. She recently completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship on the material politics of energy decentralisation in Scotland. Thomas Reverdy is Associate Professor in Sociology, teaching Economic Sociology, Sociology of Work and Sociology of Organizations at Grenoble Institute of Technology. His research at PACTE – Social Science Research Laboratory is related to the sociology of markets and the sociology of market-based instruments in the field of energy transition. He is supervising doctoral research in the field of energy and environmental transition of the industry. Karla Ricalde is a neurodivergent collector of knowledge and failures, who finds herself in the ecotones of identities. She is made up of the people around her, words and contradictions, like the rest of us. This drives her passion for thinking complexly, building bridges and fostering nuance and softness in research. She started out in maths, but now focuses on energy, interculturality and inclusion. Her pet peeves include vague people that say ‘people’ and writing about herself, especially in the third person. Tiare Robles is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Renewable Energies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She previously studied an undergraduate degree in computer science and master’s degree in energy sustainability at the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos (UAEM). Her lines of research are data science and energy poverty, which are topics that she has published on in several journals. Sarah Royston is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, and has previously worked within the DEMAND centre at the University of Sussex and the Association for the Conservation of Energy. An interdisciplinary social scientist, her work explores issues of energy governance, demand and everyday life. She studied Geography at the University of Cambridge and holds a PhD in Social Policy from the University of York. Alexandra Schneiders is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Energy Institute and the Task Leader of the Global Observatory on Peer-to-Peer, Community Self-Consumption and Transactive Energy Models (GO-P2P), a Task of the User-Centred Technology Collaboration Programme by the International Energy Agency. Her research focuses on the policy and regulatory enablers/obstacles of rolling out peer-to-peer and community self-consumption models, at UK and EU level. Jan Selby is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. His work focuses on the international political ecology of water, climate and energy. Recent papers include ‘The Trump presidency, climate change and the prospect of a disorderly energy

Contributors  xv transition’, Review of International Studies (2019) and ‘On blaming climate change for the Syrian civil war’, Middle East Report (2020). Hiroki Shin is Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast. He has worked on the history of energy, with special attention on the social and cultural aspects of energy transitions, technological diffusion and energy consumption. His publications include: ‘Energy/culture: A reading guide for historical literature’, Science Museum Group Journal (2018) and ‘At the edge of the network of power in Japan, c.1910s–1960s’, in Simone Abram, Tom Yarrow and Brit Ross Wintherik (eds.), Electrifying Anthropology: Exploring Electrical Practices and Infrastructures (Bloomsbury, 2019). David Shipworth is Professor of Energy and the Built Environment at the UCL Energy Institute and Chair of the User-Centred Energy Systems Technology Collaboration Programme by the International Energy Agency. His research focuses on ways to provide demand flexibility within the energy system and roles of consumers, regulators and buildings in delivering these. He is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and is on the Editorial Board of Nature: Scientific Data. Fiona Shirani is a Research Associate based in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Her research interests include how life events and relationships to others impact everyday energy use, as well as experiences of energy vulnerability. She has worked on a range of qualitative longitudinal projects and specialises in this methodological approach. Antti Silvast holds a researcher position in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture. His research interests include smart energy systems, interdisciplinarity, and the role of social sciences in contributing to current energy challenges. He is an editor of Science & Technology Studies, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). He held postdoctoral appointments in Princeton University (Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies), University of Edinburgh (Science, Technology and Innovation Studies) and Durham University (Department of Anthropology). Karina Standal is a human geographer by discipline and a senior researcher at CICERO – Center for International Climate Research. Her main field of expertise is on energy and the green shift, the gender, energy and development nexus and consumption practices. Gareth Thomas is a Research Associate in Cardiff University’s Understanding Risk Research Group, specialising in lived experiences and sociotechnical deliberation in the field of energy systems change. His work covers issues of identity and attachment, energy justice and vulnerability, public deliberation and social acceptability. His PhD focused on network governance and policy communities for low carbon innovation. Harriet Thomson is Associate Professor in Global Social Policy, University of Birmingham. She is an award-winning interdisciplinary academic with a background in comparative public policy. Her research interests broadly concern the role of public policy and policymaking processes, structural inequalities in the distribution of housing and access to affordable and clean forms of energy, health and wellbeing outcomes, and indicators for measuring the complex realities of energy poverty. Harriet’s research outputs have influenced the framing of policy

xvi  Research handbook on energy and society approaches worldwide, including the European Commission’s Clean Energy for all Europeans package. Margaret Tingey is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her social science research is about local government strategies for investment in low carbon energy. This has included applying a sociological perspective on valuation practices to understand how local authority decision making procedures shape the development of energy projects. Further work has considered the potential for net zero carbon localities, and how local authorities are responding differently to goals of building retrofit, sustainable heating provision and local energy. Long Seng To is a Lecturer in Resilient Energy Systems and holds an Engineering for Development Research Fellowship funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering at Loughborough University. Her research tackles the challenge of providing access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all in the context of increasing stresses and shocks, such as climate change, disasters and conflicts. Her research focuses on enhancing community energy resilience using renewable energy in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Julia Tomei is a Lecturer in Energy, Resources and Development at the Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London. Her research examines the livelihood, social and policy dimensions of energy and natural resource governance in low- and middle-income countries. In her work, she draws on a range of social science approaches and methods, to identify the practical and policy mechanisms that can advance just sustainable development. Marina Topouzi is an interdisciplinary researcher with a strong background in building energy use and demand. Her main research interests concern the ‘building/user’ system, focusing on the factors that affect buildings’ energy performance from construction to in-use. She is interested in how complex social, non-technical and technical factors are interrelated and in particular the impact they have on energy in the built environment. Qualified as an architect, she has worked on many public and private sector projects. David Tyfield is a Professor at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. He is Executive Director of the Joint Institute for the Environment (JIE), Guangzhou and Associate Director of Lancaster’s Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe). His research focuses on the interaction of political economy, social change and developments in science, technology and innovation, with a particular focus on issues of low-carbon transition and ‘ecological civilisation’ in China. His latest book is Liberalism 2.0 and the Rise of China: Global Crisis, Innovation, Urban Mobility (Routledge, 2018) and he is a co-editor of Mobilities journal. Faye Wade is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She applies social science approaches to understand the professionals and organisations responsible for delivering transformation in our energy system. This has included an evaluation of the Scottish Government’s Energy Efficient Scotland retrofitting programme, and an ethnography of how heating engineers shape energy consumption. She is currently developing sociologies of construction to understand the changing work of construction professionals amidst innovations in the way that infrastructure is created and used. Janette Webb MBE FEI is Edinburgh University Professor of Sociology of Organisations,

Contributors  xvii Co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre, member of the Scottish Science Advisory Council and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Energy Science Advisory Committee, and Co-Chair of the Energy Technology Partnership Advisory Board. Her research, funded by UKRI, is about social studies of energy and climate change, particularly European comparative heat and energy efficiency policy, and local and regional energy systems. Further work is evaluating the Energy Efficient Scotland Pilots.

A few words on the creation of the cover image

I was pleased and delighted to be asked to create the cover image for this Research Handbook on Energy and Society. The method I have used is that of digital collage, which seemed to me the perfect vehicle for this project, as it is done by building up layers of images and varying their position and opacity to allow elements to shine through and overlap one other – and surely that is the nature of both the technological development of energy generation and the growth of society. It is also not lost on me that, but for energy, I would not have been able to take, edit or store the images I’ve used. I’ve also added a couple of family images, one of my now deceased mother-in-law as a young woman in the late 1940s, and one of me and my siblings around 1963. We were perhaps the last generation to experience single glazing, coal fires at home, and milk delivered by horse and cart at a time of preparations for a moon mission. The demolition of Cockenzie power station, which in my lifetime had gone from the energy hub of the Lothians to a mothballed end-of-an-era facility, is also included. The bike photo is of University of Edinburgh bikes, set up to generate electricity, which were being used by the public at an art and science event high up on North Berwick Law, so there was a pleasing synchronicity in using it here. Many thanks to Jan for asking me to assist with the cover image for this important publication. Anna K. Dickie

xviii

1. Introduction to Research Handbook on Energy and Society: why study energy and society? Janette Webb, Faye Wade and Margaret Tingey

Unprecedented, climate breakdown, ecosystem collapse. These are some of the terms used to denote the risks to all life on Earth from humanity’s intensive exploitation of fossil fuels for energy, and the associated degradation of nature. In affluent industrialised societies, most people take access to energy for granted; they have little knowledge of sources, production systems or related injustices and environmental impacts. The extensive and intensive technologies of electricity, gas and oil are woven into working, resting, socialising and travelling, so that they have become part of the background to life. Energy is consumed even while most people are sleeping: freezers and fridges operate; lights switch on and off; industrial processes run; data centres and networks operate, along with all of the other service infrastructures of consumer societies. Fossil fuels have been fundamental to the development of such societies, bringing benefits from mass production of goods and services, health and welfare systems, greater scope for self-determination and increased life expectancy. But their intensive exploitation is causing major changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and climate systems, as well as polluting the air, and degrading land, soils, water sources and oceans. Before the eighteenth century industrial revolution, concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), measured as carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, were around 280 parts per million. Dependence on fossil fuels for energy since then is associated with rapidly increasing concentrations to over 400 parts per million. This is estimated to be the highest level in three million years (for detailed data see Ritchie and Roser, 2020; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2020). Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases produce global warming; the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. The impacts on the climate system are already evident in increasing frequency and severity of droughts, heat waves, storms and crop failures, as well as sea level rise and loss of glaciers. Unchecked, the expectation is that whole regions will become barely habitable, resulting in widespread social disruptions, diseases and widening inequalities, associated with intensifying wars over food, water and all resources, major flooding and loss of coastal cities, and mass extinction of many species (UNEP, 2020). The science is clear; we need urgently to end dependence on fossil fuels and to transform ways of life in affluent countries, in order to avoid the worst climate disasters, and to have hope for future generations. Valuable research on clean energy, mainly led by engineering sciences, has been done, and has been instrumental in significant technological innovations. But systemic change at the speed and scale needed to mitigate risks of catastrophic climate change is lacking. This Research Handbook on Energy and Society adopts the perspective that technological innovations are insufficient to solve societal problems. In order to transform energy systems, with the aim of avoiding the worst impacts of climate disruption, we need to understand processes of societal change, and the interdependencies of technology and society. In the book, international contributors analyse the interactions between energy systems and societies over time, 1

2  Research handbook on energy and society in different places, and with different consequences for material ways of living, inequalities and social divisions, political conflicts and environmental degradation. The Handbook aims to inform debate across publics, policy makers and practitioners about the future of energy and the governance of societal change. This introductory chapter describes the main themes and structure.

THE SOCIETAL CHALLENGE Most governments of countries responsible for major GHG emissions have made commitments to radical action to avoid disastrous climate change. Signatories to the United Nations (UN) Paris Agreement (2016) are formally committed to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. The most affluent countries have also accepted an obligation to support low- and middle- income countries in mitigating and adapting to climate crises. Gaining agreement between 197 countries (189 of whom have since ratified the Agreement) is an impressive accomplishment, but it has taken too long. The work of effecting necessary societal and economic transformations is also far harder than an agreement to act. Among other things, meeting the commitments of the Paris Agreement means replacing entrenched, extensive fossil fuel energy systems with renewable and low carbon energy. Any remaining combustion of fossil fuels requires carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) infrastructure to prevent further release of large amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere. International frameworks intended to guide such transformations have existed for over 30 years: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established in 1994. Fossil fuel consumption has, however, continued to increase, almost doubling between 1980 and 2020, despite renewable energy developments. Although coal combustion is declining in many (but not all) parts of the world (see Pearson, Chapter 2, and Tyfield, Chapter 15), oil and gas extraction continues to grow, and action to decarbonise industry, transport, buildings and heating systems has been limited. There is increasing social protest over the consequences for pollution, species extinction and environmental damage. There is also considerable scientific and technical knowledge about options, as well as finance to underwrite new infrastructures. But there is no consensus on routes forward, and there are major questions about the capabilities, and willingness, of governments, businesses and citizens to manage the required transformations. Many potential solutions are contested, with hard questions about shares of responsibility for change and social justice, in an increasingly inter-connected world.

THE VALUE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH ON ENERGY Where governments in affluent economies have made formal commitments to development of a clean, or ‘net zero carbon’, energy system, solutions are frequently presented as largely a matter of technological innovation for ‘green growth’. Societal questions have often been reduced to the public acceptability of new consumer technologies, such as air source heat pumps or electric vehicles; or managing public opposition to siting of renewable energy technologies; or routes to managing costs and disruption. Renewable energy technologies

Introduction: why study energy and society?  3 have also, thus far, served largely as additions to the mix of fossil fuel systems, rather than replacements (see Bakke, Chapter 8). This fits a pattern of energy transition through stealth governance, as politicians seek to minimise business opposition and public dissent, and to delay hard decisions such as those on decarbonising heat and transport. The approach has also allowed established institutional and market frameworks, geared to fossil fuel subsidies and investment, to continue much as before (Geddes et al., 2020). Looking beyond issues of acceptability of new technologies, social scientists have examined the government, industry and market innovation structures characteristic of the fossil fuel age, and asked whether they are fit for the purpose of addressing its consequences. The value of social science, in this sense, derives from its analytical capacities to look through the other end of the telescope, defining energy systems as embedded in institutions of government, markets and civil society. Rather than assuming that experts and industry, working with governments, will produce the best technologies for a largely passive public to accept, social scientists are more likely to begin by investigating definitions of expertise and authority, and to consider the relevant knowledge of much wider groups of people. This has resulted, among other things, in insights into the value of public engagement and deliberative democracy in decision-making about future energy systems (see for example Pidgeon et al., Chapter 22). Nor do social scientists accept that technological innovations are independent of society. Instead, social studies of technology have shown that the trajectories and types of innovation are themselves shaped by societies and power relations, and those technologies in turn embed particular political decisions with long term societal consequences and structural inequalities (Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999). A classic example is provided by Winner’s (1980) analysis of the politics of nuclear technologies, and in this volume, Bergman and Janda, Chapter 26, discuss the interactions between contemporary energy narratives and technology trajectories. By investigating the full cycle of energy technology innovation, production and consumption, social sciences also bring a greater focus on energy use, as equally significant to, and inter-dependent with, supply in a socio-technical whole systems perspective. This encompasses questions about what we use energy for (see Morley’s discussion in Chapter 5), and how the often taken-for-granted idea of a fixed energy consumer is socially and historically constituted (see Shin and Chappells, Chapter 4). A focus on energy use in turn highlights the relative neglect of policies for reducing the waste of energy and related resources, and managing demand (see Chapters 17–19). In energy-intensive societies such as those of Europe and North America, zero waste, at least in the foreseeable future, is likely to be critical to transformation, because it reduces the technical, economic and political challenges of transition to a largely renewables-based system. Social research demonstrates the major, but neglected, potential of resource efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enabling faster progress towards net zero targets, while creating sustainable livelihoods. Key areas for change are food production, waste and diet; a shift from ownership of products to shared services, and remanufacturing, repair and reuse, all associated with significant energy savings (Norman et al., 2021). The Handbook has been written during the Coronavirus pandemic, and there are renewed promises from government signatories to the UN Paris Agreement, as well as business, to invest in a green economic recovery. However, current global policy commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions are in line with temperature increases in excess of 3 degrees Celsius this century, presaging major destruction of life (UNEP, 2020). This gap between espoused political-economic objectives and material change is an overarching theme of social science research, with questions about agency, knowledge, power and authority. We know that the

4  Research handbook on energy and society history of governing radical change is mixed, and that unexpected events – such as the pandemic – have major, but indeterminate, consequences. Social research is urgently needed to inform publics, governments and business about the risks we face and to contribute to transforming energy systems for sustainable societies. Throughout the Handbook, contributors consider how existing institutions and established interests shape change in energy systems, and distributions of costs and benefits. Contributors provide insights into future prospects by reviewing historical trajectories of innovation; policy and politics; energy justice and inequalities; and governance, regulatory and market frameworks. The chapters illustrate the diverse methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks in use, and comment on new directions of enquiry, controversies and emerging research questions. The book has four parts: Energy Services and the Making of Markets; Social Divisions in Energy and Society; Energy Governance, Policies and Politics; and Climate Consequences and Energy Futures. Their themes are summarised below.

PART I: ENERGY SERVICES AND THE MAKING OF MARKETS This first part examines the establishment and evolution of contemporary large-scale systems of energy production and consumption through accounts of the fossil fuel age in industrialised societies. Perspectives from social history, sociology, economics and cultural studies provide foundations for understanding current dilemmas and potential routes forward. Contemporary societies and their governments are largely structured around political-economic commitments to growth, founded on exploitation of nature. Such patterns of growth were unknown prior to the first industrial revolution enabled by extraction and combustion of coal, and stimulating major transformations of the material environment (see Tyfield, Chapter 15 for discussion of China’s current reliance on coal). Intensive stores of energy in coal enabled production of raw materials for mass manufacturing, including large-scale food production to serve population growth and urbanisation (Mitchell, 2009). In this way, coal was instrumental in the demise of traditional agrarian social orders based on kinship and status. Oil and gas, alongside coal, have further intensified the process, fuelling mass production of most goods and services from housing, food and travel to plastics, pharmaceuticals and digital communications. In Chapter 2, Peter Pearson provides a wide-ranging appraisal of the societal transformations wrought through successive periods of fossil fuel development. He uses the idea of energy transitions to analyse the inter-relations between fossil fuels and political economies, societies, cultures and geographies in different parts of the world. His analysis shows that there is nothing inevitable or pre-given about transition from one energy source, and its technical infrastructures, to another. Instead technical systems for producing and consuming coal, oil and gas are bound up in societal interests and power struggles. These co-evolve over long periods as new technical infrastructures are used in producing increasingly diverse goods and services. The chapter provides both a vivid, data-rich picture of the globally varying patterns of energy transitions, and a snapshot of their cultural significance through the story of the American automobile. The exploitation of coal, oil and gas has always proved both progressive and destructive, supporting higher material standards for many, but also underpinning wars, conflicts and injustices. The implication is that breaking with fossil fuels will need an unprecedented accord across states, markets and civil societies.

Introduction: why study energy and society?  5 David McCrone (Chapter 3) develops the perspective on energy politics with an analysis of the closely coupled interactions of nationalism with oil and gas exploitation. Fossil fuels are not, as often assumed, ready-formed with inherent economic value, but must be socially and technically manufactured into ‘resources’ which both serve, and reshape, political-economic interests. Using the examples of Iranian and North Sea oil, McCrone shows how the oil and gas industries are instrumental in distinctive formations of society and economy. This includes the symbolic use of oil in constituting national identities, where ideas of nature and nation are bound together. The science of oil and gas itself is not separate from, but is an integral component of, such nationalisms, posing questions about the use of scientific knowledge in transforming our energy systems. Mainstream thinking often treats the energy consumer as a self-evident category with fixed ‘needs’, rather than as a societal construct situated in particular social and material arrangements. Chapters 4 and 5 overturn this model through detailed investigation of energy uses. Hiroki Shin and Heather Chappells (Chapter 4) explore the making of the energy consumer, while Janine Morley (Chapter 5) focuses on norms of energy use, shaped by the services derived from energy consumption. Viewed in societal terms, the malleability and diversity of consumer identities are evident throughout history, from periods of mutual provisioning, to mass consumption, and now potentially to more decentralised co-provision or ‘prosumption’. Insights from sociology about the cultural and historical specificity of ‘needs’ (Morley, Chapter 5) similarly show that taken-for-granted habits of energy consumption are governed by social norms and values, which are translated into the ‘hardware’ of energy networks and appliances. These two chapters rescue the idea of the consumer, or energy user, from an economistic model of self-interested individualism, and offer new insights into options for sustainable energy practices. The analyses invert the common approach to policy making, which takes current consumption patterns as the necessary standard to be reproduced. Instead, they challenge understandings of what is necessary, providing a foundation for innovative policies to reduce dependence on energy, and for active, and more equitable, civic engagement. Turning back to supply-side questions, the next two chapters compare European strategies for governing systemic change in the context of large-scale, incumbent, network infrastructures and different market designs. Innovations in technological systems for heating buildings and water in Denmark, Germany and the UK are evaluated by Richard Hanna and Robert Gross in Chapter 6. They compare the interactions of innovation policies and governance structures under state-ownership vs liberalised markets. In all cases, it is clear that replacing incumbent fossil-fuel heating systems is likely to be a drawn-out process, but innovation appears more straightforward where there is political willingness to apply historical lessons about governing systemic change. In Chapter 7, Thomas Reverdy, Frédéric Marty and Ronan Bolton consider innovation in electricity systems in the liberalised markets of France and the UK. The authors focus on contemporary policy support for incorporating intermittent wind and solar power into electricity supply, alongside large-scale fossil fuel and nuclear power stations. The analysis examines the consequences of European decisions to govern supply through markets, rather than state planning. With concerns about ‘keeping the lights on’, both French and British governments have devised political rationales to justify public subsidies to assure private investment in electricity generating capacity. It follows that electricity markets are not governed by universal economic laws of supply and demand, but are designed to accommodate varying political objectives.

6  Research handbook on energy and society Both chapters show the centrality of political will and reflexivity in devising systemic innovations needed to meet carbon targets. Gretchen Bakke (Chapter 8) concludes the part by looking to the future, with an appraisal of prospects for a new kind of energy transition. In the past, ‘transition’ has often been understood in terms of one fossil fuel source displacing another. All of the material in this first part has shown that a linear depiction of the history of energy systems is far from accurate. Oil and gas have not superseded coal, which continues to be intensively exploited around the world, including in countries with strong commitments to climate protection. The addition of renewable energy sources to the mix is, however, resulting in new, and distinctive, forms and patterns of transition. Among other things, Transition 2.0, Bakke argues, is likely to feature the integration of diversity in more differentiated systems. This may seem complex and unwieldy, at least from the current standpoint where fossil fuel systems are fundamental to, and often invisible in, life in economically affluent societies. If societies can, however, solve problems of governing shared resources, more diverse and differentiated energy provisions can sustain long-term resilience, marginalising fossil fuels and creating more equitable access to energy and its benefits.

PART II: SOCIAL DIVISIONS IN ENERGY AND SOCIETY The second part examines social divisions and inequalities directly. Access to, and the affordability of, energy is a concern in high- as well as low- and middle-income countries. Such inequalities structure opportunities for personal and domestic security, including decent homes, education, increased life expectancy, and ability to work, participate and invest in a changing energy system. Niall Kerr’s appraisal (Chapter 9) of the potentially unequal impacts of the different rationales underlying energy and climate policy frames the part. Policy to support home energy retrofit, for example, is typically presented in terms of co-benefits for carbon emissions, fuel poverty and public health. The relative prioritisation of these goals can result in different types of policies, with varying distributions of costs and benefits. The primary purpose of policy for heat decarbonisation, for example, is to mitigate climate change, but where there is political concern to make decarbonisation more palatable this rationale may become clouded by claims of cost-saving or other welfare benefits. Kerr argues that this risks undermining public trust in the purpose of policies, ultimately jeopardising low carbon energy transition. The next two chapters, by Julia Tomei and Long Seng To (Chapter 10), and Karina Standal and Mariëlle Feenstra (Chapter 11), turn directly to the inequalities in access to energy around the world. In 2020, around one billion people lacked access to electricity and around three billion relied on traditional cooking fuels such as firewood, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries. Using case studies and ethnographic research methods, each chapter investigates material expressions of equity and justice in different aspects of energy systems. Tomei and To use case studies of a technology (biofuels); a specific political context (displacement), and a fundamental societal challenge (gender equity). Standal and Feenstra analyse the situation of women and solar energy in India, in the context of global energy transition. Gender relations frame women’s and men’s participation, decision-making and shares of benefits in implementing solar energy at household and community level. Both chapters demonstrate the value of social science research methods in revealing the processes

Introduction: why study energy and society?  7 of social differentiation (producing intersecting inequalities such as gender, ethnicity, class, caste) which govern the roles and opportunities of different groups. They also demonstrate the contributions of social science to energy justice. Tomei and To review the prospects for global governance to support principles of equity and to enable people to engage on an equitable basis. Standal and Feenstra use their analysis to identify means to design and implement gender-sensitive policies and interventions. The development of policies to advance equity and justice in access to energy are directly examined by Karla Ricalde, Karla Cedano, Harriet Thomson and Tiare Robles (Chapter 12) in their analysis of the nascent stage of policy framings and measurement of energy poverty in Mexico. The increasing policy attention to energy poverty across regional and national institutions has been accompanied by the launch of a monitoring observatory. The authors develop a new Capabilities-driven Energy Satisfactors Index (CESI), based on and underpinned by community workshops. They conclude that overly-simplistic metrics flatten the diversity and cultural specificity of experiences, and advocate multidisciplinary collaboration between physical and social scientists to avoid such reductionism. The energy sector is a major source of employment around the globe, but knowledge about occupational stratification between men and women is limited. Bipasha Baruah and Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic (Chapter 13) address this significant gap in research with an analysis showing that women are particularly underrepresented in jobs requiring science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) qualifications and training. Plans to transform the energy sector from one reliant on fossil fuels to clean energy are dependent on new skills, training and an increasing labour supply. This presents major opportunities to recruit and promote women, indigenous peoples, new immigrants and historically marginalised groups. The authors suggest a significant new research agenda, with major social and economic benefits. Part II concludes with Karen Lucas, Noel Cass and Muhammed Adeel’s (Chapter 14) analysis of social divisions in personal energy consumption arising from car ownership and driving. Echoing Peter Pearson’s account (Chapter 2) of the role of the car in the American Dream, the authors argue that cars and driving reveal the habitual or even compulsive symbolic, as well as material, value placed on cars, road trips and associated activities. Those in higher income groups are sometimes hyper-mobile, and account for a disproportionate share of emissions from private transport. Changing the status of the car is an emotive area for policy, with little progress on reducing emissions. Given unequal access to car ownership, the authors are critical of policy assuming that a shift to electric vehicles is sufficient to solve emissions from personal travel. In line with other authors, they advocate equity as a key policy principle, but recommend that tackling high-end travel consumption is as important to improving energy equity as reducing energy poverty. This approach would prioritise walking, cycling and collective transport, while making private car use less attractive through measures such as congestion charges, and mileage rationing or bans on the largest private vehicles.

PART III: ENERGY GOVERNANCE, POLICIES AND POLITICS In this part authors examine variation in energy policies, and effectiveness, in the context of governance structures, asset ownership and control, politics and market institutions. Governance arrangements have implications for types of energy innovations, pace and scale of changes, and the distribution of costs and benefits across society.

8  Research handbook on energy and society Actions in China are enormously consequential for the achievement of global climate protection goals, and the section commences with David Tyfield’s dissection (Chapter 15) of Chinese innovation governance. Treating innovation as politics, Tyfield highlights the dynamism of Chinese innovation, which marries major socio-technical with socio-political change, increasingly at global scale. He argues that the significance of such innovations resides not in direct technical impacts, but in the resulting social upheavals, which are disrupting incumbent socio-technical systems. Using the case of urban mobility, Tyfield concludes that China may be leading the world towards ‘ecological civilisation’, but most probably by stumbling backwards, rather than by surging decisively ahead. In related discussion, with reference to electric vehicles (EVs), Kerr (Chapter 9) also notes that the Chinese Government have promoted EV development and sales as much for economic growth as for climate protection reasons. This reinforces the continuing political tensions, if not contradictions, between economic and climate policies. In the European context, the next two chapters consider interactions between devolved government in the United Kingdom (UK) and diverging policy and investments. Richard Cowell (Chapter 16) analyses interactions between UK devolution and the development of renewable electricity. In Chapter 17, Faye Wade, Janette Webb and Margaret Tingey compare diverging policies for low-energy buildings in Scotland and England. Cowell shows that the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have made differential use of their particular powers in relation to energy. Tensions over who controls energy decision-making create pressures on devolution settlements, but resulting renewable electricity developments are not simply determined by formal powers. Instead, they depend on the alignment of actors with the available powers in each territory, as well as on opportunities created by central government financial support mechanisms. The dynamics of devolved government are in turn shaped by the materiality of energy infrastructures and markets, configuring the scope for ‘sovereignty’. Cowell’s analysis makes clear the fragmentary nature of democratic control over energy, as well as the inevitable imperfections of any attempt to define a single ‘best scale’ for governing energy systems or their transformation. Drawing on institutional theories, Wade et al. further explore the scope for flexibility in use of devolved powers to create distinctive policy for energy efficiency retrofit of buildings. The perspectives of officials in Scottish and UK governments suggest greater emphasis on market solutions in England, and a more planned and coordinated approach in Scotland. In England, greater ambivalence over strategy includes uncertainty over the feasibility of local authority sharing of responsibility. Ultimately, however, the authors conclude that neither the Scottish nor UK government has policies fit for the scale or urgency of action required. Tina Fawcett and Marina Topouzi (Chapter 18) consider what kinds of policies are needed to accelerate action in line with carbon budgets, when all rates of retrofit are currently far below those required. They assess multi-level governance and policy initiatives for retrofitting existing buildings to high standards, and supplying remaining need for heating and hot water with clean energy. Fawcett and Topouzi propose ways of raising ambitions within current policy frames, such as setting detailed targets and higher building standards, as well as creating incentives for fuel switching and developing institutions to support coordination across scales of government. They go beyond this, however, with a more challenging call to reconsider the purpose and limits of building-related policies, echoing Janine Morley’s discussion of sufficiency in energy use (Chapter 5).

Introduction: why study energy and society?  9 This perspective is developed by Sarah Royston and Jan Selby (Chapter 19) in their examination of the ways in which energy demand is affected not only by energy policies, but by policies relating to other sectors, such as industry, transport, farming, health and education. These ‘non-energy policies’ have impacts on all spheres of society, hence influencing the timing, location and scale of energy consumed. Using the key example of marketisation as a non-energy policy, they reveal its often invisible effects on energy demand in one sector: UK higher education. Policy and practical implications are significant, and Royston and Selby identify ways that social scientists can contribute to greater understanding of this critical, but neglected, aspect of energy governance. The section concludes with a distinctive empirical study of such governance implications in the rural setting of the Hebridean Isle of Lewis, off the north-west coast of Scotland. Annabel Pinker (Chapter 20) uses ethnographic research methods to analyse the governance of mega-developments at local scale. She examines the issues at stake in crafting new energy futures – with potential to redistribute resources, expertise and socio-economic power – in the context of both the established centralised electricity grids and systems governing land use. The population of Lewis is accustomed to the practices of resource extraction and exploitation, with significant local employment from offshore contracts in the North Sea. Given its location at the north-east edge of the Atlantic, Lewis is increasingly envisaged as a potential renewable energy hub, offering reliable wind and wave power. But questions over who should own and install such energy infrastructures, what land is for, and who should control it in an era of transition, are highly contested.

PART IV: CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES AND ENERGY FUTURES The final part of the Handbook considers ways of understanding possible futures for energy systems, with a focus on different kinds of knowledge and its uses, and public engagement in producing and accessing knowledge. This ranges from research and development, and systems engineering models, to local knowledge about energy, and perceptions of how places and ways of life may change. Digital innovation is considered in relation to knowledge systems for potential peer-to-peer electricity trading, and customisation of energy systems to community objectives. This part commences with an examination of localised structures of knowledge in use in Scottish marine energies, and their implications for energy transitions. Shana Hirsch (Chapter 21) uses concepts from science and technology studies to examine the processes and practices of structuring knowledge about marine energy, through networked and nested testing and demonstration centres; standards for instrumentation and testing; and university– industry collaborations. The resulting localised knowledge infrastructures enabled innovation by facilitating the work of engineers and scientists in training experts, in turn improving knowledge exchange, capacity building and standard setting between academia and industry. Understanding the interactions between such local knowledge infrastructures and central support mechanisms is critical to facilitating research and development not just in marine energy, but in numerous other contexts. In Chapter 22, Nick Pidgeon, Christopher Groves, Catherine Cherry, Gareth Thomas, Fiona Shirani and Karen Henwood address the question of how social scientists can engage with publics in exploring benefits, uncertainties and drawbacks of different ways to decarbonise

10  Research handbook on energy and society energy. Pidgeon et al. use a novel methodology, situating public deliberation in locally realistic energy scenarios, to explore interactions between local knowledge and perceptions of energy futures in the steel town of Port Talbot, Wales. The research reveals participants’ ambivalent views of their industrialised environment, and shows the potential for locally specific injustices and inequalities to result from centralised, pre-fixed scenarios. Engaging with residents’ relationships to place and understandings of local histories hence provides a valuable route to improving the evaluation of energy policy options, and avoiding such injustices. A direct form of public engagement in energy transactions is explored by Alexandra Schneiders, Anna Gorbatcheva, Michael Fell and David Shipworth in Chapter 23. The increasing volume of small-scale renewable electricity sources connected to local distribution networks opens up the potential for bottom-up peer-to-peer trading. This could reshape top-down markets, potentially providing co-benefits for consumers, communities and the electricity grid. In a decentralised trading model, participants act as both consumers and sellers/traders, rather than being passive ‘end users’. An agreed local goal, such as financial savings, climate protection or reducing demand on the network, could be met by peer-to-peer trading networks. There are, however, questions about fair access to participation, and about the potential for some communities to avoid paying a fair share of costs of maintaining the established electricity distribution networks. The authors conclude that social science research on distributional and societal impacts is needed to inform policy and regulation for such local electricity trading. Digital or ‘smart’ energy systems are typically regarded as the key to resolving some of these issues, by providing real time visibility of energy flows, and shares of costs, across networks. The term ‘Smart Cities’ is increasingly used to position urban centres as the basis for digital innovation. Drawing on new empirical research from the island state of Tasmania in Australia, Heather Lovell (Chapter 24) instead examines the potential for smart grid innovations in rural communities. Using insights from the case study, she discusses the distinctive social science contributions to understanding processes of energy transition, in particular the increasing socio-technical diversity between urban and rural areas. Rural areas may be able to adapt existing energy grids to local community visions, with opportunities for innovation in the whole cycle of generation, supply and use. The concept of smart grids is also a significant component of proposals for integrating power, heat, transport and gas systems at varying scales in order to secure improvements in the reliability, cost effectiveness and sustainability of the whole energy system. In Chapter 25, Antti Silvast uses empirical material collected while working with engineers and natural scientists at a major UK research centre concerned with developing an Energy Systems Integration (ESI) model. The author examines the ways that systems-thinking, computer-based modelling and disciplinary divides shape knowledge. The analysis reveals a particular gap in knowledge about how users and citizens might engage with integrated energy systems. Silvast shows how science and technology studies helps to make explicit the assumptions used in engineering models, providing a route to dialogue about the correspondence between the model and the materiality of socio-technical systems, markets and participants. Such dialogue is instrumental to the development of useful modelling tools for the future. Part IV concludes with an appraisal of narratives and stories about such futures, and their impacts on energy and climate policy, and technology development in the present. Noam Bergman and Kathryn Janda (Chapter 26) draw on innovation studies, environmental history and ecological economics to examine competing narratives of past, present and future. They use a typology of future visions to help test responses to optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.

Introduction: why study energy and society?  11 They argue that the dominant ‘modern economic growth’ narrative narrowly defines sustainability as the need to reduce emissions and centres on technological solutions. This marginalises the possibility of deeper social change and leaves us underprepared for energy and climate change challenges. Their conclusions explain the value of multiple stories, or a ‘system of stories’, to support understanding of the scale of changes entailed, and to incorporate diverse solutions in orienting to the future.

THE CHALLENGES WE FACE A concluding editorial contribution briefly reviews the key themes, and disciplinary and theoretical perspectives in the Handbook. It considers the implications for teaching energy and society, and suggests new directions in energy and society research, in the context of the very small share of energy research funding received until now (Overland and Sovacool, 2020). Overall, the Handbook aims to contribute to a firm footing for social studies of energy, bringing diverse theories, research methods and data to understanding the ‘history of the present’, the embedding of carbon- and energy-intensive infrastructures in how we live and who we are, and how to move on. The authors demonstrate the value of social sciences in identifying the inter-locking societal and technical changes needed to limit climate disruption. Contributors examine socio-technical dynamics of energy systems from macro to micro scales, identifying ways to live within environmental limits, and to manage the consequences of massive combustion of fossil fuels. Such insights are critical to informing changes in governance institutions, production and consumption systems, and public infrastructures, while minimising perverse consequences and injustices. From business and industry, through governance and policy, to personal action, social sciences are needed to face the unthinkable, to speak truth to power, and to help create sustainable futures for life on Earth.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank all contributing authors who have made the Handbook a pleasure to produce through their high quality, original work, and quick and constructive interaction with the editors. We are also greatly indebted to David McCrone who reviewed early drafts of chapters and has been an invaluable, extremely skilled, editorial assistant. The editors are delighted that Anna K. Dickie, photographer, agreed to create a unique photo collage evoking the many meanings of energy and society for the cover of the Handbook. The editors gratefully acknowledge support from UK Research and Innovation through the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, grant reference number EP/R 035288/1.

REFERENCES Geddes, A., I. Gerasimchuk, B. Viswanathan, A. Picciariello, B. Tucker, A. Doukas, V. Corkal, M. Mostafa, J. Roth, A. Suharsono and I. Gençsü (2020), Doubling Back and Doubling Down: G20 Scorecard on Fossil Fuel Funding. Canada; UK; USA: International Institute for Sustainable Development, Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International, accessed on 21 December 2020 at https://​www​.iisd​.org/​system/​files/​2020​-11/​g20​-scorecard​-report​.pdf.

12  Research handbook on energy and society Mackenzie, D. and J. Wajcman (eds) (1999), The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd edition, Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Mitchell, T. (2009), ‘Carbon democracy’, Economy and Society, 38 (3), 399–432. Norman, J., J. Barrett, S. Betts-Davies, R. Carr-Whitworth, A. Garvey, J. Giesekam, K. James and R. Styles (2021), Resource Efficiency Scenarios for the UK: A Technical Report. Oxford, UK: Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, accessed on 26 March 2021 at https://​www​.creds​.ac​.uk/​wp​ -content/​uploads/​CREDS​-Resource​-efficiency​-scenarios​-UK​-technical​-report​.pdf. Overland, I. and B. Sovacool (2020), ‘The misallocation of climate research funding’, Energy Research & Social Science, 62, article 101349, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1016/​j​.erss​.2019​.101349. Ritchie, H. and M. Roser (2020), CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions, accessed on 21 December 2020 at https://​ourworldindata​.org/​co2​-and​-other​-greenhouse​-gas​-emissions. United Nations (2016), The Paris Agreement, accessed on 21 December 2020 at https://​unfccc​.int/​ process​-and​-meetings/​the​-paris​-agreement/​the​-paris​-agreement. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2020), Emissions Gap Report, accessed on 21 December 2020 at https://​www​.unep​.org/​emissions​-gap​-report​-2020. Winner, L. (1980), ‘Do artifacts have politics?’, Daedalus, 109 (1), 121–136.

PART I ENERGY SERVICES AND THE MAKING OF MARKETS

2. Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story Peter J.G. Pearson

INTRODUCTION Energy transitions have often enhanced human welfare by contributing to sustained increases in productivity, economic output and the production and use of new commodities, services and lifestyles. Such transitions have also been intertwined with industrial revolutions (Kander and Stern, 2013) or ‘long waves’ of economic development (Freeman and Louça, 2001), and the non-energy transitions involved in them. The ‘dark side’ of energy transitions includes their capacity for environmental and ecological damage, harmful impacts on health and wellbeing, and engagement with geopolitical economic and military power struggles. Energy transitions take many forms and have unfolded at different times and places (Smil, 2010; Pearson, 2018). They are socio-technical transitions in which changing socio-economic processes, politics and actor networks co-evolve with the exploitation, supply, distribution and penetration of new fuels and the infrastructures and technologies that help deliver energy services like illumination, heating, cooling and mobility (Jones, 2016; Köhler et al., 2019). This chapter addresses the technological and the socioeconomic processes and pressures that led countries and people to embrace oil and gas and their associated technologies, uses and cultures in a ‘hydrocarbon society’ (Yergin, 1991). As often in transitions, coal continues to feature in energy mixes (mostly for producing electricity, coke and cement), albeit with a diminished share, long after the large-scale adoption of hydrocarbon fuels (Figure 2.1, Tables 2.1, 2.2; see also Chapter 8). The appeal of new fuels and energy services lies in their ability to perform more effectively, cheaply and profitably, and to nurture new technologies, uses and practices. While growing energy and transport infrastructures and (sub)urbanisation have played key roles in the uptake of oil and gas (Flink, 1990; Jones, 2018), new social and commercial practices and cultures, including those around enhanced mobility and communication, growing use of leisure time and increased thermal comfort (heating, cooling and showering), have proved major stimuli (Trentmann, 2018). The new uses of oil for transport, especially in the internal combustion engine (ICE), were key features of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Second Industrial Revolution. Like the steam engine, the ICE and electrification constitute a ‘general purpose technology’ (GPT), a ‘generic technology that initially has much scope for improvement and eventually comes to be widely used, to have many uses, and to have many spillover effects [i.e. applications in other uses]’ (Lipsey et al., 2005, p. 98). Consequently, a GPT may have the capacity to accelerate economic growth and energy consumption (Pearson and Foxon, 2012). Others have used the concept of ‘development blocks’, evolving systems centred on one or more generic technologies, such as the linkage between oil and the ICE, ‘to describe the series of systems of technology, infrastructure, energy sources and institutions by which economic growth proceeded’ (Kander et al., 2013). Proponents of both concepts agree that the major structural 14

Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story  15 shifts that such technology systems promote take time to unfold because of lags between early inventions and the widespread adoption of new technologies, infrastructures, institutions and user practices. The transitions from coal to oil and later to natural gas occurred between rather than away from carbon-heavy fossil fuels. They were influenced by their availability, the declining costs of oil and then gas relative to other fuels, by rising incomes and by properties that resembled or were different from those of coal in valued ways (Fouquet, 2008; Grubler, 2013). For example, petrol (gasoline), natural gas and coal are significantly more energy dense (store more energy per unit mass, in MJ/kg) than air-dried wood (Smil, 2010). Moreover, liquid oil and its refined products became more easily, cheaply and flexibly transportable and tradable, via pipelines and tankers, than solid coal, as later did compressed or liquid forms of natural gas (CNG and LNG). Surface oil and gas extraction also required less, more easily managed, labour than underground coal mining, changing the balance of power between workers, management and owners (Yergin, 1991, p. 543; Mitchell, 2011). And combustion of oil, and more so natural gas, tends to have less damaging – but nonetheless harmful – air pollution profiles than coal combustion. These features, with other coal-related health and environmental impacts, gradually attenuated coal’s commercial and regulatory attractiveness, especially in densely-populated urban areas (Thorsheim, 2006). This chapter outlines how, why, when and where selected socio-technical transitions to oil and gas unfolded, and how social science and history help to understand them. It briefly explores the transitions from coal to oil, refined oil products and natural gas that unfolded at a global scale, and in the UK (see e.g. Fouquet, 2008; Arapostathis et al., 2019), other European countries (Kander et al., 2013) and North America (O’Connor and Cleveland, 2014; Unger, 2018). It touches on some more recent transitions, such as those in Latin America (Rubio, 2019). These countries embrace diverse political systems, societies, economies, cultures, geographies and energy resource availabilities, factors that have affected the nature, pace and duration of their transitions (Fouquet, 2016). In casting such a wide net, this chapter can do no more than capture some of the many complexities involved.

FROM AN ‘ORGANIC’ TO AN ‘INORGANIC’ MINERAL ECONOMY: THE RISE OF COAL So, what was special about the first transition to coal? These features help explain the attractiveness of fossil fuels and illustrate the coal-induced path dependence which impacted the oil and gas transitions. Britain’s sixteenth- to nineteenth-century coal transition unfolded before and during the First Industrial Revolution. Wrigley (2010) argues that Britain’s transition from an ‘organic’, largely biomass- and photosynthesis-dependent energy system, to one based on coal, helped transform Britain’s economy, trade and society. In the organic system (or ‘agrarian solar energy system’ (Sieferle, 2001)), apart from variable wind and water power, annual energy flows were mostly limited to what could be captured from trees and crops and processed with human and animal labour. These materials could feed people and draft animals, and so fuel their labour, and be burned for heat and other energy services. Before the spread of fossil fuels and our increasing detachment from the tangible material presence of energy and energy systems, ‘[a]cquiring energy required personal exertion … most people in most places spent more of their waking hours obtaining the energy to live than

16  Research handbook on energy and society in any other activity’ (Jones, 2018, p. 378). The drawing-down of abundant stocks of coal from the ‘subterranean forest’ (Sieferle, 2001) relaxed energy, work and time constraints. The exploitation of coal and the development of coal-using technologies opened up unprecedented technical, economic and social possibilities that would have required unfeasibly large tracts of forested land: ‘Wood could not have done the job’ (Kander et al., 2013, p. 15). Much of Britain’s transition to coal was pre-industrial: by about 1560, coal already provided about 10 per cent of the energy consumed in England and Wales; by 1750, the eve of the core years of the Industrial Revolution, it was nearly 60 per cent (Warde, 2007, App. I, Table 2); and by 1882 it reached a 96 per cent maximum share (Table 2.1). Allen (2009) argues that Britain’s transition to coal was bound up, as cause and as effect, with the Industrial Revolution. In his view, high British wages and cheap coal underpinned the Industrial Revolution by creating a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour. Innovations, including the steam engine, replacing wood and charcoal in metal manufacture, new spinning and weaving technologies, textile mills, manufactured gaslight and many socio-economic and cultural developments, helped impel and sustain the Industrial Revolution. Kander et al. (2013) argue that the development block combination of coal, the steam engine and iron characterised and drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain and then Western Europe. In Britain, coal, ports, ships, canals, railways (from the 1830s) and the steam engine made it possible to access more energy and transport it economically far from its source, to deliver power and heat. There were striking reductions in the cost and increases in the consumption of energy services as people, industry and commerce adopted new energy-using habits and devices (Fouquet, 2008). And new problems of coal-related land, air and water pollution burgeoned. For some time, however, blazing furnaces and smoking industrial chimneys were often greeted as embodiments of progress, while growing cultural attachment to the coal fire would impede domestic smoke regulation (Thorsheim, 2006; Nead, 2018). By the turn of the nineteenth century, Britain had become for a time the world’s major coal exporter, its price established at Cardiff’s Coal Exchange. Britain’s experience shows how a fossil fuel first came to dominate a nation’s energy system and energy-using culture in ways that would influence other countries’ – often much later and faster – transitions (Tables 2.1 and 2.2). The coal transition saw the accumulation of layers of path dependence that held back and advanced the oil transition. For example, Barak (2020) argues that the deposition of ‘black diamonds’ (coal bunkers) in Ottoman territories en route to British India enabled the global fossil fuels economy to evolve in the nineteenth century, in ways that sparked global carbonisation.

THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: OIL, THE ICE AND ELECTRICITY Several factors influenced the uptake of new fuels and energy carriers to augment and displace coal and its technologies. As well as building on the new demand flowing from coal-enabled mechanisation and urbanisation (Jones, 2016), a new fuel’s promoters and users would need to push past any frictions from path-dependent lock-ins of coal-related technologies, infrastructures, institutions and consumption patterns (Fouquet, 2016). Oil, and later natural gas, eventually met these criteria, because of the innovations that formed part of the Second Industrial Revolution (approximately 1860–1914). As with the first revolution, this was about

Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story  17 much more than a few key technologies. Gordon (2000) groups the major inventions of this Revolution into five interrelated clusters: Cluster 1:

Cluster 2:

Cluster 3:

Cluster 4:

Cluster 5:

consists of electricity and electrical systems, including electric light, dynamos and motors. Electricity’s industrial development dates from the electric light bulb (invented by Edison (US) and Swan (UK) in 1879) and the first central power station in 1882. Electricity drastically cut the cost of a lumen of light (Fouquet and Pearson, 2006), while electric motors revolutionised manufacturing and its organisation, eventually also leading to innovations including washing machines, refrigeration and air conditioning. Although until recently coal dominated electricity generation in most countries, oil has played a significant role in others, while natural gas has penetrated rapidly, especially in countries with gas resources. centres on the ICE: Otto developed the first modern version in 1876. The ICE made possible petroleum powered motor vehicles and aeroplanes and improvements in shipping and stationary power. Gordon adds complementary, ‘derivative’ inventions, including urban sprawl, the highway and the supermarket, and their considerable socioeconomic and cultural implications, which further boosted energy demand. includes petroleum, natural gas and processes that ‘rearrange molecules’, such as chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Growing use of oil and natural gas helped cut air pollution from industrial and heating uses of coal, while their by-products spawned numerous materials, products and health and longevity advances. Nevertheless, the development of petroleum-derived chemicals on an industrial scale dates from the 1920s; for many years they would go on being made from coal tar. After World War II petroleum increasingly supplanted coal as the major feedstock in chemical production (Bennett and Pearson, 2006). is the complex of entertainment, communication and information innovations developed before World War II, including the telegraph (1844), the telephone (1876), gramophone (1877), popular photography (1880s and 1890s), radio (1899), motion pictures (1881 to 1888) and television (1911) (Gordon, 2000, p. 22). These inventions depended on electricity, mass production and new materials, including Bakelite. includes the rapid spread after 1880 of running water, indoor plumbing and urban sanitation infrastructure (in the US). Along with enhanced understanding of the nature of infectious disease (Pasteur, Koch et al.), they greatly enhanced health and living standards.

Gordon (2000) argues that it was this second revolution and the exploitation of its inventions and knowledge through new forms of industrial organisation and mass production that raised per capita income and wealth in the USA in ‘the golden years of productivity growth (1913–72)’ (ibid., p. 23). Mokyr (1999, p. 231), however, argues that while material wellbeing grew between 1870 and 1914 in Western Europe and North America, with delayed, lesser effects elsewhere, it is less easy to establish the net effect of technological progress. This is both because of the damaging side-effects of urbanisation and industrialisation and because

18  Research handbook on energy and society World War I’s massive scale of destruction was partly attributable to the power of the new technologies and their feedstocks, oil-based fuels. The increasingly oil-dependent second industrial revolution saw the rapid development of ‘large technological systems’ (Hughes, 1983), exemplified by electric power systems. Such systems cause, and are influenced by, social change: in Consuming Power, Nye (1999) describes electrification as a process in which technological, social and cultural changes became deeply intertwined. He depicts electricity consumers as active partners of inventors and business managers, their partnership mediated by cultural symbols and discourses that appeared in advertisements, journalists’ reports and cultural commentaries. The unfolding of the production and culture of the automobile presents an analogous story, discussed below (Flink, 1990). Until the recent penetration of renewables, electricity generation depended mostly on a succession of fossil fuels: coal (well-suited to large-scale generation), then oil (useful in spatially dispersed rural or island locations), and natural gas (where, from the 1960s, the combined cycle gas turbine offered more modular, rapidly assembled, less polluting power plants). While some network systems (railways, telegraph networks and gas, water, and sewage systems in big cities) operated before 1870, they subsequently expanded greatly, augmented by inventions like electricity and the telephone. These developments turned the large technological system from an exception to a commonplace, and ‘The notion that technology consisted of separate components that could be optimised individually […] became less and less appropriate after 1870’ (Mokyr, 1999). Oil, the ICE and the turbine are outstanding examples of how a large technological system can develop ramifications beyond those foreseen by its initial promoters and users.

THE GROWTH OF OIL AND NATURAL GAS Forms of petroleum, including crude oil from surface seepages, have been widely used for millennia, for uses ranging from medicine and illumination to caulking ships and warfare (Forbes, 1958, 1959; Smil, 2010). Although not the first drilled oil well, which was in the Baku region on the Caspian Sea, large-scale exploitation dates from Drake’s Well (1859) at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, USA. It was drilled in search of a new source of kerosene to meet rising demand for illumination. Methods for refining kerosene had already been commercialised with coal oils and could be applied to crude oil (Forbes, 1959; Jones, 2016). More wells were rapidly drilled, often helped by coal-fired steam engines: by 1865 production reached 2.5 million barrels, 11.7 per cent of which were exported. By 1900 production had risen 25-fold to 63.6 million barrels, with exports of 3.3 million barrels (5.2 per cent) and US per capita consumption of 0.52 barrels (Schurr and Netschert, 1960, Table 22). Initially US consumption was mostly kerosene for lamps, with a small share for lubricants, markets expanded by coal-boosted industrialisation and urbanisation. By 1909, these markets were matched by those for gasoline and fuel oil, which rose to a 74 per cent share by 1920 (ibid., Table 24). Russian oil extraction also grew in the 1880s, led by discoveries and the entrepreneurial and technical abilities of the Nobel brothers from Sweden and their competitors, the Rothschild brothers from Paris; their loan enabled the completion of a railway line from Baku to the port of Batum. This railway ‘opened a door to the West for Russian oil; it also initiated a fierce thirty-year struggle for the oil markets of the world’ (Yergin, 1991, p. 61). Other pre-1900

Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story  19 discoveries of oil were in Sumatra and Burma, followed in the early 1900s by those in Iran, Mexico and Venezuela. Other major finds in the Persian Gulf, including those in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, came between the late 1920s and early 1960s. 1947–48 saw major new finds in Canada, and in the Volga–Urals region in the Soviet Union (Russia). The 1950s and 1960s saw the discovery of more big oilfields in the USA and the Soviet Union (Siberia), as well as in Algeria, Libya and Nigeria (Smil, 2010, pp. 34–5). The 1960s saw new finds in Mexico and offshore finds in Norway and the UK. In the 1970s, two ‘oil price shocks’ had major geopolitical and macroeconomic consequences for oil-exporting and oil-importing economies (Neary and Van Wijnbergen, 1986; Hamilton, 2013). An export embargo by members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) triggered the 1973–74 shock: real prices quadrupled relative to 1972, from $15 to $59 per barrel (at US$2018 prices). The 1979–80 shock followed falling oil output after the Iranian Revolution: real prices doubled relative to 1978, from $54 to $112 (at US$2018 prices). These shocks had deep impacts, partly because real oil prices had not exceeded $22 in the 45 years between 1927 and 1972 (BP, 2019). Some heavily import-dependent countries responded by temporarily switching back towards coal (e.g. South Korea) and/or by further researching into and developing alternatives to oil and gas, including nuclear power (e.g. France, Japan, South Korea), synthetic fuels (e.g. USA) and renewables. By 2007, the Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia were the world’s two largest oil-producing countries, each with 12.6 per cent shares, while the USA was third, with 8 per cent of total production. However, recent technical advances, including horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, have enabled big increases in North American production: by 2018 the top five crude producers were: USA (13.2 per cent), Russia (13.0 per cent), Saudi Arabia (12.6 per cent), Iraq (5.6 per cent) and Canada (5.2 per cent). The USA has also become the world’s largest natural gas producer, ahead of Russia, Iran, Canada and Qatar. Health and Environmental Issues Concerns over air, land and water pollution from coal production and use began to grow from the late nineteenth century, as scientific and medical evidence accumulated and culturally influenced ideas of pollution changed (Thorsheim, 2006). Oil, and more so natural gas combustion, yield lower carbon dioxide (CO2) and substantially lower particulate, sulphur and nitrogen oxide (SOx and NOx) emissions than coal combustion. These properties, and other health and environmental concerns, have influenced economic choices and political and public preferences in ways that accelerated transitions from coal, as with the UK’s Clean Air Acts from 1956 onwards. Recently, both air pollution concerns and the climate crisis have influenced moves towards zero-carbon energy systems that do not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Such systems require either no fossil fuels or, to the extent that their use continues, using them with carbon capture and sequestration. Politics and Lobbying Almost from the beginning of its nineteenth century exploitation, as indicated, oil became entwined with politics (see McCrone, Chapter 3 for extended discussion). The profits and government revenues from oil production and trade led to intense intra-national and international competition and attempts to restrict it by eliminating or combining with competitors (Yergin,

20  Research handbook on energy and society 1991). They also nourished geopolitical struggles to secure supplies, leading to trade embargoes, price spikes and wars (Mitchell, 2011). Issues have included: mineral rights (different countries have different systems); the regulation of market power in supply or distribution; national ownership and nationalisation of oil resources and supplies; the ‘resource curse/ blessing’, including the damaging impact of an oil or gas export-induced overvalued exchange rate on the competitiveness of a country’s traditional export sector (‘Dutch disease’); and the impacts on government behaviour and policy of budgetary dependence on oil and gas revenues (Neary and van Wijnbergen, 1986; Addison and Roe, 2018; Krane, 2019). Oil’s political and strategic significance increased greatly during and after World War I because of its growing role in powering warships, aeroplanes, tanks and lorries (Johnson et al., 2016; Rubio, 2019). The increasing importance, especially for oil-importing countries, of secure access for military and fast-growing civil uses, influenced domestic energy policies, as it did during and after World War II and the Cold War, and does today (Vietor, 1980; Johnstone & McLeish, 2020). Governments remain susceptible to fossil fuel-related political pressures, including: popular concerns over energy (in)security (‘keeping the lights on’) and/or escalating fuel prices; fiscal dependence on oil and gas tax revenues; environmental concerns and political fallout from regional unemployment in fossil fuel industries. Consequently, fossil fuels have always been fertile sources of political lobbying. Influential industrial lobbies have promoted fossil fuel subsidies, estimated at over $400 billion worldwide in 2018 (IEA, 2019), have sought successfully to limit or roll back environmental and energy efficiency regulations, as with many Trump administration decisions, and have disparaged climate science, while others increasingly promote action to eliminate fossil fuels.

THE TIMING, PACE AND SCALE OF FOSSIL FUEL TRANSITIONS Global Transitions Figure 2.1 (in terawatt-hours, TWh) depicts the global transitions between 1800 and 2018: first, from traditional biofuels to a system dominated by coal; next, to one dominated by a mix of coal and oil, with natural gas emerging; and then to a system in which oil and natural gas led. This figure illustrates several striking features (note that while the data between 1800 and 1960 are decadal, the rest are annual). ● During the nineteenth century, coal grew much more rapidly than traditional biofuels: in 1800 coal had about a 2 per cent share and traditional biofuels about 80 per cent of global consumption; coal’s share then climbed rapidly to about 5 per cent by 1840, 27 per cent by 1880 and 47 per cent by 1900. ● Coal hits a maximum share of 55 per cent by 1910, becoming the dominant global fuel, as traditional biofuels fall to 41 per cent, although their absolute amount still grows slowly. Coal then remains the dominant fuel until displaced in the 1960s by oil and natural gas. ● Oil first appears in the data by 1870, reaches about 3 per cent of global consumption by 1910, and takes 30 years to reach 12 per cent (by 1940), while growing much faster than coal. Oil then rises after World War II to a 20 per cent share in 1950; by 1965 it reaches 36 per cent, exceeding coal’s 32 per cent.

Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story  21 ● By 1973 (the first oil price shock), oil attains a maximum 45 per cent share. The 1978–79 second oil shock sees an absolute fall in oil consumption, which takes a decade to recover to its 1979 level. Oil’s share slips to 35 per cent by 2018. ● Natural gas enters the data by 1890, is at 4 per cent of global consumption by 1940, reaches 8 per cent by 1950, 16 per cent by 1973 and rises to 25 per cent by 2018, 7 per cent below oil’s share. ● 1940–65 sees exceptionally rapid growth in oil and gas: their combined share is 16 per cent in 1940, equals coal at 38 per cent by 1960, and rises to 48 per cent by 1965; by 2018 it reaches a dominant 60 per cent. ● Fossil fuel shares at 2018 are: coal 28 per cent, oil 35 per cent and gas 25 per cent, amounting to nearly 80 per cent of global consumption.

Source: chart data from Ritchie and Roser (2020), used under CC BY at https://​creativecommons​.org/​licenses/​by/​ 2​.0/​. Original data from Smil (2016) and BP (2019).

Figure 2.1

Global primary energy consumption 1800–2018 (TWh per year)

22  Research handbook on energy and society ● Renewables (other than traditional biomass, at 7 per cent) reach nearly 6 per cent by 2018, signalling the early phase of the transition from fossil fuels towards a zero-carbon energy system. Three other features stand out. First, the transitions are partial and relative (Melsted and Pallua, 2018): by 2018 coal still supplied more than a quarter of world primary energy consumption. The coexistence of these three fossil fuels indicates that in different market segments, times and places they can act as complements or substitutes (see Bakke, Chapter 8 for extended discussion). Second, the transitions have not been rapid: oil took more than 70 years from Drake’s Well in 1859, to reach 10 per cent of global consumption; took another 20 years to reach 20 per cent by 1950; about 20 more to reach 40 per cent; and a total of 114 years to go from its modern commercial inception to its 50 per cent maximum share by 1973. The penetration of natural gas was slower, taking about 80 years to go from a 1 per cent to a 20 per cent global share by 1991 and another quarter century to reach its 2018 maximum of 25 per cent. Third, the transitions have been broadly continuous, albeit with varying rates of change, and surges and blips occasioned by various stimuli. They have largely been accompanied by growing absolute levels of consumption, except perhaps recently for traditional biofuels. The stimuli have included: the push and pull-back from path dependence on coal’s technological, institutional, political and cultural momentum (Jones, 2018); the technological, economic and cultural developments of the Second Industrial Revolution, from the ICE, electrification and (later) the jet engine to the factory system, (sub)urbanisation, transport network growth and burgeoning cultures of consumption and mobility; macroeconomic and trade developments; and not least the impacts of two World Wars, the oil price shocks, the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. National Transition Experiences We now touch on the experiences of ten European and North American countries, drawing on data that underpinned the analyses by Kander et al., 2013, and O’Connor, 2014. The countries have been split here into five relatively early movers from biofuels to coal (Table 2.1) and five relatively late movers (Table 2.2). Each table depicts stages of the transitions from coal dominance to coexistence with oil, and then with oil and natural gas, and shows how fuel shares evolved. Each outlines the extent and length of these stages, and the levels of per capita fuel consumption and real income at the time. The last two columns contain comparative data and comments. The ten countries reached the transition milestones at very different per capita energy consumption and income levels, reflecting complex intermixtures of different fossil fuel resources, climates (hot summers and/or cold winters) and the different rates and ways in which their economies and energy-related infrastructures and cultures evolved. Table 2.1 shows: ● England and Wales reached a 10 per cent coal share (in 1560), two to three centuries before the rest, especially the USA. ● USA was first to reach a 10 per cent oil share (1919), and for oil to exceed coal’s share (1950). ● USA was first to reach a 10 per cent gas share, by 1938: others not until the mid-1960s and later.

Socio-technical transitions from coal and gas: an unfinished story  23 ● Only in the Netherlands (1976), and England and Wales (1996), did gas exceed oil’s share, reflecting their gas discoveries in 1959 and 1965. ● By 2008, only the Netherlands (52 per cent) and England and Wales (43 per cent) saw the gas share exceed those of oil and of coal. Table 2.2 shows: ● Canada was first to a 10 per cent oil share (1930), but all countries reached a 50 per cent share between 1958 and 1972. ● Canada was much the earliest to a 10 per cent gas share, which Sweden did not reach. ● Only in Canada and Italy did the gas share exceed that of coal. ● By 2008 oil dominated in all but Italy, with coal’s share less than 11 per cent in all countries; Portugal had the highest oil share and the lowest capita energy consumption and income of the ten countries. The Transition to Oil: No Universal Pattern The world’s major economies, including the USA, UK, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, China and India, followed the sequence from biofuels to coal before moving to oil and gas. During the twentieth century, many African and Asian countries with hydrocarbon resources but no domestic coal deposits moved directly from biofuels to refined oil products and natural gas. And some desert nations went from low biofuel use to some of the world’s highest rates of per capita hydrocarbon use in only two generations (Smil, 2010, p. 28). In Latin America, however, where petroleum’s dominance over coal occurred in the 1920s, some countries present transition models not found elsewhere: revertible and inverse transitions. In the former, countries alternated between coal and oil, before eventually settling for oil. In the latter, some small Central American republics went ‘from kerosene pre-eminence to a small phase of coal, to finally turn to oil for good’ (Rubio, 2019, p. 46). Rubio and Folchi (2010, p. 56) suggest that, although Latin American transitions have differed, some common features contrast with Western experience. First, at the time of their transitions Latin American countries consumed less energy per capita and far less coal than industrialised countries. Second, coal’s substitution with petroleum occurred relatively early in Latin America. By 1925, Brazil was the only country where coal remained the dominant fossil fuel. Third, most Latin American countries moved relatively quickly from coal to oil dominance.

OIL, (AUTO)MOBILITY AND THE PATH TO DEPENDENCE The richness and complexity of societal engagement with fossil fuels can be illustrated by how motor vehicles have interacted with the economy, technology, infrastructure and society. Their story serves as an exemplar of how transitions can be both advanced and held back because their technologies and systems become embedded in social practices – the more embedded they are, the harder they may be to dislodge. The focus is on US experience, because it led the way in mass-producing automobiles, propagated its technology and culture worldwide, and remains for now the world’s most car-intensive country.

Table 2.1

Fuel shares, consumption and GDP per capita for five early mover-to-coal countries

Note: # Warde (2007, App. I, Table 2); * in $ (Geary-Khamis (GK) 1990), Broadberry et al. (2015); ~ year 1850; + Coal = 10 per cent in 1802 but 0): A

n

 c k  / q i

i 1

constructing the indicator, also requires looking at the incidence (H) of the problem. This is calculated by dividing the energy poor (q) among the total population (n): H= q / n

A value of 1 for incidence would indicate that every household suffers from some degree of deprivation on at least one of the dimensions. In combination, this is defined as MEPI = H × A.

13. Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement Bipasha Baruah and Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic

INTRODUCTION Globally, women make up 6 per cent of technical staff and below 1 per cent of top managers in the energy sector (UN Women, 2012). There are fewer women employed worldwide in the energy industry than in the technology sector, which is often maligned for having the poorest metrics for gender inclusion (Price, 2015). The barriers women face in the energy sector appear to be similar to those in other non-traditional occupations (NTOs) in industrialized countries. An NTO is any occupation in which women or men comprise less than 25 per cent of the workforce. Thus, nursing and primary education, for example, are NTOs for men in most OECD countries whereas mining, energy, construction and transportation are NTOs for women. Some occupations within such sectors (for example, human resources, administrative and clerical services, public relations and communication, financial services) may indeed have more than 25 per cent (or even 50 per cent) women. However, women tend to be a minority in technical positions, in the operations and trades segments of these sectors, and often also in management, senior leadership and boards of directors of companies. The global shift to renewable and clean energy demands a growing array of skills – technical, business, administrative, economic and legal, among others (Baruah, 2017). Widening the talent pool will optimize the participation of women in the energy sector, in addition to complying with legal requirements of gender equality and upholding intrinsic principles of equity and fairness (IRENA, 2019). This chapter complements secondary knowledge synthesis with primary qualitative research to understand barriers and opportunities that impede or facilitate women’s entry, retention and advancement in the energy sector. Although we focused primarily on women’s employment in the energy sector in Canada and other industrialized countries, some findings and policy recommendations may also be useful in emerging economies and developing countries with energy sectors that are growing or transitioning to renewable and clean sources. We reviewed scholarly and practitioner literature on women’s employment in NTOs such as energy, mining and transportation published in the past 20 years. We drew upon information from annual reports, policy reviews, position papers and survey results of Canadian governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labour associations, professional networks, public policy institutes, think-tanks, financial institutions and social enterprises. This literature was analysed using the Codebook for Standards of Evidence for Empirical Research (SoE) (Heck and Minner, 2009). The SoE and their process of application result in a careful review of the claims of individual studies and reports based on six categories: adequate documentation, internal validity, analytic precision, generalizability/external validity determination, overall fit, and warrants for claims. 168

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  169 Findings from this literature review provided a conceptual framework to design empirical primary research in the form of open-ended questions for 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our key informants included policymakers working in the energy sector in federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada and with industry associations, private sector organizations, universities, and women’s networking and advocacy groups. Key informants for this study represented a range of career stages (recent graduate, new recruit, early career, mid-career and senior levels) as well as diverse cultural or ethnic backgrounds, education levels and family situations (single, divorced, married with and without children). We did not have any informants who identified as recent immigrants (although several were established immigrants), or as having a disability. Therefore, very specific employment issues that affect only these groups did not emerge in this research project. The interviews provided nuanced qualitative information about the barriers and opportunities faced by women in the energy sector as well as recommendations for removing barriers and optimizing women’s recruitment, retention and advancement in energy sector employment. We generated findings through initial theme identification from the literature review, followed by verification and explanation building from the interviews, and finally, triangulation of primary (interview) data and secondary (literature review) data to corroborate or challenge themes identified in the existing literature on the topic. This methodology is widely recognized as the most effective strategy for producing evidence-based research aimed at informing policy (Lune and Berg, 2016). We drew upon scholarly literature on topics such as women in the energy sector, science and technology; gender-specific and gender-intensified professional barriers; proximate determinants and structural factors that produce and perpetuate gender inequality; paid work and caregiving; and the politics of representation to provide the theoretical framework for this study. The collective works of scholars such as Joy Clancy, Peter Turnbull, Sandra Harding, Raewyn Connell and Anne Phillips inform the arguments advanced in this chapter, but we refer to this literature selectively in order to allow for a more detailed discussion of our empirical findings about women’s employment in the energy sector. We hope that the issues identified by this research will provide the grounding and detail against which other related issues and research, perhaps using very different methodologies as well as broader conceptualizations of gender equality (including those of gender-diverse LGBTQ persons) and intersectional gender analysis, can be tested, verified and advanced.

FINDINGS We organize findings from our research under three broad themes: (1) Recruitment, (2) Retention and (3) Promotion, Advancement and Leadership. Of course, some barriers and opportunities encountered by women transcend these categories. Recommendations to improve recruitment, for example, may have positive effects on retention and advancement. The line between what constitutes a barrier and what constitutes an opportunity is quite dynamic, since some barriers may potentially become opportunities with appropriate employer support, policy inputs, shifts in societal attitudes, and economic and political changes.

170  Research handbook on energy and society Recruitment Lack of adequate information and awareness about careers in energy One of the enduring legacies of women’s exclusion from NTOs is the continued disadvantage women and girls face compared to their male counterparts in accessing information about employment in sectors such as energy, mining, construction and transportation. Consequently, the barriers faced by women in the traditional versions of these sectors (e.g. oil and gas) often appear to persist, albeit perhaps not to the same extent, in their green avatars (e.g. clean energy). One clear trend we discovered through our literature review and interviews is that those employed in fossil fuels, that is predominantly men, tend to be well informed about the large changes afoot in the energy industry, including the global imperative to transition to clean and renewable energy. As a response to the current or expected decline of the traditional oil and gas sector, men appear to seek out opportunities in the clean energy sector earlier and in higher numbers than people employed in other sectors of the economy. For example, 25 per cent of students studying to be wind turbine technicians at the Lethbridge College Wind Turbine Technician programme in Alberta, Canada were once oil and gas workers (Canadian Press, 2017). Recent media reports in Canada indicate that oil and gas workers in Alberta are increasingly seeking and finding employment in the clean energy sector (Bickis, 2016). Similar trends are evident across the USA: of mostly, albeit not exclusively, men, who grew up with family members working in the fossil fuel sector in Utah, West Virginia, Texas and Pennsylvania, but who are now employed in renewables (Schwartz, 2019). Careers in the energy sector are generally not introduced to women through formal channels such as career counsellors, student employment advisors, job centres, recruitment sessions or career fairs. Women interviewees working in the oil and gas sector emphasized that they had never been informed about careers in this field in high school or in the early years of college or university. A phrase repeated often by key informants was that women tend to ‘stumble into’ the energy sector. Although concerted effort has been made in recent years by educational institutions, human resource organizations, industry associations and gender equality advocacy groups in OECD countries to increase awareness among girls and young women about careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, they remain disadvantaged compared to young men and boys. Because these sectors were almost exclusively dominated by men for so long, much information about job opportunities and skill transferability appears to continue to travel through familial and professional networks that are predominantly male. Young men tend to get job opportunities in these fields through (typically male) family connections, peer networks and student associations. Women usually do not have the same connections and networks; even when they have male family members working in these sectors, our interviews verified that career information is rarely shared with women and girls. Of course, there is nothing wrong with career information passing through familial or other informal networks. Having a parent or other family member in any occupation can be an advantage for both men and women seeking a similar career. And certain women may also benefit from such family connections. As an example, some of the most successful female mining executives in Canada come from mining families (Baruah, 2018). However, for those women (and men) without such networks, or unable to benefit from them, there is an urgent need to level the playing field by mainstreaming, that is, improving equity in access to employment information. The need for more institutionalized information systems about employment

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  171 in the energy sector has been emphasized in various contexts in North America and Europe (EHRC, 2017). Direct access to industry ‘insiders’ with experience can offer a strong counterbalance for lack of awareness and role models or misperceptions about energy sector work. To attract new talent, it might also be possible for employers to ‘simulate’ those valuable personal connections through strengthening practices such as mentoring, outreach presentations and visits, site tours, student networks and temporary work placements. Gender equality advocacy organizations in the energy sector – Women in Oil and Gas (WIOG), Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE), Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE) and Women in Clean Energy (WICE), for example, are pursuing exactly these strategies to improve women’s participation and advancement in the traditional and clean energy sector. In the early years of operation, these organizations tend to prioritize public education, professional development and networking activities. Over time, and with support from industry associations and private corporations, they have also been able to step into important research and policy roles in gender equality (Baruah and Gaudet, 2018). Lack of awareness about the range of opportunities available within the energy sector and the need for more versatile training to enable cross-sectoral transition Our research confirmed that a related barrier for optimizing women’s employment in the energy sector is the lack of awareness about the range of occupations, specializations and fields within the industry (Baruah and Gaudet, 2018; Baruah, 2019a). Those without connections to the energy sector tend to associate it with one or two occupations such as engineers and research scientists, or activities such as installations or manufacturing, when in fact the sector draws upon expertise and skills from diverse backgrounds in environmental science, ecology, conservation, engineering, business management, law, public policy and finance, to name just a few. Existing research on employment in the energy sector (see, for example, PetroLMI, 2017; Baruah, 2018, 2019a), and interviews conducted here identified that closely related to the lack of awareness about the diversity of opportunities is the need for more versatile training to enable people to move within and between different components of the energy sector. Employment in the sector can be volatile due to a range of factors: fluctuations in world energy prices; growth of the sector in emerging economies and developing countries; political forces that are supportive of or resistant to accepting the science of climate change and the urgency to transition to clean energy; conflicts over land and water resources with Indigenous populations; new resource discoveries; and technological changes (Kazi, 2017). To deal with sector volatility, training and education in the energy sector needs to be more versatile to enable intra-sectoral and intersectoral transferability. There is already some movement in this direction. For example, post-secondary education institutions in the US and Canada have begun to look for ways to deliver graduates with skills transferable across broader energy industry sectors rather than delivering petroleum-specific or renewable energy-specific programmes. Post-secondary institutions are developing more integrated energy programmes as well as increasing business-related programming in response to demand (PetroLMI, 2017). Examples include: programming to incorporate the full energy industry, both renewable and non-renewables; combining information technology with instrumentation; building cross-disciplinary and connected labs; introducing mechatronics programmes, which combine electronics and mechanical engineering; adding courses to respond

172  Research handbook on energy and society to digitalization trends; and offering more courses such as business and project management to increase employability (ibid.). Such changes may also enable the energy sector to employ and retain larger numbers of qualified women. A survey by Ernst & Young in 2017 of 1,200 young Americans below the age of 20 revealed a significant gender gap with a much higher percentage of young men finding oil and gas more appealing than young women – 54 per cent versus 24 per cent respectively. In the same survey, 62 per cent of respondents said a career in oil and gas was unappealing or very unappealing. Two-thirds of those polled, with no significant gender difference, said that a job working in renewable energy was appealing (Egan, 2017). Summer student work, co-ops, internships, apprenticeships Both existing research and the interviews conducted for this study identified summer student work, co-ops and internships as major entry points into careers in the energy sector (EHRC, 2017; Baruah, 2018). Co-op programmes that integrate academic learning with practical work experience and are part of college diplomas and university degrees in fields such as engineering, geology and environmental science tend to do well at providing students with entry-level professional experience in the energy sector. More female students could be provided with an entry into the energy sector if co-op programmes and internships in other related fields, which tend to draw larger numbers of female students, such as public policy and administration, law, business and health were better aligned with the energy sector. Efforts can be made through collaboration between governments, skill development and employment organizations, educational institutions and industry associations. The skilled occupational trades in both fossil fuels and renewables have repeatedly been highlighted in the literature as an area of deep gender inequality in industrialized countries (Government of Canada, 2018; Clancy and Feenstra, 2019). Apprenticeship training is a key method by which people acquire the skills and knowledge needed to become skilled tradespeople in industrialized countries (Frank and Jovic, 2015; Clancy and Feenstra, 2019). Indeed, it is typically a requirement for a worker to secure full-time vocational employment. However, apprenticeships are often marked by extreme gender imbalance. For example, in Canada women represent 52 per cent of individuals with post-secondary qualifications but only 14 per cent of apprentices (Frank and Jovic, 2015). When the female-dominated and lower-paid trades of hairstylist, cook and baker are excluded, the figure drops further to only 4 per cent (ibid.). Similar figures are reported in other OECD countries. Women in the UK comprise 94 per cent of childcare apprentices but under 4 per cent of engineering apprentices. The percentage of female engineering apprentices in the UK has actually declined from 4.6 per cent in 2002 to 3.8 per cent in 2014 (Young Women’s Trust, 2016). Trades associated with energy industry occupations (wind turbine technician, solar energy system installer, electrician, energy auditor, energy retrofitter, for example) remain heavily male-dominated in industrialized countries (Sustainlabour, 2013; McFarland, 2015). Even in countries where larger numbers of young people with tertiary-level training are choosing trade apprenticeships over higher education, the numbers of women remain disproportionately low, especially in trades relevant for sectors such as renewable energy, construction or transportation. For example, although Ireland registered a 25 per cent increase in young people entering apprenticeships in fields such as engineering and construction, the gender gap remains persistent (O’Brien, 2018). In 2017, just 1 per cent of apprentices in Ireland in these fields were women (ibid.). In England, there were 74 men starting an apprenticeship in plumbing for every

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  173 woman. Similarly, for every female apprentice entering construction in England, there were 56 men, and 25 men for every woman starting an apprenticeship in engineering (Young Women’s Trust, 2016). Thus, while calling for more ‘earn and learn’ apprenticeship options to enable young people to make a smoother transition from training to employment, most OECD countries are recognizing the need for specific effort to address the large and persistent gender gaps in apprenticeships programmes. Gender-neutral incentives such as significant financial support and tax incentives for apprentices and employers in the USA and Canada have not lowered the many barriers women face, including socialization and gender stereotyping; absence of mentors; difficulties finding employers; discrimination; and family obligations (Frank and Jovic, 2015). Adequate funding to allow well-paid apprenticeships is important, but as the Canadian and American experience suggests, more specific gender-responsive measures, including targets or quotas, are needed to enable women to access and complete such programmes in energy sector trades at par with men. France Daviault, the executive director of the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum emphasizes that Canada needs a collective and cohesive national strategy that has measurable outcomes and actual numerical targets, because what gets measured gets done (Kong, 2020): ‘Until we start collectively tracking the number of women who enter and remain in skilled trades careers, we will simply be talking about change’ (ibid.). In most OECD countries, securing a trade apprenticeship remains a somewhat informal and unregulated process. The fact that informal networking is still the norm for seeking apprenticeships and employment in most trades often translates into a barrier to women’s entry and advancement in these fields. Women in general, and particularly disabled women and women from ethnic minorities, are at a disadvantage. Research in North America has repeatedly identified inability to access informal and familial apprenticeship networks at par with men as a major impediment for women in gaining full-time employment in the trades (National Women’s Law Centre, 2014). The fact that many apprenticeships pay a nominal stipend and that women are consistently paid less than men is a major barrier for many female apprentices. In the UK, male apprentices were paid 21 per cent more per hour, leaving women potentially over £2,000 worse off per year (Young Women’s Trust, 2016). Women entering the trades are often older than men; they frequently join later in life, often in the aftermath of marital separation, divorce or widowhood, as a strategy for economic survival or independence. For example, in 2015 the National Apprenticeship Survey of Canada reported that slightly more than 10 per cent of women registered for an apprenticeship were 45 years and older – 5.7 per cent were 45–49 years and another 5.4 per cent were 50 years and older. Fewer than 3 per cent of all male entrants were over the age of 45. Unsurprisingly, women were much more likely to report ‘personal or family issues’ (20.5 per cent) or having ‘disliked the work’ (11.4 per cent) as the main reason for not completing an apprenticeship than were men (9.0 per cent and 7.3 per cent of men, respectively). Similarly, in a cohort of female apprentices in the UK who were all 41 years old, those who were divorced, single or had no children were more likely to complete their apprenticeships than women who were married and/or had children (Young Women’s Trust, 2016). Having the opportunity to learn a trade while supporting a family is crucial in breaking down barriers that many poorly represented groups, including women, face in accessing skilled employment in the trades. The need for policies aimed at enabling fair and equitable access to paid apprenticeships (and internships, which are also often poorly paid or unpaid) is urgent and critical for promoting equity in the energy sector (Baruah and Biskupski-Mujanovic, 2018).

174  Research handbook on energy and society Wage inequity In OECD countries, although average wages may be higher in the energy sector than in other sectors, women continue to earn less than men across occupational categories (see Antoni et al., 2015 for findings from Germany). The relatively low share of women in energy companies (17–24 per cent) in OECD countries might explain higher wages compared to other industries (ibid.). As with other sectors of employment, the causes of the gender wage gap in the energy sector are multifaceted, including women’s greater concentration in lower-paying non-technical and administrative jobs and junior positions, their comparatively weaker negotiating abilities, greater likelihood of taking time off from their careers for parenting and caregiving, and attitudes and values of employers. There are no simple or straightforward solutions for addressing the gender wage gap in the energy sector in its entirety. However, given the persistence of the gender wage gap in energy sector employment, the existing literature on the topic and our interviews highlighted making pay scale information publicly accessible as an important first step toward enabling all workers, especially women, to negotiate starting salaries, raises, bonuses and promotions. All publicly and privately held energy sector employers should be encouraged to adopt the practice of making pay scales and information about career trajectories more transparent. Even anonymized salary data grouped by qualifications, skills and years of experience would enable applicants to connect fair salaries to specific career stages. All entry-level workers should be able to understand the standard (male) career trajectories and possibilities for advancement specific to their sector. Making pay scales transparent (or less opaque) can make an even bigger difference in addressing gender wage equity during women’s careers if coupled with institutional mechanisms for reporting, correcting and seeking redress for wage differences. Retention We cannot demarcate neatly the barriers and opportunities women face in entering the energy sector from those influencing their decision to leave or remain in the industry. Existing research on sectors such as energy, transportation and mining, in which women are often underrepresented, confirm that men tend to apply for jobs even when they meet only some of the requirements, but women tend not to apply unless they meet all requirements (Asia Pacific Gateway Skills Table, 2017). Women are less likely to negotiate salaries and benefits (ibid.). Women must often outperform men in male-dominated industries to fit in and to progress. The preference for male recruits is very much, as our interviewees noted, a ‘chicken and egg’ problem – women lack the necessary training and skills for many jobs, but some jobs in the energy sector (e.g. petroleum engineers and pipeline installers) were not designed with women in mind and are not particularly attractive for female jobseekers. Thus, when it comes to selection, (male) managers are less likely to regard women as suitable candidates (ibid.). This chicken and egg problem is one which several gender equality organizations and initiatives are attempting to tackle in various ways around the globe. Women encounter both ‘sticky floors and glass ceilings’ in non-traditional sectors (Baruah, 2019b). In other words, careers may never get off the ground because of persistent and confining stereotypes of feminized roles. And findings from our interviews suggest that the absence of role models and gender-balanced initiatives make moving up the ranks more challenging for women.

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  175 Existing evidence from the literature as well as our interviews suggest that women choose to work in the energy sector for the same reasons as men: for decent incomes, good benefits, company reputation, availability of work and opportunities to build careers. Governments, industry associations, private corporations and gender equality advocacy groups have attempted to remedy some of the inequities and barriers women face, but these interventions have been unable to subvert the broader social structures creating inequities in the first place. Most corporate policies in OECD countries designed to address women’s underrepresentation in the energy sector are reactive responses that do not engage adequately with broader societal structures and institutions that produce and maintain inequality. Requiring female wind turbine technicians to work in pairs instead of alone on remote sites (adopted by many wind power companies) in order to prevent sexual harassment or assault is a classic example of a policy aimed at being gender-responsive but ending up reinforcing, not challenging, social hierarchies (Connell, 1990; Krook and MacKay, 2010). The immediate safety risks for women can be mitigated by such actions and practices (e.g. better lighting and working in pairs) but eliminating violence against women will require deeper and more proactive engagement with the social structures and power relations that sustain and reproduce it. There is very little evidence of any engagement in the energy sector with the structural causes of sexual harassment and violence against women. Well-intentioned policies intended to protect or empower women can also ironically end up placing limitations on women’s employment under certain circumstances. As an example, Women’s Employment in Urban Public Sector (WISE), a gender equality advocacy organization funded by the European Commission, recommends that female apprentices in transportation services not be placed in a department or team that is exclusively male, and that each team have at least two female apprentices (WISE, 2016). Although these recommendations were intended to facilitate women’s entry into the transportation sector in larger numbers, they may have the unintended effect of restricting additional hiring in departments or teams that already have two female apprentices. They may also lead to tokenistic female hiring in all-male departments without any additional changes to masculinist institutional cultures, a practice Harding (1995) describes as ‘adding women and stirring’. Policy responses may also reinforce affirmative gender essentialisms. In other words, women are often valorized in positive but stereotypical ways that also reinforce existing social hierarchies. For example, assumptions that women are gentler with machinery than men and therefore maintain machinery better (noted repeatedly in reports of women operating heavy machinery), or that women bring specific valuable qualities and skills to the job (e.g. empathy, patience) simply by being women end up reinforcing social hierarchies since most women acquire these skills because of historical and current social oppression, and not because they are biologically female. Instead of assuming all women are kinder, gentler or less corrupt than men, we need to argue for more women in the energy sector because they are underrepresented and because the sector is in urgent need of new workers. Because women have never been well represented in the energy sector, it is also possible that they will bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the table to benefit the industry. Understanding barriers and opportunities along the career cycle In trying to understand women’s career trajectories in the energy sector, we found it useful to draw upon Turnbull’s (2013) career-cycle assessment of women’s employment in transportation, suggesting that women face challenges at every stage of career in NTOs: attraction,

176  Research handbook on energy and society selection, retention, interruption, re-entry and advancement. Initial attraction to the energy industry may come from exposure at school, home and community, all of which are in turn influenced by the human resource policies of energy companies (e.g. corporate image, commitment to equal opportunities) and societal values (e.g. prevailing views on what constitutes appropriate work for women). Most departures (resignations and dismissals) in NTOs occur within the first five years of employment (see, Baruah, 2018, 2019b and the interviews conducted for this study). For example, a gender-based demographic analysis of women employed in science and technology, including the fossil-fuel-based and clean energy sectors, revealed that women in secure permanent positions (often obtained after 4–5 years of employment) were no more or less likely to leave than men (Byvelds, 2016). Even women in non-permanent positions at the senior level depart from their positions at rates equal to that of men. However, at the junior and middle levels, women depart from these positions in greater numbers than their male colleagues (ibid.). Therefore, women’s initial experiences – how they are welcomed and treated, and whether they are supported and promoted – are critical. That women are most likely to exit the workforce after two or more maternity leaves was reported frequently in our interviews. Success in retaining female employees, especially the aftermath of interruptions for childbearing or other caring work, is dependent on organizational support and that of co-workers. Attitudes of male co-workers was particularly important in retaining women after career interruptions. While studying the transportation sector, Turnbull (2013) distinguished between gender-specific barriers, such as stereotypes about men’s and women’s work, and gender-intensified barriers, such as the absence of working arrangements to accommodate childcare and other reproductive responsibilities. This also applies to employment in the energy sector. Gender-specific barriers tend to interact with gender-intensified barriers in influencing women’s decisions to leave. An example that was presented frequently during interviews was the double standard women faced when they returned to work after parental leave. While men who took parental leave were welcomed back to work and often valorized for their commitment to parenting, women were more likely to find their commitment to work being implicitly or explicitly questioned, to be taken less seriously by colleagues and superiors, and to feel that they were no longer competitive or competent in their positions. This was especially true for women who had taken multiple parental leaves. While there were significant differences between the public and the private sector in accommodating employees’ caregiving needs, the tendency for women not to remain in their positions after taking two or more maternity leaves was reported by both public and private sector employees. Since public sector organizations in industrialized countries tend generally to have good practices for retaining and promoting women, including flexible work hours, telecommuting or working part-time, and maternity leave, these should theoretically enable women to leave, re-join and hit the ground running, but there may be other gender-specific (not being taken seriously) and gender-intensified (low wages and cost of childcare) factors at play that influence the decision to leave. This may explain why women without caregiving responsibilities and those who enter work at a later stage in their lives, after completing parenting roles, are more likely to remain in the energy sector. Ensuring wage equity for women and men and employer support for the cost of childcare are policies that could make a big difference in enabling women to remain employed and advance within the energy sector.

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  177 Other related recommendations gleaned from our interviews include a re-definition of the ‘ideal employee’ that emphasizes performance in measurable terms over number of hours spent at work. This has also been suggested by gender advocacy organizations in STEM fields (UNESCO, 2015) and may benefit all employees since balancing work and family responsibilities also emerge as concerns for men in many countries (Gunderson, 2016). Inflexible work schedules and work-related travel Employment in the energy sector may require significant travel and time away from home. This can be challenging for men, too, but women with caregiving responsibilities, especially for young children, may be put at a particular disadvantage. The locations of energy projects tend to be determined in part by the geography of natural resources and are often in remote isolated areas, with no provisions for the families of workers. The scale of the energy operation also makes a difference in terms of location and remoteness. For example, household rooftop solar is principally located in densely settled urban areas, but utility-scale solar may be in more remote or rural locations. The location of some energy projects may help explain women’s underrepresentation in technical and field positions (this is explored more by Standal and Feenstra, Chapter 11, who discuss women’s involvement in solar energy projects in India). It is important to remember, though, that many women may already work in less-than-optimal environments for much less pay than they would make in energy industries. Given the option, some women would prefer work in the energy sector simply because of the potential to earn higher wages. Because of persistent (often unintended or unconscious) male-biased norms, even women who may be able and willing to work may not be given the option to choose between difficult or dangerous working conditions with low pay and similar conditions with higher pay (McKee, 2014; Carpenter et al., 2017). Instead, women are assumed not to want to work in such jobs and tracked into feminized occupations in administrative and support services within the sector. The fact that women’s careers can be adversely affected by ‘benevolent sexism’ has been documented by other researchers (see, for example, Dizik, 2016) and verified by our interviews. We found examples within other employment sectors of well-intentioned assumptions about women that ironically end up limiting their opportunities. For example, based on responses provided by 52 per cent of companies and 79 per cent of trade unions that participated in a study, Women’s Employment in Urban Public Sector (WISE), an advocacy organization funded by the European Commission, identified shift work as an obstacle for women’s employment and retention in the transportation sector (WISE, 2016). Interestingly, female employees who responded to the survey did not think of it as a major barrier, except when they had young children. We encountered this discrepancy between what are assumed to be general barriers to women’s employment and what women themselves thought of as barriers quite frequently in the literature. We found that assumptions made about women’s willingness or ability to work in certain occupations or working conditions were themselves barriers to women’s employment in some fields. Assumptions made on behalf of women have the effect of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies because they foreclose possibilities for women and reinforce male-biased norms and work culture within the sector (Baruah and Biskupski-Mujanovic, 2018).

178  Research handbook on energy and society Promotion, Advancement and Leadership The challenges of recruiting and retaining women (at least up to the ranks of middle management) are gradually being addressed in the energy sector, but there are still persistent barriers to addressing women’s underrepresentation in senior executive positions and on boards of directors of energy companies. In other words, the presence of women in specific roles and in the middle organizational ranks in the energy sector do not necessarily translate to representation of their ideas, needs and priorities at the institutional level (Phillips, 1998). Women’s underrepresentation in executive positions and on boards of directors is not unique to the energy sector. However, at less than 10 per cent female representation in senior leadership, the oil and gas sector fares even worse than the information technology sector, which is criticized much more widely than the energy sector for the poor inclusion of women (Catalyst, 2019). In terms of women’s representation in senior management, the renewable energy sector does better than other industries. A survey carried out by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 90 companies in 40 industrialized and developing countries in 2016 revealed that women held 32 per cent of senior management roles in the renewable energy sector. This is much higher than the estimated 25 per cent of senior-level management positions held by women in Fortune 500 companies in 2015. Indeed, as a new and fast-growing sector, renewables could give women opportunities to gain commensurate representation in higher management. There is significant evidence that gender diversity in leadership is good for business. In its study of almost 22,000 firms across the globe, the Peterson Institute for International Economics discovered that a company with 30 per cent women leaders can add up to 6 percentage points to its net margin, compared to other companies in the same industry. Across the economy, the percentage of women corporate officers is positively linked to better financial performance (Noland et al., 2016). Another study found that companies with more women board members, on average, outperform those with fewer women by 53 per cent on return on investment, 42 per cent on return on sales, and 66 per cent on return on invested capital (Catalyst, 2008). Similar findings have emerged for women in executive positions – companies with higher percentages of women decision makers financially outperform their industry peers. Across all sectors of the economy, the percentage of women corporate officers is positively linked to better financial performance. A 30 per cent critical mass of women as executive officers and board members has the most positive impact on company performance (Catalyst, 2011). Gender balance in male-dominated professions contributes to the improvement in working conditions for both men and women, with positive effects on wellbeing, work culture and productivity (WISE, 2016). There is consensus in the literature that although intrinsic moral reasons of equity and fairness as well as legal obligations of gender equality should be sufficient to motivate employers to improve the representation of women, it is the business case – higher profits if women are in senior positions and on boards – that most often motivates private corporations to support gender equality (Baruah, 2018; Clancy and Feenstra, 2019). Documenting and publicizing the economic benefits of diversifying boards and senior leadership is a useful strategy for convincing both the fossil-fuel-based sector, where women are severely underrepresented, and clean energy companies with higher levels of female representation than other industries, including the oil and gas sector, to remain committed to gender equality goals in leadership and management.

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  179 Despite slow progress on women’s representation on boards and in leadership positions, most companies remain more willing to adopt board diversity policies than to adopt targets for the proportion of women serving as directors or executive officers. Countries that have instituted mandatory quotas have achieved a higher level of representation of women in the boardroom, and done so more rapidly, than countries that have opted instead to encourage gender diversity via a ‘comply or explain’ approach, which requires adopting mechanisms that consider the representation of women or explain the reason for not doing so. In France, for example, women held 37.6 per cent of the board seats at the companies surveyed in 2016 by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), representing substantial progress towards its mandatory 40 per cent quota required to be met by 2017. In Germany, which has implemented a quota of 30 per cent to be achieved by 2017, women held 26.7 per cent of the board seats in 2016, and in Norway, which requires that women make up 40 per cent of the board, 39.3 per cent of the board seats were held by women (MacDougall et al., 2017). In OECD countries which adopt a ‘comply and explain’ approach, the proportion of women represented on boards is substantially lower than in countries that have adopted quotas or targets. For example, in the UK, 25.5 per cent of board seats of companies were held by women in 2016 (MacDougall et al., 2017). In Australia, there was an average of only 9 per cent women directors on the boards of companies in 2016. In Canada, women currently hold 14.5 per cent of all board seats among companies disclosing the number of women directors on their boards, although among the 60 largest companies, 26 per cent of the board seats are held by women (ibid.). The evidence that targets or quotas make a difference is available. McKinsey’s three-year review of 118 companies and 30,000 employees found that companies with gender targets made the most progress in women’s representation, while those without targets lost ground (McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, 2015). Our interviews and previous research (Clancy and Feenstra, 2019) have confirmed that the idea of adopting gender quotas may be unappealing for many companies for reasons including the misperception that an individual hired under a quota scheme is hired not for their qualifications but because they represent a particular category. Interviewees made the alternative recommendation that for energy companies to deal with the aversion to quotas they need to implement targets that are specific, challenging, aligned with the company’s strategy for gender diversity, and elevated to the same levels as business targets for budgets and performance. Key informants specified that targets should not be focused solely on the numbers of women in the workplace. They may also include qualitative measures or ‘new ways of working together’ – such as more respectful interactions, inclusive meeting practices or flexibility in where and when some of the work gets done. Targets can also assess indicators that are positive for everyone – less absenteeism, reduced turnover, greater satisfaction measures on employee surveys. Years of focused study on gender diversity across many industries has yielded another overwhelmingly consistent conclusion: the commitment of the most senior leader (such as the CEO or President) is the critical ingredient for diversifying organizations. For example, a Conference Board of Canada research study highlighted the difference between ‘passive’ and ‘proactive’ CEO support for gender diversity. And only ‘proactive’ support was found to be sufficient (Orser, 2001). The literature provides specific examples of the difference proactive senior leadership on gender equality can make versus passive or abstract support. For example, the CEO’s persistent commitment to pay equity enabled Reykjavik Energy in Iceland to reduce its gender pay gap from 8.4 per cent in 2008 to 0.3 per cent by the end of

180  Research handbook on energy and society 2017 (Clancy and Feenstra, 2019). At the CEO’s insistence, Reykjavik Energy procured specially developed software to show in real time the effects of each pay decision on the gender pay gap (USAID, 2018). Public sector organizations in several industrialized countries have already started to implement the practice of selecting ‘gender champions’ from the ranks of senior administration. Private sector companies may be well advised to adopt this practice. Because energy companies often do not have enough women within their organizations at high enough ranks to step into senior executive positions, our interviewees emphasized it may be necessary to recruit senior professional women from outside the sector to fill executive positions. Although there is a better demonstration effect when women who had worked their way up within the energy sector are selected for leadership positions in energy companies, it may be necessary to bring in recruits from outside until an adequate senior female talent pipeline is established within the sector. This finding resonates well with a point we made much earlier in this chapter: efforts made to recruit and retain larger numbers of women in the energy sector will also have positive effects on promotion, advancement and leadership. In the interim, bringing in recruits from government or from private sector companies in related fields to fill senior management roles could bring in new ideas and leadership styles that benefit the energy sector.

CONCLUSION Despite promising examples of government, corporate and non-profit programmes and practices to optimize women’s employment in the energy sector, gender disparities and hierarchies persist. Women experience both ‘sticky floors and glass ceilings’ in the energy sector, meaning that their careers may never get off the ground because of persistent and confining stereotypes of feminized roles, and moving up the ranks is also more challenging for women due to the absence of role models and gender-balanced initiatives. There are both proximate determinants (e.g. childcare challenges and need for flexible work schedules) and structural factors (e.g. the gendered division of labour within families and communities, societal valorization of paid work over unpaid caregiving) that interact with one another and impede women’s entry, retention and advancement in the energy sector. Based on a literature review of women’s employment in the energy sector and other NTOs in OECD countries as well as interviews conducted with energy professionals across Canada, we have attempted to identify the opportunities and constraints women face in the energy sector at various stages in the career cycle, and to provide actionable policy recommendations that can improve women’s ability to participate in the sector on a more level playing field with men. Global skill shortages and need for specific training in the context of a worldwide transition to low-carbon economies represent a timely opportunity to diversify the energy workforce and increase women’s participation. This research project endorses the value of complementing quantitative data, statistics and literature on women’s employment in the energy sector with qualitative data derived via methods such as interviews and focus groups. Data collected through interviews with key informants in this project revealed a range of previously undocumented challenges and opportunities faced by women at different stages of career in the energy sector. In-depth interviews were a suitable method for collecting data to inform this research because although interviews were conducted with a diverse group of key informants, quantification of the data

Closing the gender gaps in energy sector recruitment, retention and advancement  181 was not a priority. We were primarily interested in understanding specific opportunities and constraints for recruiting, retaining and promoting women in the energy sector in Canada and other industrialized countries in as much detail, nuance and complexity as possible. Complementing a review and synthesis of scholarly and practitioner literature and statistics from OECD countries with interview data from Canadian energy practitioners and policymakers enabled us to optimally achieve this objective.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Natural Resources Canada. A secondment with the International Energy Agency (IEA), held during a sabbatical from Western University, enabled the writing of this chapter.

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14. Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector: personal car ownership and use Karen Lucas, Noel Cass and Muhammed Adeel

CLIMATE CHANGE IMPERATIVES In common with other chapter authors in this Handbook, our focus on energy consumption is prompted by escalating concerns about climate change and the UK Government’s legal obligation to achieve ‘Net Zero’ emissions by 2050 (UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), 2019). Within this policy aim, a focus on transport is important because the transport sector consumes the most (roughly 40 per cent of all sectors in 2018: indeed, the transport sector is a focus for emissions reductions efforts globally – see Tyfield, Chapter 14, for the case of China). It is also growing, compared to gradual reductions in most other sectors. Collectively, transport was responsible for 27 per cent of the total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in 2016 (see Figure 14.1). Within the domestic transport sector, car use is responsible for nearly three quarters of total mileage in personal mobility, accounting for 55 per cent of all transport emissions (Climate Change Commission, 2018). This is a disproportionate share, both absolutely and in terms of energy/emissions per mile/kilometre travelled. Nearly 808 billion passenger kilometres were travelled in Great Britain in 2017, approximately 83 per cent of which were by car, van or taxi. These produce nearly 76 per cent of petroleum demand and 55 per cent of direct transport emissions, compared to 5 per cent of direct emissions produced by buses, coaches and rail combined. Cars were also involved in 70 per cent of all reported collisions and car users made up 44 per cent of all road deaths on public roads in Great Britain in 2017 (Department for Transport (DfT), 2020). The car rivals (and even exceeds, in the case of sports utility vehicles (SUVs)) air travel in its per capita energy intensity. The UK’s car ownership rates are at an historic high, mostly driven by the rising proportion of multiple car ownership households, as the proportion of single car households is stable at 44 per cent since the 1970s. Domestically, on average, each car in the UK produces 128g of CO2 per kilometre in 2019, and real-world emissions can be nearly 40 per cent higher than laboratory measurements (Fontaras et al., 2017). Average UK emission levels are as much as 40 per cent higher than the European Union annual target (via Regulation (EU) No. 2019/631) of 95g per kilometre. UK car sales increasingly follow US trends of ever-larger engines and heavier cars; more energy-intensive in both their construction and use, as with so many other upwardly ratcheting expectations of comfort and convenience (Shove, 2004). SUVs represented 21 per cent of new car sales in 2018 (Anable et al., 2019: 10), an increase of 12 per cent 2018–19 (Car Magazine, 2019). This is a global trend, with SUVs having a third of the market share and becoming the second largest contributor to the increase in global carbon emissions during 2010 to 2018 (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2018). For those depending on electric vehicles to decar184

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  185

Note: Other transport = domestic aviation, shipping, mopeds and motorcycles, etc. During year 2016, UK’s total emissions from domestic aviation were 1.5 MtCO2e while international aviation emissions stood at 34 MtCO2e. Source: Climate Change Commission (CCC) (2018) based on analysis of BEIS data, 2016

Figure 14.1

UK’s transport emissions as compared with other sectors (MtCO2e for year 2016)

bonize the transport fleet, it is a sobering thought that the ratio of new SUVs to battery electric vehicles was recently 37:1 (Anable et al., 2019: 10). Public transport use is far less energy intensive overall (see Figure 14.2). For these compelling reasons, in this chapter, we focused on car ownership and use to analyse the social divisions in personal travel consumption, as a proxy for discussion of the equity or fairness of the distribution of energy/emissions across different social groups. Clearly, for a fuller picture the equity of all forms of personal travel should also be considered when assessing the fairness of the current allocation of travel resources across social divisions, as identified elsewhere (e.g. Buchs and Schnepf, 2013; Brand et al., 2019; Cairns, 2019). However, this requires a complex data synthesis process which is outwith the capacities of this current research project.

186  Research handbook of energy and society

Source:

Redrawn from IEA (2018).

Figure 14.2

Energy intensity of different transport modes in OECD countries

UNDERSTANDING TRANSPORT INEQUALITIES AND FAIRNESS Past research has identified and measured mobility and accessibility disparities in various contexts, e.g. urban and rural areas, between different locations, and between different social groups, for example women and men, rich and poor households (e.g. OECD/ITF, 2017; Lucas et al., 2019). These studies do not necessarily determine whether the revealed uneven distributions are fair or unfair; for example, some people may need to travel more than others based on their personal circumstances, home locations and local activity destinations. Nor do these studies identify when personal travel is blocked or suppressed due to a lack of mobility resources (e.g. an available vehicle, public transport service, money or time). As such, Lucas et al. (2019: 5–6) argue that a conceptual move has to be made from measuring disparities to understanding the social inequities that are embedded in these uneven distributions and then deciding what is a morally fair allocation of resources. The authors highlight the importance of considering not only people’s revealed travel behaviours, but also their activity outcomes linked to employment, education, leisure, social pursuits and civic life and how this affects their life chances and personal wellbeing. From this ‘livelihoods’ perspective, the need to travel is highly person- and context-specific, and so what might be an adequate allocation of resources for one person or situation may be completely inadequate in another context. Consequently, providing everyone with the same allocation of travel resources or mobility opportunities will not be the most desirable approach for future transport policies to achieve fair and inclusive mobility for all, especially considering the urgent need to reduce overall levels of energy consumption to prevent irreversible

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  187 climate chaos. As such, transport justice must go beyond simple measurements of travel distributions to consider the external consequences of behaviours, not only in terms of their burdens on individuals but also on the whole of society and the global environment. Historically, income levels have been the best predictor of car ownership across the world (Tanner, 1978). However, this relationship has weakened considerably as car ownership has spread rapidly among lower income households. Nevertheless, the income gap remains, more significantly in urban areas. The NTS data show that 47 per cent of urban households in the poorest income quintile are without cars, compared to only 13 per cent of high-income urban residents, suggesting that urban environments ease the ‘compulsion’ to own a car, whereas only 3 per cent of the rural rich have no car. The numbers of cars in households show similar relationships; growing with income, but also showing the same disparity between urban and rural environments. Although car ownership is associated with income, it is higher across all income levels in rural areas, given the low density of activity destinations and scarcity of public transport options; Christie and Fone (2003) found household car ownership in rural Wales was not directly associated with income or social deprivation, suggesting that it is more of a general necessity in this regional context. Analysis of NTS data 2015–17 shows that, on average, each English resident annually travels nearly 6,500 miles per capita in 780 trips (excluding short walks). Car-based travel accounts for nearly 76 per cent of trips and 79 per cent of travel miles per capita. Disparities in the use of cars can be roughly mapped onto disparities in the energy consumption of individuals from different social groups. As Figure 14.3 illustrates, there is a fairly linear relationship between income and car miles travelled, at the quintile level, showing gross disparities compared to an average per capita car mileage of nearly 5,000 miles in 2015–17. When gender and age distributions are considered, further disparities emerge. The young adult and elderly population travel fewer miles by car compared to those in ‘economically active’ years. Less car travel among younger adults has many causes, including long-term socio-economic conditions such as affordability, delayed attainment of driving license, living in areas with better public transport, and social attitudes (Chatterjee et al., 2018). Household structure is also likely to account for age-related disparities. Gender-based differences in car travel appear in adulthood (25–34) and persist through into retirement (there are also gender disparities in access to energy, more broadly; see Tomei and To, Chapter 10). Discretionary leisure and social travel make up the major portion of total car travel per capita, at nearly 42 per cent of all car miles, followed by ‘other’ purpose travel, for example shopping and escort trips, at nearly 32 per cent. As such, it cannot be assumed that only mandatory (commuter and business) travel is of value as a reduction target for the decarbonization agenda, the reduction in car use for discretionary (social trips) could also be an important focus. However, care is needed to protect people’s mental wellbeing and to avoid social isolation, as the recent experience of the COVID 19 lockdown has so clearly demonstrated. In summary, differences in vehicle ownership or access, or miles travelled, or the energy consumed whilst travelling based on social divisions are inequalities of outcome. Their injustice is that they are likely to be based on inequitable distributions of opportunity, wealth or freedoms. The idea that mobility opportunities are unfairly distributed according to different social divisions is called ‘motility’ (the potential to be mobile) by Kauffman et al. (2004, 2018), and is an essential component of the mobility justice debate. Much of the assessment of motility is based on the Capabilities Approach (Sen, 1994), as modified by Nussbaum (2007), which focuses on the quality of life that individuals are actually able to achieve given various

188  Research handbook of energy and society

Source:

NTS 2015–17 – England only (DfT, 2019).

Figure 14.3

Per capita car miles by travel purpose and income quintiles

physical and cognitive capabilities and life-chances: capabilities are the freedoms to choose one’s goals in life (see Ricalde et al., Chapter 12 for more discussion of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach). If this ability to choose is undermined, intentionally or not, Sen considers this morally unjust, requiring policy interventions to rectify. This leads us to the issue of enforced mobility and to question whether mobility in itself is actually a social good.

ENFORCED MOBILITY AS A JUSTICE ISSUE Most research studies and analytical approaches to mobility justice consider mobility and the accessibility it brings as in itself a fundamental social good. Research on transport-related social exclusion has demonstrated that many people with fewer mobility resources also have highly restricted access to employment, education, healthcare and other activities compared to the general population, and thereby reduced life chances and social wellbeing (e.g. Social Exclusion Unit, 2003; Lucas, 2012). As we have identified, measured disparities in total mobility are unevenly distributed by income, but the poor still travel considerable distances by car, as shown in Figure 14.3. This can be particularly important in the context of determining mobility justice, if their travel (and especially car ownership), is imposed or enforced, for example, due to residential location, labour precarity, lack of public transport alternatives and/ or caring responsibilities (Mattioli et al., 2019). Car use varies much more within settlement types, than between them. In rural town and fringe settlements, even people in zero-car households travel on average nearly 1,700 miles per year by car, growing to nearly 6,600 miles for one-car households. Two or more car

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  189 households travel even more, at nearly 9,000 miles per capita. This level of car mobility is only exceeded by those in two-car-owning households in rural villages and hamlets, who travel nearly 10,000 car miles per person per year (DfT, 2019 (NTS, 2015–17)). These differences between the numbers of cars per household are also evident across settlement sizes, suggesting that ability to pay for a car and household structure are other predictors of miles travelled along with home location and settlement size. Spatial analyses suggest that rural car ownership is more likely enforced, because rich and poor do not appear to be able to do without cars, but this can also be the case in peripheral parts of denser urban settlements. Arguably, enforced car ownership in low-income groups, located in suburbs or low-density areas, is an unwilled response to suppressed mobility and accessibility levels, or transportation disadvantage (Currie et al., 2010). This issue of compulsion suggests that alternative mobility resources (particularly public transport) are simply not available and so car ownership becomes a necessity even for the poorest households (Mattioli, 2014). In this way, enforced car ownership and use in poorer households can be seen as an unfair distribution of freedoms. Car dependency is unfair at the personal level insomuch as the costs (sunk, and ongoing) of car ownership and use can be a serious financial burden, in the context of constrained household income (Simcock and Mullen, 2016; Chatterton et al., 2018). There is clear evidence that certain households spend a much larger share of their housing budgets on transport costs to meet their everyday travel needs (Mattioli et al., 2019). Lack of affordable transport resources can lead to transport poverty and hinder effective participation in daily life (Delbosc and Currie, 2011). The organization of transport infrastructures and the built environment combined with the complexity of people’s everyday lives makes access to a car a necessity (Lucas, 2009). The car dependency concept can be applied to people (Anable, 2005; Mattioli, 2014), and/or to specific activities (e.g. shopping: Mattioli and Anable, 2017), and/or to geographical locations (Mattioli and Colleoni, 2016; Mattioli et al., 2019). At the spatial level, everyday activities have been spread further apart through land-use planning, on the assumption that transport is available and therefore car-based distances are accessible, in a system of automobility (Urry, 2002). However, according to Mattioli and Anable (2017: 22), although car-dependent shopping accounts for approximately 70 per cent of all car driver distances and 65 per cent of CO2 emissions for food shopping travel, these trips are undertaken by only 22 per cent of the population. Transport-related social exclusion arises from the automobility assumptions of goods and service providers. It emerges from the ‘interaction of (a) obligations to proximity, (b) personal resources (for instance, of time and money) and (c) physical infrastructure and provision’ (Cass et al., 2003: 28). For certain vulnerable social groups, such as children, young, elderly, women and disabled and those in remoter or peripheral areas, lack of access to a car can be a significant disadvantage, which they may find hard to cover with their current resources (Lucas, 2009; Mattioli and Colleoni, 2016). However, lack of car access does not always create limited accessibility or vulnerability to social exclusion, and neither does access to a personal car guarantee accessibility and inclusion. Poor car owners may still have to cut down discretionary, social or even necessary travel to reduce transport expenditure (Lucas et al., 2016), or else go into debt, and remain vulnerable to, for example, fuel price increases (Berry et al., 2016; Mattioli et al., 2019). In high-income groups, where car use is not as constrained by cost, ‘car dependency’ is perhaps better described as a habit of convenience: preferences for other modes for short

190  Research handbook of energy and society journeys have been found to be over-ridden by the availability of a car (Douglas et al., 2011). But this availability may affect all drivers’ travel habits and attitude segmentation studies have further identified that car ‘dependency’ can stretch from reluctance to near-addiction (Anable, 2005). In this context, justice considerations based on a presumption that mobility provides access to opportunities (Cass, Shove and Urry, 2005; Cass and Manderscheid, 2018) should usefully be combined with an assessment not only of the distribution of such benefits but also the knock-on disbenefits (e.g. in terms of noise, air pollution and road traffic injuries and deaths) for different groups, to identify the overall unfairness of outcome.

OVERCONSUMPTION AS A JUSTICE ISSUE Although some studies have looked at mobility inequalities through the lens of enforced mobility (e.g. Mattioli et al., 2019), the overconsumption of personal travel has rarely been scrutinized. This is particularly a pertinent issue in the context of exploring energy justice. Our analysis of the NTS1 has identified that high-end car users are responsible for a highly disproportionate amount of car mileage, and therefore travel-related energy consumption. Although this travel-related consumption does not directly align with household/personal income levels, more affluent, professional and middle-aged individuals are more likely to be identified amongst high-end consumers (Anable, 2005; and see Figure 14.3). Meanwhile, low-end energy consumers, who are often non-car owners, are not only most likely to be experiencing transport poverty and related social isolation, but bear the greatest burden of traffic pollution, pedestrian collisions and other negative externalities of transport systems worldwide (Lucas, 2012). Furthermore, in respect of energy justice, most current transport policies still support the hypermobility that drives unequal patterns of consumption across social divisions, by favouring transport infrastructure development that preferences speed and distance over safety, access and energy reduction. Equally, land use and housing policies in the UK do not actively seek to reduce car dependence or hypermobility through the planning system. We therefore suggest that to reduce domestic transport energy consumption in the interests of the environment and greater social equity, high-end travel consumption urgently needs to be brought under scrutiny and control. This requires a shift towards the reduction of ‘high-end’ energy intensive or ‘hyper-mobility’ (Urry, 2006) and ‘excessive’ travel consumption. One of the main challenges in terms of developing a fair approach to travel-energy reduction is to determine exactly who is affected and whether these high-end users can bear the burden of increased costs and/or have the opportunity to adopt alternative travel practices in the places where they live and undertake their everyday activities. Figure 14.4 illustrates the distribution of car mileage across NTS diary respondents by plotting the percent of total miles (y-axis) against the percentage of the sample who travelled those miles (x-axis). It confirms that the 50 per cent least mobile account for only 8 per cent of the total car mileage, whilst 50 per cent of car mileage is done by 15 per cent of the sample, and the 8 per cent most mobile individuals account for 30 per cent of the total mileage. This is similar to the ‘wineglass’ of global emissions responsibility (Gore, 2015) and the concentration of 20 per cent of flights in 1 per cent of the population (Cairns, 2019). Brand and Preston (2010) produced similar results in their more complex analysis of overall personal travel, which identified that only 20 per cent of most mobile travellers produce 60 per cent of all emissions based on their travel distances.

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  191

Figure 14.4

Inequality in car mobility in England: association between the share of total population and total car mileage

If this high-end car mileage were to be targeted as the most effective and equitable way to reduce personal travel-related energy use, for example by imposing a ‘rationing’ of mileage at a feasible cut-off point, then we first need to determine: (a) what the most effective cut-off point should be; and (b) which households would be most affected by this. Table 14.1 illustrates a rough mathematical approach to identify the proportion of ‘excessive’ car users affected for different ‘cut-off’ values based on the NTS 2015–17 travel diaries (DfT, 2019). The average car mileage among travel diary respondents was 5,178 miles per year. Doubling this to give a cut-off of 10,000 miles reveals ‘excessive’ car use by the 16 per cent most car-mobile diary respondents, who travelled a mean of nearly 17,300 miles per person. A cut-off of 15,000 miles produces an ‘excessively mobile’ 8 per cent of car travellers with a mean of nearly 22,600 miles per person. The top 4 per cent high mileage car travellers of all diary respondents were travelling at least 20,000 miles yearly by car with an average of nearly 27,700 miles per person per year. Applying a 5 per cent definition of ‘excess’ reveals high car mileage individuals could be travelling at least five times more than the average per capita mileage. Next, to understand who the high-end consumers are, we created simple box plots to show the spread of average per capita car mobility among the residents of England by purpose of travel and across income deciles, using the NTS dataset for years 2015 to 2017. It identifies the most highly mobile individuals, which appear as ‘outliers’ in NTS travel diaries (see Figure 14.5).

192  Research handbook of energy and society Table 14.1 Cut-off value

‘Excessive’ car travel defined by cut-off points and the effects of imposing mileage rationing ‘Excess’ population

Yearly car miles per capita

n

%n

Current

20,000

1,753

4

27,716

Expected after rationing 4865

15,000

3,399

8

22,612

4581

10,000

6,893

16

17,288

4018

All respondents

43,337

100

5,178

–

Source:

National Travel Survey, 2015–17 – England only (DfT, 2019).

Firstly, it is clear from both parts of the figure that there are outliers or excess travellers for every travel purpose as well as in every income group, as represented by the dots and whiskers of the plots. Secondly, the size of the ‘excessive’ travel varies significantly by travel purpose. For example, the top 5 per cent of travellers (above the horizontal bar) in commuting travel at least 10,000 miles, whereas for daytrips and social purposes of, for example, visiting friends, the top 5 per cent of travel is above about 5,000 miles per year. Holidays, business travel and commuting appear to account for much of this ‘excess’ (in terms of overall and highest) travel.

HOW TO REDUCE THE TRANSPORT-RELATED ENERGY CONSUMPTION OF HOUSEHOLDS FAIRLY? So far in this chapter we have demonstrated disparities in car ownership and use based on social divisions and offered reasons when and why these might be considered unfair. Next, we discuss the likely equity implications of reducing car-related travel and energy consumption in various ways and what the fairest approaches might be, especially focusing on the issue of overconsumption. This requires understanding the different ways in which the energy-related impacts of overall mobility and car use might be tackled, and how they might impact on different social groups and geographies. While the benefits of personal car use continue to be recognized in national and local policies, its spiralling knock-on societal and environmental costs are less well addressed. Car users take more per capita space and investment budgets than other road uses, while their externalities are passed on to the rest of society (Schwanen and Lucas, 2011). Replacing car mobility with active travel (walking and cycling), and flexible, integrated and demand-responsive services, alongside improved conventional public transport options would, therefore, seem to be an obvious and sensible choice in terms of reducing energy demand in the domestic transport sector (Givoni and Banister, 2010). This could meet other quality of life outcomes and promote sustainable development. For example, replacing some car trips with active travel can increase physical activity rates (Adams, 2010), which have positive health benefits (Mueller et. al., 2015). Other benefits of reducing car use are known to include higher rates of social interaction, community participation and trust (Ornetzeder et al., 2008; Nieuwenhuijsen and Khreis, 2016), personal and public financial savings (Litman, 2015), reduced congestion and air pollution, increased safety for active modes, and freeing up travel (Gwilliam, 2008). Improved land use efficiencies from road and parking reduction measures also lead to more equitable economic development and greater environmental sustainability (Heinonen et al.,

Distribution of per capita car miles by purpose of travel (left) and household income (right)

NTS 2015–17 – England only (DfT, 2019).

Figure 14.5

Source:

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  193

194  Research handbook of energy and society 2013). However, not all trips can be replaced by these active modes due to their distances and other factors such as low levels of local accessibility to activities. To identify the most effective ways to reduce overconsumption in people’s personal travel, it is worth considering the different approaches to transport planning or sustainable transport policy, summarized as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Reducing the need to travel – substitution; Transport policy measures – modal shift; Land-use policy measures – distance reduction; Technological innovation – efficiency increases; Personal taxation – reduced consumption; Carbon allowances – monitored consumption.

1. Substitution (e.g. by virtual travel/telework and conferencing, online shopping etc.) appears to have only marginal effects in terms of reducing people’s overall travel and is also unevenly socially distributed. While some aspects such as online shopping appear available to almost all social groups, tele-working and similar tech-dependent forms of substitution are more available to upper income groups, in particular the managerial class (Cass, 2016: 14–15). Its impacts on reduced transport energy consumption are also unclear (Cass et al., 2017), as light van traffic (mostly relating to home delivery) has grown by 30 per cent since 2001–17 whilst car traffic grew by only 1 per cent over the same period and there might also be rebound effects in terms of increased domestic energy demand. Nevertheless, many people have become used to working at home with the recent pandemic and so policies to encourage this as an embedded practice could be particularly effective in reducing travel to work car trips. 2. Modal shift from cars to less energy-intensive modes such as public transport, bicycles and walking is proving incredibly difficult, and in many cases, it seems that expecting car users to shift to public transport is affected inter alia by its inadequacy and expense (Batty et al., 2015). The former problem affects all socio-demographic groups equally, but is diversely spatially distributed across inner city, urban peripheries, smaller market towns, and rural areas. This means that not everyone has an equal opportunity to change their current travel behaviours to less energy-intensive modes. However, since the pandemic there is far greater public investment in walking and cycling infrastructures and to support public transport services, which may be a game changer in terms of making these alternatives more attractive for local trips. Nevertheless, they are unlikely to provide an effective substitute for the high-end consumers because of their demand for long-distance trips. 3. Travel distance reduction is probably the fairest and most efficient way to reduce domestic travel energy consumption because it not only reduces people’s need to travel but encourages the greater uptake of walking and cycling, which are cheap. Improving the density of available activities near the home is needed in conjunction with land-use measures to encourage a closer proximity of land uses. However, densification is largely a longer-term and urban-focused solution and does not work outside of cities where many high-end users reside. It is also slow and can lead to gentrification and the displacement of lower-income households to the periphery where they have less access to public transport. Over the longer term, however, land-use and housing policies will need to radically change to reduce people’s need to travel, and there are some indications that reducing time poverty

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  195 and encouraging people’s perceived wellbeing through more leisure time might be an effective way to encourage travel reduction. 4. Technological innovations in terms of achieving fuel efficiencies have been largely undermined by increasing SUV usage. The average car in the EU in 2019 weighs nearly 1,392kg; 10 per cent heavier than 15 years ago and vehicles are also physically much larger taking up more road and parking space. This suggests that reducing vehicle sizes could be a positive way to reduce vehicle energy use. Currently, electrification of the UK’s car fleet is the preferred policy option of central government, which will only be positive in terms of energy reduction if the upstream sources for electricity generation are clean and non-energy intensive. 5. Taxation measures – Barrett et al. (2019) have suggested that an addition to personal income tax based on the level of personal energy consumption is possibly the fairest way to directly target these high-energy consumers because they are likely to be employed professionals with high taxable incomes. The average per capita mileage and thus the threshold value for the top 5 per cent of travellers both increase with income levels, and income tax is perhaps a more progressive way to distribute the cost of providing alternative solutions. A study by Hiselius and Rosqvist (2018) based on the Swedish NTS found that nearly 90 per cent of car mileage was produced by a quarter of the population and explored the potential to target these identified ‘high car users’ through policies for modal shift. However, they found that taxing at these higher-income levels would target only the people who could most easily bear the burden and so would leave their energy consumption behaviours relatively unaffected. 6. Carbon allowances either at the personal or household level have been offered as a possible control measure for people’s overall energy consumption, but it is recognized that these would be extremely difficult to allocate fairly and could lead to further inequalities in their distribution and uptake. Any allowance would also need to go beyond the transport sector to all other areas of domestic energy consumption in order to avoid substitution effects with other sectors, as already discussed.

CONCLUSION: EXCESSIVE CAR MOBILITY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ENERGY CONSUMPTION In this chapter, we have demonstrated disparities in car ownership and use across different social divisions. Among these, the most obvious is the linear relationship between income and travel, with gender, age, household structure and spatial factors such as rurality and settlement type also accounting for differences. Although it is hard to disentangle the reasons behind these differences in travel behaviour, which may vary considerably from person to person and place to place, access to transport resources, especially but not limited to cars, is distributed inequitably. At the lower end of income distributions, car dependence is often enforced whereas at the highest end, it may be compulsive and excessive. At the highest end of car travel distribution (and further considering air travel, which is also inequitably distributed), the hyper-mobile consume a hugely disproportionate number of miles with their concomitant energy and emissions impacts. As traditional transport poverty and environmental justice analyses show, the disbenefits of these inequitable distributions of high energy-consuming

196  Research handbook of energy and society mobility, such as pollution, are also unfairly distributed onto vulnerable social groups and in peripheral areas. However, these quantitative analyses of nationally aggregated data of people’s car use do not tell the whole story and many nuances are lost. The large amount of car travel, and therefore energy consumption, in poorer households cannot be named as an inequity unless we know whether it is enforced or not. More importantly, what is missing is an account of the motivations, meanings and contexts of people’s travel. The question of whether differences in car ownership and use (and by proxy transport-related energy consumption) across and between different social divisions and groups are unfair or unjust requires going beyond quantitative analysis of disparities across social divisions (however compelling these may seem to infer inequalities), to more qualitative explorations of questions about social justice (Martens and Lucas, 2018). Further qualitative research about the experiences, meanings and drivers of consumption will certainly increase our understanding and help us to fairly move towards a sustainable, but still mobile society. Logic suggests that car travel, along with air travel, should be targeted as the most energy-intensive and emissions-producing modes of travel. Electrifying cars simply puts them beyond the reach of most households. Studies suggest that lifestyle change could have a comparable and quicker impact on transport emissions than electrification without lifestyle changes (Anable et al., 2012; Brand et al., 2019). Banning the largest and most energy-inefficient cars might be another way to go (although this would also target smaller and older cars that are more likely to be owned by lower-income households and so could be inequitable). Conventional behaviour change approaches to both modal choice/shift and other household energy consumption behaviours have shown limited success, but currently ignore the habitual, compelled, sometimes compulsive and deeply socially embedded practices both of driving and of the activities it gives people geographical access to. Simplistic as they may seem, the most equitable policy options would appear to be to improve access to the less impactful alternatives across social and geographical divisions, by investing in public transport, to address transport and other household energy consumption levels through direct taxation on income, and to impose blanket measures which do not attempt to operate through neo-liberal policy obsessions with choice. Examples of these include parking and congestion charges, strict mileage rationing, or bans on SUVs. What also emerges is the need to focus on the consequences and experiences of ‘excessive’ car use and energy consumption that might be more equitably targeted. However, people will only reduce their demand for travel when they are able to easily facilitate their daily activities locally and this demands a far more fundamental rethink about how we organize land uses and economies to better enable this to happen.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research is being undertaken as part of the ongoing programme of work on Transport and Mobility being undertaken at the Centre for Research of Energy Demands Systems, which is funded by UK Research and Innovation, to look at different ways to reduce energy demand. This project is looking at ways to address high consumption in domestic energy use in the home and personal travel. In writing this chapter, we would like to thank our project colle-

Social divisions in energy justice in the transport sector  197 gaues who have helped us to shape our thinking and have offered us their critical advice on various drafts, namely Jillian Anable, Milena Buchs, Malcolm Morgan and Caroline Mullen.

NOTE 1.

This chapter uses data from the UK’s annual National Travel Survey (NTS) for 2015 to 2017 (DfT, 2019). The data covers a total of 43,337 travel diary respondents, of whom 28,551 respondents reported making at least one trip by car. Since 2013, the survey covers residents of England only, and their travel within Great Britain is measured through one-week-long travel diaries. Each survey year dataset is a statistical representative of all residents of England and the survey respondents are selected through multistage stratified random sampling methodology. Appropriate weights and procedures were applied for data analysis as suggested by the data provider, UK Data Service.

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PART III ENERGY GOVERNANCE, POLICIES AND POLITICS

15. Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’? David Tyfield

15.1 INTRODUCTION As a new decade begins, it is clear the 2020s will be pivotal for the future of human life on planet Earth. Efforts at decarbonisation must be dramatically and urgently accelerated, to a fivefold increase in current climate action (Chinadialogue, 2019c). While decarbonising sources of energy (including the intermediary forms of electricity and heating/cooling) is pivotal, the full complexity of the challenges is best captured in other spheres. The sustainable transition of urban mobility has a good case to claim that dubious honour. Challenges of decarbonisation are not simply technological problems of substituting ‘high-carbon’ fossil fuel sources of energy for ‘low-carbon’ ones. Regarding low-carbon transition of urban mobility the issues are complex, multi-dimensional and ‘wicked’– in that we struggle to identify and define the problems, let alone solutions. Indeed, transition in urban mobility has been justifiably called the ‘hardest case’ (Geels et al., 2013), while urban mobility already represents a quarter of global emissions, and growing. In turning to this crucial agenda, China, and increasingly its impact around the world, should command our attention. In the late-2010s, Chinese innovation and environmental initiatives exploded onto the global public imagination. Prior to this, studying Chinese innovation – and Chinese low-carbon innovation, especially – was a niche specialism. Yet the transformation of China’s economy over the past four decades from a technological backwater, with per capita GDP in 1978 equivalent to the poorest sub-Saharan African countries (Ang, 2016), to a rising global superpower – including in the latest digital technologies – will be seen as the global story of the turn of the twenty-first century. China, already singularly populous, has become a growing global presence, not least regarding its footprint of consumption and production of primary resources and waste products, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2007 China overtook the US as top global absolute emitter of GHGs. Chinese emissions have been growing ever since, such that these absolute emissions are now bigger than the US and EU combined (Rapier, 2018). Even its per capita emissions now surpass those of the EU (McGrath, 2014). Yet Chinese government and commercial efforts are leading the world in various low-carbon industries and environmental projects. The country’s massive global infrastructure project, the Belt Road Initiative (BRI), seen by many as the largest single national plan for infrastructure since the post-war US Marshall Plan, now promises – or threatens (Hilton, 2020) – to multiply that impact significantly. As Nicholas Stern puts it, ‘The world cannot go net zero unless China does’ (Chinadialogue, 2019a). China’s central government has adopted the project of building an ‘ecological civilisation’. Many, including senior Western policymakers, claim this is definitive evidence of China’s global leadership on climate action (Pike, 2019a). ‘Ecological civilisation’ was first floated 201

202  Research handbook on energy and society as a high-level slogan, a common policy device in China’s one-party-state, in a speech by then-newly incoming President Xi Jinping in 2012 (Geall and Ely, 2018). In 2015 a more detailed ‘master plan’ presented a wave of legislation covering a wide array of environmental challenges, many particularly severe within China and hence pressing domestic issues. In 2018, ‘ecological civilisation’ was written into the national constitution and a major reorganisation of government departments occurred, to streamline decision-making powers on environmental questions at two new super-ministries. The focus is now on environmental commitments to appear in the major policy-cycle document of the 14th Five Year Plan (FYP), which, published from 2020, comes into force for 2021–25. Most recently, in September 2020, President Xi announced that China has committed to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2060. This target has been globally welcomed as keeping the UNFCCC process of the 2015 Paris Agreement alive, even as details of how to deliver this goal remain elusive and the ambition of the target itself falls short of what some climate policymakers argue is necessary. Will China deliver ecological civilisation? This chapter offers a framework for thinking about this question. We discover a highly turbulent yet productive multi-dimensional process of Chinese environmental ‘innovation-as-politics’. This contrasts with dominant narratives that see China as either singular climate hero or villain. China may be leading the world towards ecological civilisation amidst the challenges of the Anthropocene, but most probably by stumbling backwards, rather than by forging boldly and deliberately ahead. The rest of the world – including not least the socio-technically pre-eminent United States and allied advanced economies – will ultimately be grateful to China for its many mistakes, failures and blunders, painful as this may be, as for its successes. We must first reassess the ‘problem’ that sustainable transition, and/or China’s ‘ecological civilisation’, addresses. Section 15.2 contains a brief analysis of the framework and methodology of this chapter. This is followed by an overview in Section 15.3 of the contradictory evidence of China’s efforts on environmental innovation in general, using a ‘quadrant’ analysis that emerges from the framework and is useful for understanding the contested debate about Chinese environmental innovation. Section 15.4 turns to the more specific – and pivotal – issue of urban mobility transition, regarding three key but neglected issues regarding Chinese innovation, namely issues of government, culture and ethics, before we conclude in Section 15.5.

15.2

FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY: COMPLEX POWER/ KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS (CPKS)

The emerging orthodoxy for thinking about energy transition adopts a multi-level perspective exploring socio-technical systems (at ‘regime’, ‘niche’ and exogenous ‘landscape’ levels) to chart credible future courses that will maximise shifts to sustainability (Geels, 2012). Rather than focus on individual technologies, the multi-level perspective conceptualises socio-technical systems as key units of transition. This shift in analysis is a significant advance. The multi-level approach, however, is also direct and rationalistic, seeking comprehensive overviews of particular case studies with a view to policy advice and/or abstract characterisation of transition processes. By contrast, thinking about transition in China invites a different approach that is itself more strategic in perspective. This approach thus foregrounds strategic and power dynamics

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’?  203 in empirical case studies, albeit still of complex socio-technical systems, including regarding their very composition. From a complex power/knowledge systems (CPKS) perspective, we understand socio-technical systems as constituted of relations and technologies of power/ knowledge, arranged into dynamic structures. In turn, these dynamic structures shape and are shaped by equally dynamic subjectivities and practices (Tyfield, 2018b). This approach thus explores the dynamics of innovation-as-politics, at the interface between concrete examples and the systems shaped around them. From this complex power/knowledge systems (CPKS) perspective, transition is best understood as a process of learning how to do government of (global) complex systems well (Tyfield, 2018a). This highlights that the challenge is not just intrinsically socio-technical but also, thereby, political, cultural and place-based. It is, therefore, a matter of ‘government’ as dispersed responsibility amongst multiple human and institutional agencies and the relations of power/knowledge that constitute them. As an ongoing learning process, it not only lacks single ‘solutions’ or ‘technofixes’ (Markusson et al., 2017), but even a definable end-point. Most importantly, this perspective enables exploration of how a fundamentally creative, constructive process of open-ended socio-technical change may coalesce out of contested political processes such that mitigation and adaptation occurs at maximal pace and scale. These considerations are crucial for understanding the potential environmental impact of Chinese innovation. For our purposes, we can summarise the unique contributions of this perspective in terms of three issues that emerge as neglected but important aspects of the dynamics of low-carbon transition: (a) Government: accelerating transformations in power/knowledge relations and subjectivities; (b) Culture: the increasing importance of cultural considerations, e.g. attitudes to openness and change or specific tastes and styles, in the shaping of socio-technical trajectories; and (c) Ethics: the increasing evidence of questions of justice, in contemporary politics per se, but particularly in spurring growing powerful movements regarding climate change. In each case, digital innovation(-as-politics) also has particular relevance, even as the conjunction of sustainability and digitisation remains widely ignored (WBGU, 2019). Our goal is to illustrate the current dynamics and structures of power/knowledge relations regarding China and ‘low carbon transition’; first in overview, then regarding urban mobility.

15.3

CHINA: OVERVIEW

Evidence about Chinese innovation capacity and impact is contradictory and confusing. Placed atop high geopolitical stakes, the result is an argument that is essentially contested. Making matters even more complicated is the distinctive dynamic of innovation processes in China, documented by a large, compelling literature across multiple industries, as non-linear boom-and-bust, in which seeming strengths become weaknesses and vice versa (Breznitz and Murphree, 2011). Chinese innovation cannot, therefore, be understood in terms of a single coherent characterisation. Instead, we need a way to bring all the contradictory snapshots together, seeing the process dynamics of the whole. Using a CPKS perspective helps in this regard, setting up a 2×2 grid (Table 15.1). This identifies four distinct, and seemingly contradictory, positions, and

204  Research handbook on energy and society with the left-hand column alone largely exhausting mainstream commentary and its essential contestation. However, the fourth quadrant incorporates the other three, generating an emergent picture of the extraordinary, turbulent dynamism of the whole (Tyfield, 2018a). Table 15.1  

The quadrant of Chinese (sustainable) innovation Direct effects

Indirect effects

(at agent level)

(at system level)

‘Intended’ outcomes

‘Optimists’

‘Disrupters’

(for national policy)

What the CCP party-state wants to have happened What has emerged in a seeming vindication or

(primarily at

and has – big, cutting-edge, high technology

‘success’ of party-state policy, but is actually the

techno-economic level) success

result of working around, or in spite of, it – surprising,

‘Unintended’ outcomes ‘Pessimists’

off-radar, oblique success ‘Innovation-as-politics’

(spilling over into other What the CCP party-state directly produces that

What dynamics are in turn (now) emerging from or

system dimensions)

thwarts its own goals as deepening structural

immanent within these effects regarding challenges at

problems – big, cutting-edge, high-technology

the level of systems of power relations – to what end?

failure

For whom?

15.3.1 Optimists Optimists regard China’s environmental innovation capacities through an endless series of statistics showing that China is effectively unrivalled. Regarding renewable energy technologies, China now dominates both global markets (e.g. for wind, solar PV and hydroelectric power) and global installations, e.g. 180GW of solar PV installed by 2019 against an ambitious national target of 110GW (Chinadialogue, 2019b). High-speed rail and space showcase China’s technological prowess, while in other technologies, such as nuclear power, China is also fast catching up (Hodson, 2020). Similarly, in our case study sector of electric mobility, China is now home to the largest market for electric vehicles (EVs), with record annual sales of over 1 million in 2018 and 2019 (Yang, 2020a). Growing fleets of electric buses are increasingly exported to global markets (Liévano, 2019). The exceptional size, financial resources and centralised coordination of China is presented as capable of unique mobilisation of directed socio-technical change; nowhere more evident than in China’s multiple high-profile, ambitious projects for new and large eco-cities, such as Xiong’An (Li, 2018), outside Beijing. With its growing set of unquestioned digital giants, command of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and the singular backing of the party-state in the form of the flagship ‘Made in China 2025’ industrial policy drive, a global lead in the growing convergence of environmental and digital technologies is in many ways China’s to lose. Last and by no means least, the unprecedented and unsolicited announcement by Xi Jinping in October 2020 that China aims to be carbon neutral by 2060 is a major boost to the country’s environmental credentials, even as major questions remain about how that goal will be realised (Wagner, 2020). 15.3.2 Pessimists Pessimists, however, have strong arguments to the contrary. Environmentally, for all its renewable energy capacities, the single greatest global source of GHGs remains China’s use of coal. This may have peaked in recent years (Qi, 2018), but domestically it shows little sign

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’?  205 of declining. China has simultaneously become the leading exporter of coal-combustion technologies across the low- and middle- income countries through the BRI (Hilton, 2020). The reasons for this illuminate deep-seated challenges for decarbonising innovation trajectories in China. The structures of power relations in China serve the primary imperative of stabilising the system of one-party rule. This underpins the continued massive use of coal for the foreseeable future through the imperative of securing centralised state control of energy security and generation. Coal is thus run by powerful state-owned enterprises, who have strong influence over governmental decision-making, with self-preservation a priority. As the US–China trade war has negatively affected economic growth in China, which is the primary pillar of popular acceptance of the party-state regime, coal-based stimulus has been unleashed (Wu, 2019). Likewise, despite the problematic environmental credentials of BRI projects to date, exporting surplus coal-based capital (both physical and financial) has been pursued as an easy economic win (Pike, 2019a). Finally, notwithstanding the announcement of the 2060 zero carbon target, responses to the economic downturn of the Covid-19 pandemic have redoubled questions regarding phasing out of coal in China: more new coal power is under development in China as a result of the associated economic stimulus than the entire remaining coal fleet of the US (Rudd, 2020). Regarding electric mobility, the environmental benefits of EVs remains a significant question. So much electricity in China is still coal-generated that growing adoption of EVs may increase emissions. The key ‘circular economy’ issue of recycling vehicles’ lithium batteries also remains neglected (Beall, 2018) by both private industry and policy. EV adoption itself also raises fundamental problems. While the national market has a global lead in terms of absolute numbers of sales, proportionally EVs (including hybrid electric cars) remain a modest 4 per cent of annual total sales, and stalling (cf. 45 per cent in Norway, 5 per cent in the UK, 2 per cent in the US, for 2019 Q4; McKinsey, 2020). Chinese sales figures also remain heavily dependent on government-backed schemes, in particular subsidies and preferential access to licence plates. These are, however, both financially unsustainable and being wound down unpredictably, in part due to their fraudulent exploitation (Yang, 2016). The result is that ‘showcase’ examples of EV transition in Chinese cities remain dominated by government schemes (Zhang, 2018), notably government-procured vehicles, such as taxi fleets. Conversely, adoption by consumers and private businesses remains slow (Yang, 2017). Indeed, despite a boom from 2014 to 2019 in private sales, the current EV market may already have peaked. In January 2020 (i.e. before the added economic pressure of the coronavirus), leading Chinese EV company, BYD, reported EV sales plunging 72 per cent (Yang, 2020b). Meanwhile, recent assessments of a feasible date for phasing out conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) sales in China suggest it will be more laggard than vanguard (Pike, 2019b). So China is not, therefore, on the verge of a wholesale replacement of ICE by electric vehicles. From a systems transition perspective, though, the simple substitution of one sort of car engine by another hardly constitutes a low-carbon urban mobility transition (Freudendal-Pedersen & Kesselring, 2017). Just as the structures of the party-state have imposed enduring limitations on a single-minded environmental drive, similar structural considerations underpin the emerging weakness in its approach to EV transition. This is evident in China’s broader automotive sector, despite nearly 40 years of committed industrial policy (e.g. Thun, 2006). The challenge of mass adoption of a such an important socio-technical artefact

206  Research handbook on energy and society as the car systematically militates against the top-down and purely technical focus of China’s policymaking process. Cars are not just a matter of technology, but also a singularly important financial investment, a matter of personal safety that must be utterly reliable in that regard, and a key symbol of personal cultural status. 15.3.3 Disruptors Nonetheless, the Chinese EV market does increasingly evidence dynamism of domestic companies. This includes both those, such as BYD, selling smaller, cheaper vehicles, that currently dominate EV sales, and the intense competition amongst start-ups all aiming to be ‘China’s Tesla’, such as Nio, LeEco or Faraday Future. This dynamism leads us to our third quadrant. This concerns a large and growing segment of Chinese innovation that does not fit neatly into either optimist or pessimist narratives. On the one hand, there are resounding success stories (Tse, 2016), even as these have emerged out of the boom-and-bust dynamics of Chinese innovation. On the other hand, the successes are not the direct and intended result of government interventions and the organisation of Chinese society and politics. Rather they manifest a flexibility and complexity-adeptness that succeeds in spite of, and even by learning to manoeuvre around, the multiple dysfunctionalities and obstacles of the party-state regime. These successes may be claimed as vindications of the political system’s foresight and support, but they are rather evidence of its persistent failings. Private sector ‘disruptive’ innovators have succeeded by taking an approach that is in effect the opposite of the top-down, technology-fetishising approach of government policy. Instead, they have become industrial titans by offering cheaper, easier-to-use goods and services that bundle surprising functionalities together in ways that are attractive to Chinese consumers, without subsidy or government R&D support (Tyfield, 2018b). These EV companies also characteristically have a digital aspect, a reflection of the exceptional appetite (as a matter of aggregate demand, if not personal desire) of the Chinese market for digital innovations. By giving consumers new products they can afford, this has also generated the exceptional techno-economic momentum that has enabled many of these companies to upskill quickly. The result is that they have first redefined and then assumed a global lead in their particular sectors. The most high-profile examples of these ‘disruptor’ companies are China’s digital giants, such as Alibaba, Tencent and, at a lower level, Baidu (collectively called the ‘BATs’). But across multiple other industries such as container shipping or pianos, this model was apparent over a decade ago (Zeng and Williamson, 2007); and it is also evident in low-carbon innovations. For instance, the domination of global markets of wind, solar PV and solar thermal energy (e.g. Urban et al., 2016; Kirkegaard, 2017) all fit better into this disruptor quadrant than into that of the optimist narrative. All these companies are private, and have developed technological capacities by relentless focus on growing market share through cost reductions, thus enabling the revenues then to build a more conventional R&D programme. In electric mobility, these companies are prominent and central to China’s story. However, it is not electric cars but electric bikes, and other small 3- and 4-wheeled vehicles and buggies, that is the most striking domestic success story of e-mobility innovation (Zuev et al., 2018). While banned from the centre of most big cities, there are over 200 million e-bikes. This rivals the total number of cars, while EVs struggle in the low single figure percentages of annual sales. China also offers evidence of ‘digital disruptors’ (Tse, 2016) across this emerging

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’?  207 domain, including Didi Chuxing (China’s ride-hailing firm, which forced Uber to exit from the Chinese market), the multiple QR-enabled bike-sharing companies (e.g. Mobike) and the various ‘Chinese Tesla’ start-ups. Moreover, the boom–bust dynamic of wasteful cut-throat competition has underpinned their rise to dominance, leaving rivals, such as Kuaidi, Uber or Ofo, stranded. New ‘automated, connected, electric and shared’ (ACES) models of urban mobility are now emerging (Freudendahl and Kesselring, 2017), in innovative combinations of technologies and their affordances. Competition for dominance in this new sector, however, has only just begun, including in China. Yet the capacity of Chinese entrepreneurs to forge highly attractive and affordable novel combinations of technologies now has over 20 years of striking precedent across an array of industries, and specifically those with digital elements. To this we can add the unquestionable strength of Chinese firms in digital technologies, including AI and big data. Meanwhile, on the demand side, there are the emerging ‘middle classes’ of China’s megacities and their growing aspirations for post-materialist and high-quality living. Altogether, it seems highly likely that Chinese digital innovations will have a significant, if not pivotal, role in the key twenty-first-century industrial sector of urban mobility. 15.3.4 Innovation-as-Politics Yet what is apparent regarding digital innovation especially, and perhaps most obviously in China, is that such socio-technical change is never just a techno-economic race to be the first to introduce a new product or sector successfully. Rather, it is also and inseparably a process involving the profound reorganisation of the power/knowledge relations of society. It is thus a very high stakes process of innovation-as-politics (Tyfield, 2018a), the fourth quadrant. The key question regarding low-carbon innovation, in China as elsewhere, thus concerns how actual ongoing processes of low-carbon innovation are shaping and being shaped by parallel, broader evolution of the system of power/knowledge relations. As a matter of an ongoing research programme, this is not a position that can be tidily summarised here. Instead, we illustrate this final innovation-as-politics quadrant by considering the pros and cons of current Chinese urban mobility transition capacities across the key three neglected dimensions noted above of government, culture and ethics. The goal is to provide a contemporary snapshot of key dimensions on which to focus regarding the still-undetermined role of China in global transition. From this is it possible to suggest strategic openings and focus for future research.

15.4

ASSESSING CHINESE E-MOBILITY INNOVATION

What are the strategic advantages of the model of innovation emerging in China around the issue of sustainable, digital urban mobility in comparison with the other incumbent advanced economies? 15.4.1 Advantages: Government The dynamism of China’s digital ‘disruptive’ innovators and entrepreneurs is not just a techno-economic phenomenon, but a political one. There are powerful organisations and

208  Research handbook on energy and society individuals within China’s political economy and broader culture that attract the party-state’s attention. But they represent the tip of an iceberg of many millions across China currently pursuing similar entrepreneurial strategies. Altogether, they comprise the most dynamic constituency in global capitalism today. On the ‘demand side’ are the rising Chinese ‘middle classes’. This amorphous and difficult-to-define group (Goodman, 2015) is the primary engine of continued economic growth in China. The rising middle classes are primarily clustered in more prosperous megacities and/or provinces along the eastern/southern coast. They are the ultimate holders of power within the country, with sufficient resources to make their demands heard, while willing to give the regime their definitive support so long as economic growth stays strong and their material opportunities prosper. They are also the primary source of ‘venturesome consumption’ (Bhidé, 2009), meaning they underpin the rocketing growth of China’s digital giants and its mobility innovations. These disruptive innovators and middle-class urban digital consumers constitute a formidable political body. It promises to underpin a continuation of the socio-technical change that they have become accustomed to over 40-plus years of China’s economic ‘miracle’. But further change still lies ahead in China, not least regarding the ‘hardest case’ of greening and digitising the entrenched system of ‘steel-and-petrol’ automobility (Urry, 2004). 15.4.2 Advantages: Culture China’s disruptive innovators exemplify a broader culture that has become particularly adept at working with complexity. Chinese culture, language and (traditional) practice are marked by a longstanding pragmatism. Today common-sense, everyday orientations to the world have built upon this in ways now adapted to the fast-changing high-stakes nature of contemporary Chinese political-economic life. Combined with population size, the result is a culture of complexity-adept, resourceful and well-resourced individuals on a globally significant scale. This includes an openness to experimenting with digital innovations, especially those offering increased personal autonomy, convenience and/or opportunity. Added to the distinctive lack of squeamishness (Jacobs, 2018) regarding data privacy (though this may be changing fast (Chandler and Morris, 2019)), contemporary Chinese culture may prove particularly accommodating of experiments – and hence inevitable failures and scandals – regarding emerging AI/data-driven digital mobility innovations. Finally, attempts to include China’s rural poor in the ongoing digital revolution may also be hugely profitable (e.g. Prahalad, 2009) and have significant implications for rapid adoption of Chinese technologies across the low- and middle-income countries that are also the sites of greatest economic growth globally. Finally, there is evidence of significant, world-leading artistic dynamism in China. This spans the visual arts, literature (especially science fiction), music (classical performance) and digital arts/games, if not yet film, TV, theatre and music (composition and pop). Although such developments are perhaps surprising given the tightening authoritarian regime, they create dynamism that shapes frontiers of innovation. Cultural savvy and a trend-setting style are crucial for successful new products and services, especially digital ones. These concerns are particularly important in the development of new mobility services (e.g. Weber & Kröger, 2018).

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’?  209 15.4.3 Advantages: Ethics In terms of ethics there are also advantages, especially in the medium-to-long term. The economic miracle (building on the utter chaos of the Cultural Revolution that preceded it) has unleashed an unprecedented form of rampant, amoral materialism and consumerism, accompanied by ecological destruction, economic polarisation and societal disintegration. But there is also growing evidence of a profound yearning for ethical renewal. This is especially so amongst the rising middle classes who are exposed to the risks and dangers of contemporary Chinese society, but also sufficiently resourced and educated to consider alternative paths (e.g. Xu and Wu 2016). This is set to intensify in the context of continued disruptive innovation, intense environmental risk and tightening centralised control. The Chinese have shown themselves to be fast learners in technology and business. There is no reason to presume the same is not true regarding changing worldviews and ethical outlooks. An ‘inner awakening’ is increasingly presented as the inspiration for these entrepreneurs and their respective ventures (Martindale, 2019). This coincides with a re-engagement with traditional Chinese schools of thought that stress issues of harmonious social and ecological relations as pre-eminent, after a century of their neglect and/or persecution. In short, the intense crucible of forces, tensions and contradictions currently shaping Chinese socio-technical change can be read as generating powerful dynamics for continued world-changing sustainable innovations. But this is at best half the story. Persistent strategic weaknesses and disadvantages also arise from these circumstances. 15.4.4 Disadvantages: Government In terms of governmental dynamics, the greatest obstacle to Chinese ‘ecological civilisation’ is the re-centralisation of top-down power in the hands of the central party-state (if not Xi personally). This system of government requires the preservation of the unrivalled power of the one-party-state, an imperative that then conditions all dynamics and initiatives. The system can claim significant responsibility for the growth of China’s economic prowess over the past 40 years, holding the country together and steering a productive course through the hostile waters of Washington Consensus globalisation. Today, however, the clear-and-present challenges to China (and globally) are increasingly those of government of complex systems. Confronted by these qualitatively novel and unprecedentedly complex challenges, the centralised, top-down and engineering mindset is ever more of an impediment. No arena of innovation illustrates this better than sustainable digital urban mobilities (as discussed above). Sustainable, equitable digital mobilities are inseparably matters of shaping new socio-technological assemblages that are yet to take a clear and settled form. This technological stabilisation will only materialise in parallel with major changes in everyday social practices. This includes the demand for mobility of working and commuting, provisioning and waste disposal, ferrying children, dwelling and leisure time. However, a top-down programme of centralised system management, as opposed to emergent system self-government, is likely to prove not just an increasing frustration but a positive obstacle. Notwithstanding the authoritarian regime’s persistence, China’s disruptive innovators indicate that there has actually been significant room for such growth over the past 40 years. But today even these openings seem under threat. The success of the Reform period since 1978 has created a large, prosperous and individualistically ambitious middle class but

210  Research handbook on energy and society also the deepening confrontation with these novel complex system challenges. So long as the party-state regime prioritises its own self-preservation in dealing with these issues, though, there is but one pathway open to it: for each opening and compounding complexity, it must now ratchet up an equal-and-opposite capacity and determination to keep things under its control. The most graphic illustration is the movement of the CCP’s control of Chinese online and social media activities. This has transitioned from a mere ‘networked authoritarianism’ in 2011 (MacKinnon, 2011) to an Orwellian ‘digital totalitarianism’ (Strittmater, 2019). For sustainable digital urban mobility, this tightening control is increasingly problematic for, if not incompatible with, innovation. Experimenting with new forms of citizen participation in shaping future-oriented plans for urban mobility systems is necessary if these are to become resilient, equitable and attractive, and hence rapidly and massively adopted. Yet even minimal public participation in government, including in the shaping and regulation of mobility plans, has proven a challenge for Chinese cities over past decades. Indeed, at present political space for such participation is shrinking, just as the need for even more involvement is growing. Emerging struggles in its high-profile eco-city projects indicate these tensions (Li, 2018). 15.4.5 Disadvantages: Culture The world is currently confronted by challenges of socio-economic polarisation. Such concerns are a key issue for cities and urban mobility, and are exacerbated by digitisation. Inequality will likely continue to be a particular challenge for Chinese society, and hence also shape the innovation that develops in parallel with it (Curran and Tyfield, 2020), not least because it takes a powerful cultural manifestation, illustrated by the electric two-wheeler (E2W). It may once have been possible to imagine this distinctively Chinese low-carbon innovation being promoted for low-cost transition to electric mobility – leapfrogging the ‘American’, ‘twentieth-century’, gas- and space-guzzling car. Today, though, that window now appears closed. This development involved widespread, and government-encouraged, cultural deprecation of such vehicles as not only dangerous but also as markers of low social status and even low personal ‘quality’ (or suzhi). Their cultural meaning was overlain with the existing polarised cultural politics of snobbery in Chinese megacities, with E2Ws identified with ‘low-quality’ migrant workers from the countryside treated with abomination by ‘high-quality’ urban residents (Zuev et al., 2018). Indeed, although still nominally ‘socialist’, concerns of fairness and equity in contemporary China are not much of a cultural or political priority, much less a strength; and this is unlikely to change quickly. It seems more plausible to forecast cultural dynamics of deepening class resentment and polarisation in the short term (Curran and Tyfield, 2020). Such conditions would tend to cultivate a deepening of the existing culture of self-preservation, if not active disdain, for those who fall behind. 15.4.6 Disadvantages: Ethics Any ‘ecological civilisation’ worthy of so grand a title presupposes some ethical renewal, a significant degree of public and individual empowerment, political openness and/or justice. Altogether, these features may be called ‘liberality’, following Murray (1938). Liberality, however, is what the current power/knowledge system governing China is least equipped to

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’?  211 provide, as it attempts to preserve top-down control over an increasingly restive, complex polity confronting deepening existential challenges (e.g. of air, soil, water, food, energy, flood/ drought and disease). There is no escape from a deepening confrontation in China between the incumbent system of government and the challenges of developing a culture of liberality and, hence, the widespread capacities for strategic and ethical self-government. However, there are grounds to read these weaknesses as potentially productive. Here ‘incumbent system of government’ in the broadest sense includes not just the institutions and working practices of high state power, but also their inseparable counterpart: the subjectivities of a population largely accustomed to entrusting and handing over ethical responsibility for the direction of their society and their lives to the party-state. In these circumstances, the unavoidable tendency to intensify tension at the heart of Chinese society will not just strike at the institutions of CCP power but afflict the hearts and lives of Chinese people. It will thus disturb China’s current not-entirely comfortable acceptance of illiberality and drive it through the painful – but potentially rapid – learning process towards greater self-government. Moreover, these dynamics are not just domestic. They will play out globally as the rest of the world becomes progressively more interested and entangled in China’s affairs. China’s massive global infrastructure project, the BRI, involves big and often controversial, construction projects. Many of these are urbanisation and/or mobility projects. ‘China’ (not the specific organisations in charge) will largely be held responsible for these, in a huge diversity of political, economic and cultural contexts. Chinese business remains inexperienced in dealing with overseas partners, and it starts from an unfavourable base. To the extent stakeholders overseas demand political accountability, this is not even something that many Chinese organisations had to learn to deal with at home. Conversely, the pragmatic mindset that enables striving on in the face of uncertainty is an introverted approach largely uninterested in what others think. Global policy scholar Zhao Tong argues that a singular weakness in China’s external dealings is that ‘China has not acquired the capacity to look at issues from the perspective of others’ (Rennie, 2019, p. 7). Chinese initiatives are thus likely to be surprised by the vehemence with which certain issues are defended, which to them appear utterly irrational. Issues of religion/ sacredness are particularly obvious examples. The challenges, however, will be just as intense on the other side. China is not about to retreat back into the self-contained isolation that characterised the last 500 years. Here the clearest example is the global Tech Race that has clearly emerged between China and the US. Rennie (2019, p. 3) notes there is ‘already an undeclared cyberwar’ with the American’s technological lead in semiconductors ‘the hill the Pentagon is willing to die on’. This Tech Race will increasingly overlap with the BRI as the so-called ‘digital Belt Road’ spills this rivalry across the world. All countries, not least the US itself, will have to learn how to work anew with a rising China, whether they like it or not. China’s strategic weaknesses are thus set to become powerful productive forces. They are driving processes of learning how to do complex systems government well both domestically and internationally. But this is precisely the challenge currently confronting humanity anyway. And it is the relationship of interconnectedness and incommensurability of contemporary China with the still-dominant global norms, fashioned by the ‘West’, and vice versa, that is the key to this dynamism.

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15.5 CONCLUSION The world urgently needs a sustainable transition. ‘Ecological civilisation’, while unclear in its meaning, appears to capture a compelling vision. Yet both strategically and normatively, construction of this ‘ecological civilisation’ presupposes liberality. As such, while the phrase is the coining of the Chinese Communist Party, contemporary China faces profound challenges in generating a complexity-adept system of government and the innovations to underpin it; let alone to become an/the exemplar and light for the world. And yet, China in its seismic dynamism and widespread pragmatism is still likely to be a major driver of ‘ecological civilisation’, even as it is unlikely itself to deliver it as direct achievement. A more accurate characterisation of China’s role in global sustainability transition is that it is leading the world backwards into the Anthropocene. Here, the unquestionable strengths of China are not just its capacity for singular massive mobilisation of resources, but also its chaotic dynamism and pragmatic, complexity-adept approach. China’s substantial contributions to realising ecological civilisation are most likely to feature both its successes and its failures. This is likely to unfold across numerous dimensions of contemporary complex system challenges, with urban mobility and urbanisation a pivotal domain. China’s successes will continue to fuel deepening geopolitical tensions with the erstwhile global ‘core’ (especially the US), while its failures will shore up the case to distrust, reject or fear China’s rise. This dynamic relation, however, is not just one of China as ‘stick’ to the erstwhile core of advanced liberal democracies. There is a significant element of ‘carrot’, and mutual complementarity laced with competition. Specifically, China could lead the global process of creative destruction necessary for movement to a new system. Meanwhile, the rest of the world (and these advanced economies especially) will benefit considerably from this. But in being forced to hold China and its (digital) innovations to account, other countries are increasingly developing new governmental ‘technologies’ and social innovations of public sphere engagement that can circulate and spread, even back to China. The deepening conflict between China and the ‘West’ that currently looms thus may catalyse significant change within both regions, from which new possibilities of mutually beneficial courses of action may arise. But there are no guarantees. Powerful voices in the West could choose to focus on the bad news stories from China, even as it may benefit from its technologies. In China, the party-state machinery could abandon even the economic rhetoric of supporting global trade and focus on its programme of techno-nationalism, propagandising its population that the West (and the US in particular) is irredeemably anti-China. Conversely, holding China to account, and particularly in its growing ventures overseas, will be driving the learning process – governmental, cultural and ethical – both in China and the rest of the world. The fourth quadrant of Chinese eco-digital innovation suggests that China could well be the engine, while the rest of the world acts as the steering wheel-cum-brake, to construct global sustainable transition. This could create new ‘facts on the ground’, via China’s unrivalled socio-technical momentum, and a resurgent liberality respectively, possibly in a turbulent but productive complementarity. For energy transitions more generally the case of China – and the CPKS understanding of it – highlights key changes in perspective. Transition is neither a matter of identifying agents that themselves deliver desired change, nor is transition solely or primarily dependent on such agents. Rather, confronted by huge challenges and the need for new paradigms of understanding, it is a contested process in which the depth of the ensuing socio-political turbulence is

Will China deliver urban ‘ecological civilisation’?  213 inseparable from progress toward sustainability goals. In short, the case of China strongly counsels a shift in perspective from a rational and analytical approach, to a strategic learning process.

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214  Research handbook on energy and society Rennie, D. (2019), ‘Special report: A new kind of cold war’, The Economist, 18 May. Rudd, K. (2020), ‘The new geopolitics of China’s climate leadership’, Chinadialogue, 11 December. Strittmater, K. (2019), We Have Been Harmonised, London: Old Street Publishing. Thun, E. (2006), Changing Lanes in China: Foreign Direct Investment, Local Governments, and Auto Sector Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tse, E. (2016), China’s Disruptors, London: Portfolio Penguin. Tyfield, D. (2018a), Liberalism 2.0 and The Rise of China: Global Crisis, Innovation and Urban Mobility, London and New York: Routledge. Tyfield, D. (2018b), ‘Innovating innovation: disruptive innovation in China and the low-carbon transition of capitalism’, Energy Research and Social Science, 37, 266–274. Urban, F., S. Geall and Y. Wang (2016), ‘Solar PV and solar water heaters in China: Different pathways to low carbon energy’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 64, 531–542. Urry, J. (2004), ‘The system of automobility’, Theory, Culture & Society, 21 (4–5), 25–39. Wagner, V. (2020), ‘Six reasons why China’s climate pledges are huge news’, Chinadialogue, 24 September. WBGU (German Advisory Council on Global Change) (2019), Towards our Common Digital Future, Berlin: WBGU. Weber, J. and F. Kröger (2018), ‘Introduction to special issue on autonomous driving and transformation of car cultures’, Transfers, 8 (1), 15–23. Wu, Y. (2019), ‘Is coal winning the US–China trade war?’, Chinadialogue, 12 November. Xu, H. and Y. Wu (2016), ‘Lifestyle mobility in China: Context, perspective and prospects’, Mobilities, 11 (4), 509–520. Yang, J., (2016), ‘How Beijing’s EV plan came unglued – and what to do about it’, Automotive News China, 28 January. Yang, Jian (2020a), ‘Market declines for second straight year; EV demand dips for first time’, Automotive News China, 13 January. Yang, Jian (2020b), ‘BYD sales slump in wake of reduced EV subsidies’, Automotive News China, 20 January. Yang, Y. (2017), ‘Why are Beijingers being slow to adopt EVs?’, Chinadialogue, 4 April. Zeng, M. and P. Williamson (2007), Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation is Disrupting Global Competition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Zhang, C. (2018), ‘Chinese coal town embraces electric vehicles’, Chinadialogue, 11 January. Zuev, D., D. Tyfield and J. Urry (2018), ‘Where is the politics? E-bike mobility in urban China and civilizational government’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 30, 19–32.

16. Energy transitions and multi-level governance: how has devolution in the United Kingdom affected renewable energy development? Richard Cowell

INTRODUCTION For societies to move towards secure, affordable and sustainable energy systems, it is vital to understand not just the technological options, but how such change is to be steered into existence (Meadowcroft, 2009). This means governance, which – to summarise a large conceptual debate – can be defined as processes for ‘authoritatively allocating resources and exercising control and coordination’ (Rhodes, 1996, p. 653). Understanding governance entails grasping who can decide, what are the levers for change and how steering effects are exerted. Moreover, a concern for governance means extending our focus beyond the bureaucratic hierarchies of the state that characterise ‘government’, to embrace the coordination of change with and between a diversity of actors – public, private sector and in civil society. As many social scientists have noted, an inherent quality of energy systems is that they are shaped by governance processes operating at and between many different scales (Sovacool, 2014); that is, by multi-level governance. Energy systems have co-evolved with the territoriality of states, for example creating ‘national grids’. We can also observe the growth of transnational governance, in environmental regulation (like the Paris Agreement on climate change), market extension (e.g. the European Union [EU] single energy market) and infrastructures (including trans-national gas pipelines). Myriad aspects of energy governance take place ‘below’ the central state, in households, communities and cities. The question for governance then, is to understand how changes to energy systems are orchestrated across these multiple sites – each with different forms of agency and differing territorial jurisdictions – and for energy systems that are themselves in spatial flux, in terms of corporate structures and supply chains. One way that researchers have responded to issues of governance scale is through a normative concern with institutional design, seeking to identify ‘the best scale’ at which more sustainable energy systems might be governed (Sovacool, 2014). Amory Lovins’ (1977) seminal Soft Energy Paths extolled the ecological and social virtues of localised energy systems, contextually attuned to patterns of energy use flow, presaging numerous critiques of the pathologies of ‘centralised’ energy systems, characterised by concentrated power and diminished transparency (Sovacool and Cooper, 2013). Various pragmatic formulations have employed ‘the matching principle’ (Butler and Macey, 1996) – that the scale of the challenge should determine the appropriate level for responding to it – to make the case for polycentric governance, that would better ‘balance the need for large scale infrastructure with local and contextualised solutions’ (Goldthau, 2014, p. 134).

215

216  Research handbook on energy and society Just as important as imagining institutional improvements, however, is to understand how energy systems are impacted by actual shifts in the broader spatial architecture of governance (Moss, 2014). These include moves to create larger institutions in which sovereignty is pooled, such as the EU, as well as processes of political devolution, decentralisation and secession. Such re-scaling processes re-cast the governance landscape on which energy transitions play out, creating potential instabilities that could disrupt the status quo, including new apertures for change. Moreover, it is not simply that broader governance re-scaling affects energy development; conflicts over ‘who controls energy?’ can become integral to wider social struggles for empowerment, in which communities of various scales seek greater autonomy. A world of multi-level governance also offers other research opportunities. States that have experienced devolution, or possess federal structures can provide ‘laboratories of controlled variation’, through which social scientists can investigate the efficacy of different strategies for promoting sustainable energy. This chapter reviews social science research on the interface between energy transitions and multi-level governance, and the wider insights generated. It next examines some basic ontological questions about how governance scale should best be understood. Following that, it reviews analyses of how devolution can affect the scope for delivering renewable energy, focusing on the UK case. This is an apt illustration for the themes of this chapter. Expanding renewable energy generation is widely regarded as integral to the realisation of sustainable energy systems, but raises question as to how this is to be achieved. Devolution in the UK is a useful context for understanding the effects of multi-level governance in the energy field, and on renewable energy in particular (Toke et al., 2013a; Strachan et al., 2015; Cowell et al., 2017a). Certainly, the UK’s devolution experience has its own distinctive qualities, such as the persistence of relatively centralised government, and poorly developed institutions for intra-UK governmental coordination. Given that, as this chapter shows, imperfection is an endemic feature of energy governance arrangements, the UK case has wider relevance.

CONCEPTUALISING LEVELS AND SCALES For those studying energy governance, conceptualising the challenge in terms of ‘multi-level governance’ has become a key reference point. Ideas of multi-level governance are concerned with how a simple conceptualisation of government centred on states increasingly fails to grasp a world in which power has shifted ‘vertically’, upwards and downwards, to supra-national and sub-national bodies, as well as ‘horizontally’ between multiple spheres of authority (Hooghe and Marks, 2001). One can see the appeal of such thinking to energy scholars. Energy systems appear to exemplify the wider trends that inform multi-level governance theories: that is, a move from the state level being pre-eminent, to a situation where important governance powers are held by ‘higher’ levels, like the European Union (which shares energy competences with member states) and, in many countries, more localised scales. There is little doubt that the spatial arrangements of energy governance are complex. But if the ‘multi’ of multi-level governance is accepted, criticism has been directed at the meaningfulness of equating scale with ‘levels’. The language of levels assumes a world in which there is a hierarchy of pre-given governance levels – each neatly bounded and distinct – reaching down like the rungs on a ladder through the interstate to national and local levels (Bulkeley, 2005). Viewing scales as levels in this way can also come hand-in-hand with simplistic

Energy transitions and multi-level governance  217 state-centrism, in which states are taken to be internally coherent, and to possess sovereignty within their boundaries, an assumption which permeates the unquestioned ‘methodological nationalism’ found in much energy research. The language of levels also neglects the more complex, less hierarchical relations that emerge between notional tiers, such as transnational networks of ‘local’ actors that interact globally without going through central states, for example the 100% Renewable Energy Cities and Regions Network.1 Social scientists have responded to the deficiencies of ‘levels’ in a number of ways. Some view governance scales as relationally constructed, rather than something rigid, essential and pre-given. For Bulkeley (2005), scale is something that evolves in the context of webs of economic, political and environmental connections to other scales, such that ‘what constitutes the regional, urban or the local is not contained within a particular physical territory ... but rather socially and politically constructed as such within and between variously configured networks of actors’ (p. 884). Relational perspectives have been adopted by transition theorists, seeking to understand how new energy technologies emerge and intersect with dominant regimes of provision (Murphy, 2015). For example, the idea of ‘niches’ – as relatively ‘protective spaces’ (Smith and Raven, 2012) that allow more scope for innovations to emerge – are seen as composed of multiple actors and elements; some more locally embedded (like skills and social networks) but others, like financing, emanating from other arenas, like central government. Also conceptualising scale as something constructed are researchers that see the world as shaped by networks. Post-foundational perspectives, for example, view society not as structured within some all-encompassing social order, but rather involving ‘multiple agreements of highly varying extension, durability and substance ... all of which have the potential to fall into disagreement’ (Annisette and Richardson, 2011, p. 231). From such perspectives, energy systems would be characterised by multiple, intertwining networks of varying spatial reach and form. Energy researchers (Kama, 2014; Cowell, 2017) have begun to make use of cognate ideas, such as Andrew Barry’s concept of ‘technological zones’ (Barry, 2001), within which steps have been taken to reduce differences between technical practices, procedures and forms, thus enabling the circulation of entities – money, data, electricity, and so on. Technological zones are governance devices and can be composed of multiple elements: common measurement and connection standards (allowing integration), and processes of transparency and evaluation with common criteria, which together stabilise and enable the spatial extension of governance. Viewing energy governance arrangements in terms of networks rather than levels does not imply that the power to steer is evenly distributed. The notion of hierarchy remains important, if viewed in terms of status, authority and significance rather than elided with spatial scale (Bulkeley, 2005). Nevertheless, network-type ontologies do bring a number of additional insights for grasping the multi-scalar nature of energy governance. For one, different technological zones may have their own geography and should not be seen as spatially monolithic or automatically aligned with national boundaries. Electricity systems on the island of Ireland are a case in point, as discussed below. The patchy coverage of electricity networks within many developing countries offers other examples (as discussed in Tomei and To, Chapter 10). Seeing governance arrangements in terms of technological zones also shows how the material form of energy infrastructures has consequences for governance. For example, the way that energy networks have been organised across space, making ‘concrete’ previous social decisions, configures the present and future distribution of political agency (van der Vleuten and Högselius, 2012).

218  Research handbook on energy and society Indeed, a concern for networks can sensitise us to the boundaries of governance systems, which may be especially problem-prone, making them critical sites for ‘political negotiation and conflict’ (Barry, 2006, p. 250). Efforts to transcend boundaries to create unified and coherent (energy) systems are more likely to have to negotiate divergent values and priorities from the different communities involved (Barry, 2001, p. 2006). For example, Kama (2014) shows the struggles that have unfolded to align the market rationality of the EU Emissions Trading System with the sovereignty claims of member states (see also Reverdy et al., Chapter 7, for discussion of EU electricity market liberalisation and political objectives of states). Similar tensions can arise where moves towards devolution or decentralisation threaten to introduce boundaries within previously contiguous technological zones. Research on Wales (Cowell, 2017), discussed in detail below, shows how efforts to assert greater control over energy within a territory entail not just shifting vertical hierarchies of formal control, but also messy processes of creating new demarcations of authority within previously more homogeneous arrangements. The importance of these perspectives on governance, scale and territory all become apparent when we turn to the main focus of this chapter – what research has shown about the effects of devolution on renewable energy development in the UK. This is discussed around the following themes: ● The complexity and partiality of energy governance; ● Explaining patterns of renewable energy development, with reference to instrument design and contextual conditions; ● How energy governance concerns can drive devolution; ● How the materialities of energy systems structure, and co-evolve with, governance arrangements.

DEVOLUTION IN THE UK AND RENEWABLE ENERGY The Complexity and Partiality of Energy Governance The year 1998 saw the passing of legislation that instigated a major wave of political devolution in the UK, passing powers previously exercised under the authority of central government in Westminster to new elected assemblies and executives in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This process has recast the spatial reach of ‘national’ energy policies promulgated by the UK government and created new political and executive spaces for steering energy development. However, some devolved institutions received more powers than others, creating an asymmetric situation (Cowell et al., 2017a). Northern Ireland possesses the widest suite of formal energy-related powers, including powers to design and operate systems of market support. This reflects the fact that electricity networks in Northern Ireland have historically been functionally detached from the rest of the UK, exhibiting greater cross-border integration with the Republic of Ireland. In Scotland, key aspects of energy policy are ‘executively devolved’, including control over major energy consents and planning, and operational control over aspects of market support. The Welsh Government has the fewest energy-related powers, of which the most pertinent are in planning policy. All of the devolved governments received

Energy transitions and multi-level governance  219 responsibility for discretionary economic development funding which can be spent, inter alia, on energy-related projects. Cutting across the above, the UK Government retains responsibility for security of energy supply, markets and competitiveness and, as a concomitant, control of key levers. It substantially shapes market support systems for energy, and sets the operating parameters for arms-length market regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), which operates across England, Wales and Scotland but not Northern Ireland. The UK Government also controls planning policy and economic development spending for England. Any attempt to summarise the post-devolution distribution of powers risks glossing over a key feature – the inherent messiness of the arrangements. Social scientists have shown the difficulties of neatly parcelling up energy governance ‘powers’ to be exercised cleanly by any one government arena in isolation. In seeking to map the UK’s ‘energy constitution’, Muinzer and Ellis (2017) identify complexities (formal legal devolution of powers to parliaments runs alongside executive devolution of specific responsibilities and more diffuse intergovernmental guidance), and contingencies (in that the ability of the UK to meet its responsibilities for energy or climate change substantially depends on the performance of the devolved administrations in a range of spheres, such as land-use planning). Consequently, Muinzer and Ellis argue that it makes little sense to ask what is ‘the right scale’ for energy and climate-related action, but to ask instead on what terms and within what parameters should different jurisdictions interact? Their research also shows how the multiple governance sites involved in the sector create a challenging context for orchestrating change – and for understanding cause– effect relationships. Devolution as Laboratory – Explaining Patterns of Renewable Energy Development As a whole, the UK has experienced significant expansion of renewable electricity, especially from 2000 to 2018, with total installed capacity exceeding 44GW by the end of that period (DBEIS, 2019). However, Table 16.1 shows a more spatially and technologically nuanced picture. For the first decade of the 21st century, ‘UK renewable energy increase’ was mainly a story of onshore wind energy expansion in Scotland. Wales and Northern Ireland, both much smaller in area than England, also saw a large share of growth. When viewed in terms of capacity installed per capita of population, then Scotland again scores highest. Such data inform the frequent representation of Scotland as a ‘world leader in renewables’,2 which successive Scottish governments have encouraged. However, one cannot straightforwardly infer that energy development within any particular government territory can be attributed neatly and solely to action by that government. As researchers have argued (Toke et al., 2013a; Cowell et al., 2017a) teasing out the precise role of devolved governments in the UK’s wider renewable energy expansion requires attention to the complex allocation of energy-related powers across the devolved nations, introduced above. Moreover, formal competencies are only an indicator of the potential power that an organisation possesses. This can be seen by focusing on two key instruments for steering renewable energy development: first land-use planning, then systems of market support. Devolution gave the newly created governments significant control over land-use planning. This matters because the organisation of planning is pivotal to renewable energy development, especially for onshore wind, given that its visibility and (often) rural locations creates significant potential for land-use conflicts. Indeed, research shows that different approaches to

220  Research handbook on energy and society Table 16.1

Renewable energy expansion across the UK (installed capacity, MW)

 

2003

2008

2013

2018

England Total

1,293

2,615

11,321

27,812

Onshore wind

164

565

1,836

3,077

Offshore wind

–

526

3,312

6,867

– 1,675

1 3,350

2522 6,687

11,107 11,019

Onshore wind

307

1,735

4,586

7,933

Offshore wind

–

–

190

623

Solar PV Northern Ireland Total

– 48

– 227

126 645

331 1,844

Onshore wind

38

213

580

1393

Offshore wind

–

10

–

–

Solar PV Wales Total

– 428

– 601

26 1,175

321 3,345

Onshore wind

232

315

575

1,136

60

193

726

– 6,836

148 19,960

1,064 44,304

Solar PV Scotland Total

Offshore wind Solar PV UK Total

Note: Source:

– 3,458

Figures rounded down to the nearest megawatt. Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES).

planning adopted by the devolved governments have contributed to different renewable energy outcomes (Power and Cowell, 2012; Cowell et al., 2017a). Scottish governments have sought to orchestrate planning policy to facilitate onshore wind, by encouraging local planning authorities to identify in their plans areas where wind energy development would be preferred, and areas where it would be inappropriate. The consistently positive approach, and the Scottish Government’s willingness to police the decisions of local planning authorities threatening to take a restrictive stance, has helped underpin the wind energy expansion. But so too have geographical advantages (Scotland has large areas of rural land outwith nationally designated landscapes) and the fact that Scottish governments inherited consenting powers over the largest energy projects (over 50MW), enabling implementation of its positive policies. The absence of these ingredients explains why Wales’s progress with onshore wind has been slower, despite the Welsh Government’s ambitious, centrally directed spatial planning approach, promoting a series of ‘strategic search areas’ (SSAs) in which there is a firm presumption in favour of large-scale onshore wind (Cowell, 2010). While this approach did eventually stimulate a major ‘wind rush’ of new investment interest, delivery faltered. This was partly because the identification of SSAs in mid-Wales fomented resistance, with communities and local councils challenging the idea that their uplands should become ‘wind farm landscapes’ (Mason and Milbourne, 2014); and partly because the Welsh Government did not – unlike Scotland – receive consenting powers for major energy projects. These remained with central government in Westminster, which from 2010 became more hostile towards onshore wind. By comparing across the devolved governments, researchers have shown how the use and outcomes of planning powers reflect not just technical matters of instrument choice and setting, but the social and political conditions that generate policies and shape their

Energy transitions and multi-level governance  221 operation. Arguably, the Scottish Government’s relative effectiveness in promoting renewables, especially onshore wind is attributable to its success in forming a coherent policy community (Marsh and Rhodes, 1992) – bringing major energy businesses and agencies into the policy-making process. This alignment of elite interests has helped to ‘legitimise and rationalise the Scottish Government’s full and assertive use of the powers conferred on it by devolution’ (Cowell et al., 2017a, p. 177), whilst marginalising voices critical of onshore wind expansion, and containing political dissent. The Welsh Government, in comparison, has found it difficult to foster a cohesive policy community. As the environmental side-effects of major onshore wind expansion emerged, opponents more successfully politicised the issues, joining forces with opposition in England to push the UK Government to be more restrictive towards onshore wind. Here, Welsh ‘local’ objectors have exploited the opportunity structures of multi-level governance. The salience of wider actor networks in shaping policy formation and implementation is corroborated by Northern Ireland, which achieved a considerable acceleration of onshore wind energy development with a flexible, criteria-based approach to planning. This approach ‘worked’ not because of cohesive policy communities, but because of the relative absence of potentially disruptive actors: landscape NGOs are limited, party politics is focused on sectarian issues and all significant consents are issued centrally (Cowell et al., 2017a). This research also shows that governance for energy transition is not just a matter of fostering innovation: sub-state governments can perform a variety of roles, as implementers, mediators and resistors of shifting national or corporate energy agendas (Cowell et al., 2017a). Thus, the devolved governments variously sought to maintain supportive planning policy frameworks for onshore wind, facilitating the continued roll-out of a mature technology, thereby insulating its expansion from the policy upheaval in England where post-2010 governments used their powers to promote increasingly restrictive planning policies for wind. Such insulating effects are only relative, however. Planning is weak as a development driver without market support policies to stimulate investor interest (Cowell et al., 2017a). The power to shape the form and scale of market support has remained largely with central government, in a formal sense and in terms of actual leverage, constraining the scope for the devolved governments to use what freedoms they possess. So, the Scottish Government led the UK in using its operational powers to set higher market support levels under the Renewable Obligation system for emergent technologies like wave and tidal-stream power (Winskel, 2007), boosting support levels: a ‘first mover’ action credited with Scotland pulling in more commercialisation and testing facilities for these technologies. Scottish and Northern Ireland governments have also actively sought to raise the profile of marine renewables at EU level, securing EU funding for investigating marine energy grids (Scottish Government et al., 2012), circumventing the hierarchical authority of the UK Government. However, the ability of Scotland to accelerate onshore wind deployment is more attributable to the fact that developers in Scotland can access the wider, cross-UK pool of market support, supported by the larger numbers of electricity consumers. Such financial concerns trumped sovereignty in Northern Ireland, where governments have decided to remain part of UK-wide market support systems despite formal powers to develop their own market support arrangements. These are good illustrations of how the agency of devolved governments emerges relationally, not just from action ‘within’ their boundaries, but from relations with actors and other flows (e.g. resource dependencies) beyond their territory.

222  Research handbook on energy and society Devolved governments have sought to influence decisions made in Westminster, including the design of financial support systems, but have relatively limited power within the UK government’s decision-making processes, compared to UK ministers, officials and ‘insider’ industrial and energy organisations (Toke and Ørsted Nielsen, 2014). Thus, the UK government has been able to change the main market support system to ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CfD), in part to support nuclear power expansion, and to deny onshore wind access to such support, despite concerns expressed by the Scottish and Welsh governments (Toke et al., 2013a). Among renewables, the chief beneficiary of the CfD has been offshore wind. To explain the accelerating deployment of offshore wind, Kern et al. (2014) mapped the networks that key actors formed around this technology, finding close collaboration between incumbent energy businesses, the UK Government and its agencies, but devolved governments almost entirely absent. As Table 16.1 showed, the lion’s share of offshore wind has developed in English waters, because England’s shallow seas are cheaper to exploit; a critical factor given UK Government emphasis on cost reduction. Herein is a good example of how sub-state governments’ efforts to forge their own agendas, and build sustained, cohesive actor networks, can have their agency curtailed by the central state. Energy Governance as a Driver of Devolution Tracing the relationship between devolved governments and energy transition is not a static, linear exercise in establishing cause and effect, because the spatial structures of governance processes are themselves in flux. Moreover, various studies have shown that disputes about the distribution of authority to govern energy can be a driver for change (Cowell et al., 2017b). The desire to control energy resources is a persistent theme of independence movements, with nationalist claims on ‘Scotland’s oil’ being a prominent example (see McCrone, Chapter 3). Such pressures continue in the context of devolution, since the newly-created political bodies – often concerned with their own legitimacy and agency – have shown a strong propensity to question constitutional arrangements. On occasion, energy problems destabilise devolved government in chaotic and unexpected ways, such as the mismanagement of Northern Ireland’s Renewable Heat Incentive precipitating the 2017 collapse of the power-sharing government (Muinzer, 2017). More orderly pressures for change can also be observed. For example, a major concern for successive Welsh governments has been the lack of consenting powers for major energy infrastructure (generation projects of 50MW or over), which were reserved to UK Government. Discontent spiked from 2010, amidst intensifying conflicts over large windfarm applications in mid-Wales, where the UK Government utilised its consenting powers to refuse a number of projects, despite their compliance with the Welsh Government’s spatial planning policy. Pressure from the Welsh Government eventually won out, with the Wales Act 2017 amending the devolution settlement to grant the Welsh Government consenting powers for energy generating projects up to 350MW and associated grid connections (Cowell, 2017). There are tensions inherent in the re-scaling of governance arrangements, especially where devolution pressures precipitate the disaggregation of ‘technological zones’ previously operating in consistent, integrated fashion across a wider territory (Cowell, 2017). In the example above, the Welsh Government’s calls for more powers had to confront UK Energy Ministry resistance, that only a ‘unified planning regime for England and Wales’ would ‘provide a stable platform for investment in major new infrastructure’.3 These disputes are characterised

Energy transitions and multi-level governance  223 by plural and incommensurable values – accountability, territorial integration, system integration, efficiency – with no simple basis for calculating ‘the better option’. These tensions also apply to Brexit, especially on the island of Ireland, where Northern Ireland and the Republic have operated an Integrated Single Electricity Market (I-SEM), underpinned by EU rules and institutions. These arrangements have helped to dampen consumer prices, boost energy security and integrate intermittent renewable energy. As Muinzer (2018) argues, the advantages of the I-SEM could be maintained, if post-Brexit scenarios treat Northern Ireland as a distinct zone within the UK, largely aligned to EU law, but this risks Northern Ireland citizens losing any democratic oversight for the operation of this system, having left the EU with the rest of the UK. It is a perfect illustration of how the democratic, market and technical dimensions of energy governance systems can be difficult to align. One can observe some patterns in the ways that arguments for devolution or other forms of re-scaling play out in the energy field. One pattern is that arguments to devolve the governance of entities that are readily represented as territorially rooted and potentially divisible are more likely to win. The Welsh Government gaining more control over consenting powers is one example. Another is the devolution to Scotland of roles and assets of the Crown Estate (the body which manages Crown-owned land) under the Scotland Act 2016, relevant to the licensing of seabed for offshore wind. However, where arguments over control centre on systems perceived as operating seamlessly across territory – like markets or electricity networks – then calls for devolution are fewer, less vehement and face more significant challenges. One might explain these patterns in social and political terms, arguing that the operation of markets or grid networks deemed integral to energy security are ‘policy cores’ (Sabatier, 1988), for which central authorities are reluctant to relinquish control. However, these patterns also highlight a more fundamental analytical issue – how the materiality of energy systems affects the mutability of governance. Materiality as a Shaper of Energy Governance Much of the research examining how devolution, as a form of governance re-scaling, has affected energy outcomes tends to treat energy systems as simply passive subjects of governance. However, one can see how the materiality of energy infrastructures themselves is implicated in the (re)distribution of power between governments and other agents. Infrastructure materialities affect what is thinkable and actionable The governance arrangements for energy can be conceptualised in network terms, as technological zones (Barry, 2001), which are not necessarily coterminous with state space and need not align with devolved governments’ territory. This might explain why arguments for decentralising power have been more thinkable and actionable for aspects of energy embedded in land and territory, but not for flows of electricity, gas and money. Thus, although Welsh Governments recognise that their energy ambitions are shaped by the way that central government organises market support and the capacity of the grid, they have exerted little pressure for major structural changes, because it entails creating new boundaries through electricity networks and markets between England and Wales that have never previously existed. Historically, Scotland’s electricity system has been more functionally and organisationally detached from that in England, and territorially aligned with Scottish space. Some analysts have calculated what Scotland might achieve for renewable energy if an independent elec-

224  Research handbook on energy and society tricity network enabled Scottish consumers to divert the funds they are due to contribute to support the costs of new ‘English’ nuclear power (Toke et al., 2013b). Nevertheless, despite major policy differences with the UK government over future energy pathway choices, the Scottish National Party tends to frame its independence agenda within the maintenance of GB-wide energy markets and integrated grid networks. Again, we see how the territorial configurations of materially durable infrastructures – and the flows of energy and revenues that they facilitate – affect the propensity of devolved governments to argue for significant relocalisation of power and control. Energy systems shape the meaning of sovereignty We can see, then, the problems of conceiving the multiplicity of governance arrangements for energy in terms of neat, separate territorial levels. This also raises important questions for the meaning of ‘sovereignty’– that is, having the power to govern oneself without external interference – and ‘independence’. Examination of the energy sector and the politicking of devolved governments and nationalist parties provides further evidence that regions seeking ‘independence’ now rarely claim immediate statehood, but qualify their goals with significant sharing of institutions with the larger polity; agendas Keating (2012) characterises as ‘post-sovereignty’. When it comes to grid systems and markets integrated at a Great Britain level, the net effect of the UK’s gradually evolving devolution settlement is to extend and formalise the rights to be consulted on cross-Britain governance arrangements. The Scotland Act 2016 and Wales Act 2017 gave devolved governments the right to call Ofgem before their legislatures, and placed a new duty on Westminster to consult Scottish and Welsh Ministers on reviews of systems of market support for renewables. These relationships are important. The Scottish Government has long argued for reforms to transmission charges which would enable Scottish renewable generators to pay lower rates for sending their power south to England, and for special treatment of renewable energy generation on the Scottish Islands. Both points have been acceded to (Toke et al., 2013a).4 Technology economics affect the salience of governing powers The research above helps explain how different governance activities – land use planning, market support, network-building between actors – affect the delivery of renewable energy. However, longitudinal assessment of energy transitions shows that the shifting performance of different technologies affects the salience of different policy instruments, and the distribution of power. The efforts of devolved governments to foster more novel marine energy technologies – wave, tidal, tidal lagoons – using their discretionary economic development budgets, have struggled against the rapidly falling cost of offshore wind, driven by economies of scale, and pushed by the UK Government (ENDS, 2015). However, there may be a swing back towards the devolved governments, as the falling costs of solar energy and onshore wind enable projects to be put forward without subsidy. This erodes the steering power of central government, as performed through market support systems, and puts a premium back on the capacity of devolved governments to use their planning systems to facilitate site availability. Although this chapter focuses on renewable electricity generation, it has long been recognised that constructing energy pathways in which the vectors of electricity, heat and transport are more integrated heightens the relevance of decentralised governance arenas, centred on municipalities (Goldthau, 2014). Decentralised energy agendas cast a different slant on the

Energy transitions and multi-level governance  225 ways that devolution affects energy transition (see Wade et al., Chapter 17), and put a premium on more reflexive and collaborative governance relations between different arenas (Sperling et al., 2011) than has been characteristic of bulk electricity provision. There is, though, a preliminary question – to what extent does political devolution or other forms of governance re-scaling necessarily enlarge the scope for radical, alternative, decentralised energy pathways to emerge? Devolution = energy decentralisation? Research in the energy field warns against the easy elision between ‘lowering the scale of governance’ and ‘greater opportunity to open up and pursue alternative policies’ (Strachan et al., 2015), showing this to be no guarantee. It shows all devolved governments acting in ways that help to maintain dominant systems of provision based on large facilities supplying electricity into centralised and organisationally unchanged grids. In transitions terms, the devolved governments have restructured governance processes to create ‘protective spaces’ (Smith and Raven, 2012) not for new niches, but for prevailing systems of provision (such as large-scale, commercial onshore wind), shielding them from challenge. For example, having extracted more consenting powers from central government, the Welsh Government moved to reallocate decision-making on all energy generation projects over 10MW from local councils to itself. Has devolved government in the UK provided arenas for re-thinking neo-liberal modes of energy development? The research shows the effects to be relatively modest. Scotland has achieved more than other parts of the UK in promoting community-owned renewable energy, due to its sustained interest and financial support, backed by skilled intermediaries and linkages with a wider post-devolution agenda of land reform (Strachan et al., 2015). Both Scotland and Wales have been ambitious target-setters for ‘locally- and community-owned energy’, with the Welsh Government setting an expectation that all new renewable energy projects should have an element of local ownership by 2020 (Welsh Government, 2018). Nevertheless, these policies for the incremental socialisation of energy are layered on to the status quo, without significantly displacing the dominant framing of renewable energy in the devolved governments, as a sector to be expanded at industrial scale, supplying energy above ‘domestic’ demand, as the basis of export-related economic development, reliant on international investment.

CONCLUSIONS By recognising and analysing the multi-centred nature of energy governance, social scientists have added much to our understanding of the dynamics of energy systems change. This work has countered the pervasive methodological nationalism of much energy policy discussion, by showing how ‘national pathways’ are constituted by pathways unfolding at sub-state levels, and their successes and failures. Comparison between devolved governments in their efforts to promote renewable energy has also deepened our knowledge of the merits of different policy instruments, by looking beyond their technical properties or the allocation of formal powers, to understand how instruments operate within different social and political contexts. This research thus offers important correctives to largely a-spatial and apolitical economic or engineering perspectives on energy system change.

226  Research handbook on energy and society Sensitivity to the multiple governance arenas involved in energy also shows the complexity of energy transitions and the challenges of orchestrating change. Indeed, tracing the effects of UK devolution on energy development helps to reveal the fragmentary nature of democratic control over energy systems across all levels (Stirling, 2014). It shows why fathoming ‘the best’, or even ‘better’, governance arrangements for energy is challenging. It is not simply because of the polycentricity of energy systems, or that the relational nature of governance ‘scales’ makes them hard to separate. It is also because of strong, spatial path dependencies, which make it difficult to conceptualise how energy markets and infrastructures operating at a given territorial scale can be carved up. Furthermore, thinking through the merits of changing the allocation of powers between governments inevitably confronts plural and incommensurable values – claims about efficiency, sustainability, accountability, involving different polities – with no perfect solution. Dealing with these imperfections in energy governance places a premium on reflexive and effective inter-governmental or inter-arena governance mechanisms, falling outwith simple distinctions between ‘global’, ‘national’, ‘devolved’ or ‘local’ (Muinzer, 2018). Beyond its evident importance to understanding energy transitions, more attention to the multi-scalar nature of energy governance also offers significant potential for elucidating mainstream social science concerns, such as the meaning of ‘sovereignty’, ‘independence’ and ‘democracy’. There is particular insight to be gained from improving our understanding of how the materialities of energy systems are shaped by, and go on to shape politics; conceiving of the world as one where neither governance nor energy systems are seen as a static backdrop to the other, but as mutually configuring elements of continuity and change.

NOTES 1. See https://​iclei​.org/​en/​100RE​.html. 2. For example, see https://​www​.wwf​.org​.uk/​updates/​scotland​-world​-leader​-renewables​-2017 accessed 29 January 2020. 3. UK Government, cited in Cowell (2017). 4. See https://​renews​.biz/​55418/​scottish​-islands​-set​-to​-be​-green​-powerhouse/​ accessed 31 January 2020.

REFERENCES Annisette, M. and Richardson, A. (2011), ‘Justification and accounting: applying sociology of worth to accounting research’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 24 (2), 229–249. Barry, A. (2001), Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society, New York: Athlone Press. Barry, A. (2006), ‘Technological zones’, European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2), 239–253. Bulkeley, H. (2005), ‘Reconfiguring environmental governance: towards a politics of scales and networks’, Political Geography 24, 875–902. Butler, H. and Macey, J. (1996), ‘Externalities and the matching principle: the case for reallocating environmental regulatory authority’, Yale Journal of Regulation 14, 23–66. Cowell, R. (2010), ‘Wind power, landscape and strategic spatial planning – the construction of “acceptable locations” in Wales’, Land Use Policy 27 (2), 222–232. Cowell, R. (2017), ‘Decentralising energy governance? Wales, devolution and the politics of energy infrastructure decision-making’, Environment and Planning C 35 (7), 1242–1263.

Energy transitions and multi-level governance  227 Cowell, R., Ellis, G., Sherry-Brennan, F., Strachan, P.A. and Toke, D. (2017a), ‘Energy transitions, sub-national government and regime flexibility: how has devolution in the United Kingdom affected renewable energy development?’, Energy Research and Social Science 23, 169–181. Cowell, R., Ellis, G., Sherry-Brennan, F., Strachan, P. and Toke, D. (2017b), ‘Subnational government and pathways to sustainable energy’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 35 (7), 1139–1155. DBEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) (2019), Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) Renewable Energy, https://​www​.gov​.uk/​government/​statistics/​renewable​-sources​ -of​-energy​-chapter​-6​-digest​-of​-united​-kingdom​-energy​-statistics​-dukes, accessed 23 January 2020. ENDS (Environmental Data Services) (2015), ‘Marine sector consolidation continues’, ENDS Report 484, 16. Goldthau, A. (2014), ‘Rethinking the governance of energy infrastructure: scale, decentralization and polycentrism’, Energy Research and Social Science 1, 134–140. Hooghe, L. and Marks, G. (2001), ‘Types of multi-level governance’, European Integration online Papers (EIoP) 5 (11), http://​dx​.doi​.org/​10​.2139/​ssrn​.302786, accessed 25 August 2021. Kama, K. (2014), ‘On the borders of the market: EU emissions trading, energy security, and the technopolitics of “carbon leakage”’, Geoforum 51, 202–212. Keating, M. (2012), ‘Rethinking sovereignty. Independence-lite, devolution-max and national accommodation’, Revista d’Estudis Autonòmics i Federals 16, 9–29. Kern. F., Smith, A., Shaw, C., Raven, R. and Verhees, B. (2014), ‘From laggard to leader: explaining offshore wind developments in the UK’, Energy Policy 69, 635–646. Lovins, A. (1977), Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marsh, D. and Rhodes, R. (ed.) (1992), Policy Networks in British Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mason, K. and Milbourne, P. (2014), ‘Constructing a “landscape justice” for windfarm development: the case of Nant Y Moch, Wales’, Geoforum 53, 104–115. Meadowcroft, J. (2009), ‘What about the politics? Sustainable development, transition management, and long-term energy transitions’, Policy Science 42, 323–334. Moss, T. (2014), ‘Socio-technical change and the politics of urban infrastructure: managing energy in Berlin between dictatorship and democracy’, Urban Studies 51 (7), 1432–1448. Muinzer, T. (2017), ‘Incendiary developments: Northern Ireland’s renewable heat incentive, and the collapse of the devolved government’, UKELA E-Law 99 March/April, 18–21. Muinzer, T. (2018), ‘Electricity bills could rise if Brexit threatens Northern Ireland’s unique energy agreement with Ireland’, The Conversation, 28 November 2018. Muinzer, T. and Ellis, G. (2017), ‘Subnational governance for the low carbon energy transition: mapping the UK’s “energy constitution”’, Environment and Planning C 35 (7), 1176–1197. Murphy, J. (2015), ‘Human geography and socio-technical transition studies: promising intersections’, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions 17, 73–91. Power, S. and Cowell, R. (2012), ‘Wind power and spatial planning in the UK’, in Szarka, J., Cowell, R., Ellis, G., Strachan, P.A. and Warren, C. (eds), Learning from Wind Power. Governance, Societal and Policy Perspectives on Sustainable Energy. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 61–84. Rhodes, R. (1996), ‘The new governance: governing without government’, Political Studies XLIV, 652–667. Sabatier, P. (1988), ‘An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein’, Policy Sciences 21, 129–168. Scottish Government, Northern Ireland Executive, Government of Ireland (2012), Irish–Scottish Links on Energy Study (ISLES), ERDF, April, https://​docplayer​.net/​13657933​-Irish​-scottish​-links​-on​ -energy​-study​-isles​.html, accessed 25 August 2021. Smith, A. and Raven, R. (2012), ‘What is protective space? Reconsidering niches in transitions to sustainability’, Research Policy 41 (6), 1025–1036. Sovacool, B. (2014), ‘What are we doing here? Analyzing fifteen years of energy scholarship and proposing a social science research agenda’, Energy Research and Social Science 1, 1–29. Sovacool, B. and Cooper, C. (2013), The Governance of Energy Megaprojects, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

228  Research handbook on energy and society Sperling, K., Hvelplund, F. and Mathiesen, B. (2011), ‘Centralisation and decentralization in strategic municipal energy planning in Denmark’, Energy Policy 39 (3), 1338–1351. Stirling, A. (2014), ‘Transforming power: social science and the politics of energy choices’, Energy Research and Social Science 1, 83–95. Strachan, P., Cowell, R., Ellis, G., Sherry-Brennan, F. and Toke, D. (2015), ‘Promoting community renewable energy in a corporate energy world’, Sustainable Development 23 (2) 96–109. Toke, D. and Ørsted Nielsen, H. (2014), ‘Policy consultation and political styles: renewable energy consultations in the UK and Denmark’, British Politics 10, 454–474. Toke, D., Sherry-Brennan, F., Cowell, R., Ellis, G. and Strachan, P.A. (2013a), ‘Scotland, renewable energy and the independence debate: will head or heart rule the roost?’, The Political Quarterly 84 (1), 61–70. Toke, D., Strachan, P., Cowell, R., Ellis, G. and Sherry-Brennan, F. (2013b), Is an Independent Scottish Electricity System Good for Renewable Energy and Good for Scotland? DREUD report. Van der Vleuten, E. and Högselius, P. (2012), ‘Resisting change? The transnational dynamics of European energy regimes’, in Verbong, G. and Loorbach, D. (eds), Governing the Energy Transition. Reality, Illusion or Necessity? New York: Routledge, pp. 75–100. Welsh Government (2018), ‘Nearly half of Wales’ electricity came from renewable sources in 2017’, Press Release, 20 November 2018. Winskel, M. (2007), ‘Multi-level governance and energy policy: renewable energy in Scotland’, in Murphy, J. (ed.), Governing Technology for Sustainability, Earthscan, pp. 182–202.

17. Local heat and energy efficiency policy: ambiguity and ambivalence in England and Scotland Faye Wade, Janette Webb and Margaret Tingey

INTRODUCTION: LOCAL PLANNING FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND HEAT DECARBONISATION The scale of energy used for heating in buildings poses a significant challenge for climate protection goals. In the United Kingdom (UK), the sector accounts for around a third of territorial carbon emissions (UK Government, 2020), with heating primarily from methane gas combustion. Critically, approximately 80 per cent of today’s buildings are expected still to be in use by 2050 (RAE, 2010: 6) and Scottish 2045 and UK 2050 net-zero emissions targets entail ‘near complete decarbonisation of the housing stock’ (CCC, 2019: 11), alongside public and non-domestic buildings. Social science research on governing such transitions contributes to analysis of options and discussion about what needs to change. Issues of governance discussed in this chapter are part of those wider concerns about institutional innovations and policy capacities needed (Hawkey et al., 2016; Kuzemko and Britton, 2020). Here we apply this social science perspective to comparative analysis of Scottish and English governance institutions for energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation in buildings. The aim is to provide insights into the reasoning behind emerging differences, and to interpret their significance for policy and practice relating to energy use in buildings. Governance institutions and policies for net zero buildings vary in different countries, but current debates suggest that changes on this scale cannot be directed by central governments alone, and that devolution of powers and resources is an important component. Strategy and implementation is expected to benefit from local area-based planning to secure economies of scale, and to support business and supply chain improvements, as well as engaging building occupants and owners, and enforcing quality standards (Bridge et al., 2013). Local and regional authorities are regarded as well placed to govern such strategies, because of their local knowledge, planning, and community engagement powers (CCC, 2019: 127). Hence we pay particular attention to the different perspectives on responsibilities attributed to local authorities by central governments in England and Scotland. The UK encompasses four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Devolution transferred powers from the UK Parliament to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru. Scottish devolved powers over housing, local government, economic development and environment open up potential for policy divergence in relation to buildings, creating an opportunity for insight into impacts of different governance institutions within the same state (also demonstrated in this Handbook Chapters 3 (McCrone) and 16 (Cowell)).

229

230  Research handbook on energy and society In Scotland, the Energy Efficient Scotland programme envisaged new local authority statutory responsibilities for developing comprehensive Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) (Scottish Government, 2018). The successor to this, the Scottish Heat in Buildings Strategy (currently under consultation) suggests that LHEES will be taken forward (Scottish Government, 2021). In England, specific policies for reducing building emissions remain uncertain, in the context of the market-led approach in the UK Clean Growth Strategy 2017, and Build Back Better: Our Plan for Growth (UK Government, 2021). Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP), geared to decarbonising heat and reducing emissions from buildings, has however been tested as part of the Smart Systems and Heat programme, funded by public and private partners to the former Energy Technologies Institute (ESC, 2019). Comparing Scotland and England provides the basis for analysing governance institutions; their suitability for achieving net zero emissions from buildings; and innovations that may be required. Scottish and UK Government perspectives on local governance are explored using qualitative data from interviews with policy officials. The following section introduces the institutionalist perspective used in analysis, before describing data collection. The respective policies are then outlined, and officials’ perspectives on local authority responsibilities are analysed. The penultimate section discusses findings in relation to the current local authority context, and broader policy targets. The conclusions highlight the contribution of this social science approach to understanding policy divergence and identify institutional innovations in governance needed to support energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation.

CONCEPTUALISING INNOVATIONS IN GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS Institutional theory understands policy making as a socio-political process contingent on historically-embedded networks of actors and institutions (Hirschman and Berman, 2014; Cairney et al., 2019). Institutions are defined as the rules of conduct, infused by particular beliefs and values, which both govern, and result from, processes of political contest. This perspective invites research comparing policy formation under different institutional frameworks, and is valuable for analysing decisions on clean energy policy and practice (Andrews-Speed, 2016; Lockwood et al., 2017). First, net zero emissions targets require more radical and faster action, which will need new forms of policy and ways of working (CCC, 2020). New policies are, however, grounded in pre-existing institutions of government which may be differentially effective in achieving the innovations and changes needed. Second, the institutions – or rules of the game – can be both formal and informal and can shape the definition of valid policy goals and legitimate instruments available to advance them (Hall and Taylor, 1996). The mix of formal and informal rules informs the socio-political process, including contest over policy goals and instruments; hence government policies typically need to serve multiple goals, agreed through negotiation. This suggests that energy policy making can be understood as a process of satisficing, rather than economic optimisation (Rosenow et al., 2016). Third, policy goals are likely to have differential importance, as they form part of a hierarchy which reflects past power struggles (Lockwood et al., 2017). Economic growth through liberalised market competition is, for example, a core policy goal in contemporary capitalist societies, shaping the types of policies regarded as legitimate. Although energy is central to economic performance, policies for energy saving, building retrofit, and heat

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: England and Scotland  231 decarbonisation occupy an uncertain status. For example, they are all axes of division over the balance between public sector- and market-led responsibility for action. Energy efficiency and heat policy may hence exist as a zone of uncertainty and ambiguity or dissent, potentially resulting in stop–start action and limited investment. Thus far, however, few studies have compared the consequences of differential governance institutions for such policy goals and innovations. We contribute to this type of comparative analysis by exploring the perspectives of officials with formal responsibility for energy efficiency and heat policy in Scottish and UK governments. Policies intended to achieve net zero emissions from buildings will require significant socioeconomic change among highly differentiated property owners, businesses, supply chains and building occupants. For politicians, and their officials, this is a complex problem with considerable risk to political capital. Understanding policy making as a process of satisficing suggests that working with and through interlocking and supportive actor networks is likely to be critical to organising consent for change aross sectors (Cowell et al., 2017). Analysis of such networks is a feature of the sociology of institutional fields. A ‘field’ is understood as a rule-governed meso level domain, where there is something at stake among groups with differentially favourable structural positions and resources; what happens in one field is expected to be interdependent with developments in adjacent fields (Fligstein and MacAdam, 2012). In the case of energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation, field theory can be used to explore the interdependencies between government policy makers, local or regional authorities, businesses and civil society interests. Innovations in policy and governance can be understood as shaped by the rule-governed interactions of such interest groups. From this perspective, inter-relations between UK and Scottish governments and respective local authorities are embedded in a history of struggle over local representation, powers, budgets, degrees of autonomy and influence. Shared interests between local, devolved and central governments in particular policy goals are not pre-given. Instead, these have to be negotiated and maintained through political engagement, and mobilisation of cross-sector and cross-government interests in relevant institutional fields. In this case, devolved and central governments in the UK, and local authorities, may consequently develop differential energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation policies, including allocation of responsibilities between local and central scales.

DATA COLLECTION Documentary analysis and expert interviews are used to examine policy making for energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation in Scotland and England. In Scotland, Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) are the proposed local area-based component of the national Energy Efficient Scotland programme. In England, there is no equivalent national policy with a specific local area planning component. Instead, we focus on the Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) element of the UK Smart Systems and Heat programme, comprising development of an area-based planning tool and its testing with three local authorities (two in England and one in Wales). Interviews with Scottish and UK Government officials explored how local actors are being considered in development of governance innovations for energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation. They provide insight into the likely results of efforts to incorporate

232  Research handbook on energy and society local planning for energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation. Interviews with six Scottish Government officials between 2017 and 2019 explored the proposals for development of such local planning, including: origins and objectives; roles and responsibilities; and future plans. Scottish Government interviewees were based in the Directorate for Energy and Climate Change (SG-DECC), and the Heat and Climate Change team within the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor (SG-OCEA). These formed part of a wider evaluation of LHEES pilots (Wade et al., 2019). In UK Government, interviews took place in 2016 with six officials from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK-DECC) and one member of the House of Lords. These concerned UK heat and energy efficiency policy over the past decade (Webb, 2019). In 2019, interviews with four additional officials from the UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (UK-BEIS),1 discussed heat and energy efficiency policy questions associated with the Smart Systems and Heat programme (Cowell and Webb, 2019). All interviews lasted approximately one hour, were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically.

AREA-BASED ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND HEAT DECARBONISATION IN SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND Options for area-based planning in the form of Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies and Local Area Energy Planning pilots are situated in the wider Scottish and UK Government policy initiatives summarised in Table 17.1. Proposals for LHEES in the Energy Efficient Scotland policy framework come closest to institutionalising local government responsibility for area-based energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation. In England policies for locally-led planning and implementation remain more uncertain and piecemeal. The social science perspective used here investigates the logic for divergence in governance between Scotland and England and its likely consequences. The following section outlines differences in existing policy initiatives, before exploring perspectives on the role of local area-based planning. Of the existing initiatives, the most sustained energy efficiency policy relevant to area-based action in both Scotland and England stems from the UK Home Energy Conservation Act (HECA) 1995. Established prior to Scottish devolution in 1999, HECA was concerned with ameliorating fuel poverty (Koh et al., 2012). It requires local authorities to submit annual reports on energy conservation actions across owner-occupier, private- and social-rented sectors (UK Government, 2019). However, no new resources have been directly attached to HECA since it was established, and action and reporting have been uneven. Hence HECA has failed to act as a catalyst for locally-led systematic heat and energy efficiency programmes. Many local authorities in Scotland and England have nevertheless maintained energy efficiency programmes for social housing and their corporate estate (buildings and street lighting) (Tingey and Webb, 2020). In Scotland public funding for fuel-poor areas has been more consistent; local authorities are obliged to produce Local Housing Strategies detailing measures to ameliorate fuel poverty (Scottish Government, 2019), and to ensure their housing stock meets Scotland’s Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing. They also have a duty to reduce their own carbon emissions and to take action in support of national targets. These rules, and associated sustained activity, contribute to established actor networks across governance scales in Scotland.

Coverage

Grant funding, worth a total of £1 billion for public sector bodies to fund energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation measures in public

Public Sector Decarbonisation

Scheme (PSDS)

UK Government

UK Government

Government)

Systems Catapult (funded by UK

UK Government) and Energy

UK-wide but local

England

England

including heat mapping, energy masterplanning, techno-economic feasibility, and detailed project development.

Funding and expertise in developing heat network proposals,

testing heat as a service.

England and Wales

Wales

selected in England and

planning (LAEP) demonstrators with local authorities; living lab for authority demonstrators

Programme of local energy system modelling and local area energy

to interest commercial investors.

(HNDU)

Smart Systems and Heat (SSH)

Energy Technologies Institute

‘unlocking’ investment in local energy through aggregating projects

opportunities for scaling up through shared project delivery; and

energy efficiency, heat and power generation projects; identifying

developing their own approach to: delivering an initial pipeline of

£9 million funding during intial period). Each hub is tasked with

Five mega-regional energy hubs piloting project support (total

local authorities within in their area.

funding from BEIS to develop a single energy strategy covering the

Each of 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships was awarded £50,000

Heat Networks Delivery Unit

Local Energy Hubs

UK Government

(Public–Private Partnership with

Local Energy Strategies

for energy efficiency and decarbonisation of heat.

Strategies (LHEES)

UK Government

Local authority-led development of comprehensive area-based plans Scotland

Local Heat & Energy Efficiency

Scottish Government

Scotland.

Energy efficiency and heat improvements to all building types across Scotland

Energy Efficient Scotland

England

Scottish Government

sector buildings, including schools, hospitals and town halls.

measures.

benefits) for homeowners and landlords to install energy efficiency

Green Homes Grant

Grant funding (up to a value of £5,000 or £10,000 for those receiving England

Focus/scope

UK Government

Policy or Programme

Overview of energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation policies from UK and Scottish Governments

Government-related body

Government or

Table 17.1

2013–ongoing

2011–2019

Initially 2018–2020

2017–2018

2016–ongoing

2016–2036

2020–2021

2020–2022

Years active

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: England and Scotland  233

third sector applicants. Funding offers up to 50% of capex costs – up

Insulation for homes in fuel-poor areas. Delivered by local authorities.

Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)

Home Energy Efficiency

Programme – Area Based Schemes

UK Government

Scottish Government

Unsecured loans of £1M+ for district heating schemes over either

customers) to make eligible energy efficiency and heat improvements Scotland to domestic properties primarily among low-income, fuel-poor and

Warm Front

Energy Supplier Obligation

(currently Energy Company

Obligation – ECO)

UK Government

UK Government

Note:

Mandate for local authorities to improve energy efficiency of owner-occupier, private rental and social housing.

Home Energy Conservation Act

(HECA)

vulnerable householders.

Company Obligation and Green Deal.

in privately owned or rented domestic properties; rolled into Energy

Up to £3,500 energy efficiency improvement for eligible customers

improvements.

Interest-free loans and advice for home energy efficiency

a

Scotland

England, Wales and

England, Wales and

England

Scotland

Loans and advice for small business energy efficiency improvements. Scotland

Separate scheme in Northern Ireland; non-domestic scheme suspended in 2016.

UK Government

Levy on energy bills requiring large suppliers (over 250,000

Home Energy Scotland

Scottish Government

upgrades through savings on energy bills.

Resource Efficient Scotland

Scotland

Scottish Government

England, Wales,

Green Deal

UK Government landlords and tenants to pay for energy efficiency and heating

Scotland

non-domestic)

Wales (domestic and

England, Scotland and

Scotland

England and Wales

Coverage

Programme of government loans intended to enable homeowners,

Financial incentive for renewable heat producers.

landlords, SMEs and ESCos with less than 250 employees.

10- or 15-year loan term. Open to local authorities, registered social

District Heating Loans Fund

to £5m grants, £25,000 - £10 million loans.

£320m gap funding for heat networks, open to public, private and

(HNIP)

Focus/scope

Heat Networks Investment Project

Policy or Programme

Scottish Government

UK Government

Government-related body

Government or

1995–ongoing

2008–ongoing

2000–2013

2017–ongoing

2013–ongoing

2012–2016

2013–ongoing

2011–2021a

2011–ongoing

2019 for up to 3 years

Main scheme from April

Years active

234  Research handbook on energy and society

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: England and Scotland  235 In contrast, UK government policy commitment to, and public funding for, energy efficiency in England has been more uneven. Unlike in Scotland, grant funding ended in England during the 2010–2015 UK Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government (see Webb, 2019). Kirklees Warm Zone was, for example, a large-scale programme (Webber et al., 2015), using Warm Front grants for low-income households in Yorkshire. However, this fund ran only from 2000 to 2013. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO), paid for through energy tariffs, was the only remaining funding. The annual ECO budget (from December 2018 until March 2022 covering England, Scotland and Wales) was halved from a previous projected £1.3 billion to around £640 million (2017 prices), and is now entirely directed to fuel-poor households. Local authorities can work with energy suppliers to define eligible households, but there is no dedicated resource, or requirement, for area-based action. London is a partial exception, due to the Greater London Authority (GLA) utilising its particular powers and resources in order to: incorporate heat mapping into the London Plan; retain a zero carbon homes policy for new build (despite UK Government’s 2015 cancellation), and for non-residential from 2019; and introduce a carbon offset fund for borough councils (GLA, 2018). This variation in local approaches reflects differentiation in resources available across different institutional fields. It also demonstrates the absence of a UK Government supportive policy framework for locally-coordinated energy efficiency and heat strategies in England. Additionally, policies for heat infrastructure decarbonisation remain limited in both Scotland and England. Both governments recognise potential for new urban district heating networks, using waste heat from water, ground or industrial sources, and support project planning and development.2 Nevertheless progress has been limited, partly because of the dominance of mains gas infrastructure, and partly due to absence of heat regulation. Low value-added tax (VAT) of 5 per cent on domestic gas tariffs, and an extensive gas network with an estimated 85 per cent of households using gas for heating (UK Government, 2018), means there is no significant demand for other options. Both governments are now discussing heat regulation and Scottish Government introduced a Heat Networks Bill to Parliament in 2020.3 Absence of UK Government policy relating to the future of the gas grid has also led to uncertainty for all options. The exception is off-grid areas, where property owners are encouraged to switch to electric heat pumps, instead of solid-fuels and oil heating. A UK Heat and Buildings Strategy was promised in 2020, but had not been announced at the time of writing. There are hence significant unresolved questions about governance innovations for net zero emissions from buildings, and ambiguities over the role of local planning, coordination and delivery. Continuing uncertainties reflect the tensions and political sensitivities over the legitimate instruments to deliver such far reaching changes. We explore these next through the perspectives of UK and Scottish policy officials. Scottish Government: Proposed Area-Based Model for Energy Efficiency and Heat Decarbonisation The Scottish Government made energy efficiency a National Infrastructure Priority in 2015, with underpinning beliefs and values articulated by government around co-benefits to society, business and environment (Scottish Government, 2017b). This perspective was reinforced in interviews discussing the stages of policy development from designation of a ‘national priority’ through to investment. The ‘designation’ provided the rationale for the detailed Energy Efficient Scotland 2018 routemap, and resulted in ‘more of a profile in the Programme for

236  Research handbook on energy and society Government’ (Official A, SG-DECC, 2019), as well as supporting continuity of area-based funding for fuel poverty amelioration. Proposals are for a 20-year framework for integrated energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation, with shared national and local responsibilities for planning and implementation. An additional Local Energy Policy Statement reinforces the potential for significant responsibility for local authorities. A proposed statutory requirement for Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) constitutes a local authority-led route to area-based plans, priorities, costing and implementation. A comprehensive LHEES is envisaged as encompassing the following (Scottish Government, 2017a): 1. Assessment of existing strategies and data availability 2. Authority-wide assessment of the existing building stock’s energy performance and heat supply 3. Authority-wide setting of targets for heat demand reduction and decarbonisation – short and long term 4. Socio-economic assessment of potential solutions 5. Prioritisation of opportunities leading to designation of zones for specific low carbon heat systems 6. Costing and phasing of delivery programmes. Three rounds of pilot projects (2017–2021), with local authority funding of £50,000–£70,000, have enabled all 32 Scottish local authorities to gain experience, prior to potential introduction of a new statutory duty. LHEES pilots were regarded as crucial for identifying and understanding: ‘the components of local strategic oversight … the content of a strategy and how you actually develop one and prepare one, and what the elements of that are, and how you acquire the detail’ (Official B, Heat Regulation, SG-DECC, 2018). Specific retrofitting strategies and technologies are not pre-given, but policy is developing around ‘low regrets’ options, such as district heating in dense urban areas and electric heat pumps in rural areas not served by the gas grid. Strategic objectives, including long-term commitment, were also presented as a critical component of the ‘economy-wide transformation’ (Official B, Heat Regulation, SG-DECC, 2018) needed to achieve targets in the 2018 Climate Change Plan, updated in 2020. Referencing comments from the Committee on Climate Change on the need to ‘take carbon out of the Scottish economy’, this official critiqued the ‘silo-based thinking’ perceived to result from national performance metrics and prioritisation of economic growth over social welfare and climate protection. This diagnosis, combined with objectives for cross-sector action, legitimised LHEES as a strategy to transform action at local scale: ‘what we’re working towards is creating a toolkit or a set of mechanisms that’s so valuable it becomes the way you do things’ (Official C, SG-DECC, 2019). Critically, this ‘toolkit’ (LHEES), developed iteratively through technical evaluation, piloting and consultation, was depicted as a new way of working to enable area-based, cross-sector strategic planning. In addition, it would serve as a means to generate consistent benefits across Scotland. A ‘key outcome’ was characterised as: ‘long-term certainty and visibility of supply chain opportunities, … providing a strategic focus, and [the] evidence base for local authority-led investment planning’ (Official A, SG-DECC, 2019). There was less concern, another official suggested, about specific delivery mechanisms or timing, provided ‘there are plans to do the whole shebang’ (Official D, SG-DECC, 2017). For these officials, the critical institutional development, underpinned by values of social inclu-

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: England and Scotland  237 sion, is a commitment to think strategically on a long-term basis about how energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation would be achieved through public governance in every Scottish locality. LHEES as the ‘toolkit’ was envisaged as key to unlocking this desired innovation, and capturing integrated social, environmental and economic benefits. UK Government: Ambivalence about Area-Based Heat and Energy Efficiency across England In contrast, recent UK governments have expressed uncertainty over the value of, or need for, local planning and implementation for energy efficiency and heat. In 2016 this was indicated in interviews with DECC officials following the closure of Warm Front and halving of the ECO budget. It was reinforced in 2019 interviews with BEIS officials, when one heat policy official commented that the notional local authority actor continues to be ‘a citizen of nowhere’ (Official 1, UK-BEIS, 2019), indicating uncertainty in central government about the need for local governance and coordination of heat and energy efficiency transformation. In 2016 interviews, market-led values in UK Government were noted by referencing the Secretary of State for Energy’s preference for ‘government not interfering in markets any more than it needs to’ (Official 1, UK-DECC). Accordingly ‘there was no pot of money announced in the Spending Review for supporting big home energy efficiency improvements. That’s not to say the government couldn’t find money at some point, but there’s no money at the moment in the Budget’ (Official 1, UK-DECC). Planned targets and timetables to upgrade building stock were not regarded as cost efficient. Instead, market innovations were expected to lead to price reductions, justifying delay on an opportunity cost basis. From this perspective, the primary purpose of policy was to stimulate markets, with the expectation that markets would reveal what constituted cost-effective retrofit. The main test of area-based planning was through the industry-led Smart Systems and Heat programme (2011–2019), which aimed to stimulate market and technology innovations. Smart Systems and Heat was initiated by the Energy Technologies Institute, a Public–Private Partnership set up in 2007 between the UK Labour Government and energy businesses. The Smart Systems and Heat programme entailed recruitment and development of a cross-sector actor network concerned with low carbon heat systems, and exemplified a proposed governance innovation largely independent of government. Notably, the scheme was not co-designed with, or intended to contribute to, UK Government’s 2013 Heat Strategy or the Renewable Heat Incentive development: ‘it always felt like there was a disconnect between the [Smart Systems and Heat] programme and what it was trying to do and what government was trying to do in terms of policy’ (Official 2, UK-BEIS, 2019). Smart Systems and Heat envisaged whole systems engineering tools (rather than the local policy tools advocated in Scotland) as key to unlocking low carbon heat planning and decision-making. Local authorities were, however, envisaged as critical intermediaries, able to bring cross-sector interests together in a meso-scale field. The resulting EnergyPath Networks tool was tested over five years with three local authorities (two in England and one in Wales). The local authorities, however, questioned the value of the tool as a means to securing local priorities for integrated social, economic and environmental benefits (Cowell and Webb, 2019). Although energy plans were devised for the three areas, they have not thus far acted as catalysts for policy to support generic area-based heat planning. Overall the outcomes suggest that the use value of any heat systems planning tool is likely to be improved by more collab-

238  Research handbook on energy and society orative development, in turn supporting formation of an institutional field with viable actor networks at meso-scale (see Silvast, Chapter 25 for more on the development of integrated energy systems modelling). An exception to UK Government’s agnostic stance on the value of localised energy planning was the 2016 Treasury allocation of £320 million for heat network investment in England and Wales. The commitment was negotiated by a team of officials who sought to assemble a ‘business case’ aligned with political commitment to market instruments. The then head of the team commented: ‘I was pleasantly surprised [when the fund was announced], but I wasn’t shocked, because I thought we’d made quite a good case for it being slightly more within Treasury’s comfort zone … being capital infrastructure for new low carbon projects, which will leverage in other people’s money as well’ (Official 2, Heat Team, UK-DECC, 2016). Thus, district heating networks, largely undeveloped in the UK, but nevertheless identified in policy appraisals as a ‘low regrets’ measure for area-based decarbonisation, received public funding. Money has, however, been allocated very slowly with only £64 million awarded over four years.4 There is no presumption that it will act as a precursor to comprehensive local planning for energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation.

SCOTTISH AND UK GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVES ON COORDINATING STRATEGY ACROSS SCALES UK and Scottish Government officials articulated differing beliefs about the value of investing in local authority resources and skills for area-based responsibilities. The Scottish stance on the necessity for local governance has been integral to LHEES proposals. UK Government officials, however, articulated more varied perspectives on local governance capacities and their significance. Scottish Government: Formalising Local Empowerment Across the UK, local authority powers and responsibilities are defined mainly through parliamentary statutes, with limited scope for local discretion. In the conext of heat and energy efficiency policy, Scottish Government has proposed a new local statutory responsibility for development of LHEES. If this proceeds, LHEES would comprise the central policy instrument for fuel poverty and energy efficiency targets, as well as supporting capacity building and skills and supply chains intended to benefit local economies (Scottish Government, 2017a). Local empowerment is a recurring theme in rationales for LHEES: ‘local authorities, over quite an extended period lost a lot of the[ir] powers, and this was us looking at empowering them again’ (Official C, SG-DECC, 2019). Using LHEES as the innovation underpinning an envisaged supportive actor network, government officials could: ‘start to understand the local authority’s role as a partner in the programme and help to build an understanding across the local authority in how they need to deliver that’ (Official A, SG-DECC, 2019). Local accrual of knowledge and expertise was also believed to be necessary to ensure local authority ownership of the outcomes of LHEES and corresponding action. Variation in skills and capacities, and need for development, was recognised: ‘there’s acknowledgement that some [local authorities] could probably do it now and be absolutely fine, but there’s quite a lot of them that would struggle and so need support’ (Official E, SG-OCEA, 2017). In the imme-

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: England and Scotland  239 diate term this posed risks; during the pilots typically only a single local authority officer had responsibility for the work. As a coordinating policy actor, Scottish Government was envisaged as managing the risks of locally uneven development through centralised institutions: ‘one of the most important parts of learning is around what it teaches us about local authority capacity, and where there is a need for new resource or reconfigured resource at a central level’ (Official B, Heat Regulation, SG-DECC, 2018). A key example of institutional innovation is the development of a standardised socioeconomic analysis tool for costing and prioritising LHEES according to the societal value of reduced emissions and fuel poverty reduction, rather than short-term cost and pay back. Centralised control over local authority budgets, however, means that political negotiations over resources are integral to creation of any statutory duty. In Scottish Government, officials were aware that only through statutory powers would LHEES be institutionalised at executive level in local authorities, and hence be made consequential. Local politicians, on the other hand, are resistant to any new statutory duty in the absence of commensurate resources. Resolving this question will be critical to the future of LHEES innovations. UK Government: Perspectives on Different Roles of Local, Regional and Central Governments UK and Scottish Government officials held similar views about the uneven capacities of local authorities for coordinating heat and energy efficiency programmes: ‘It’s clear that it can be a really good way to deliver and make sure everything happens in a responsible way … But at other times local authorities just don’t have the capacity or the understanding’ (Official 3, UK-DECC, 2016). In England, however, political tensions between central and local governments, and variations in capacity, were perceived as sources of significant risk, potentially resulting in highly uneven action, and inequitable outcomes: That’s fine if everyone in Manchester is happy with their solution. But it’s not fine if everyone in Leeds isn’t happy with their solution, and everyone in Sheffield doesn’t have one at all, then what do we do? ... Somebody has got to be thinking about what this all adds up to. And for good reason, individual local authorities aren’t best [placed] to think about that, because it’s not really their job. (Official 1, UK-BEIS, 2019)

This official emphasised the challenge of ensuring parity and progress across different areas, and the value of central government direction and control. Heat decarbonisation is, however, often considered to require local authority planning and decision-making, on the grounds of local knowledge of building stock, ‘waste’ heat and bioenergy sources, and development planning powers. For areas suited to district heating, attributed co-benefits such as reduced fuel poverty, urban regeneration and socioeconomic resilience could then also accrue locally, and this was used as an argument for devolution of powers: That in turn plays into the devolving decision making down to local areas. In particular in the North you’ve got the link between industrial challenges … Linked to that…you want heat and power available and resilient. So there’s a local resilience argument as well as a wider resource efficiency argument for using CHP [Combined Heat and Power]. (Official 2, Heat Team, UK-DECC, 2016)

240  Research handbook on energy and society The value of local authority involvement in planning for net zero buildings, however, remains contested in UK central government: There is an assumption … that there is a better solution for one area than another area … I’m not sure I really buy into zon[ing] a city [to] come up with different approaches. You can see some reasons, heat networks is obvious… But, I think there were some… assumptions [about the value of locally-led planning] that were made in the first place which perhaps weren’t tested. (Official 2, UK-BEIS, 2019)

Uncertainty about local authority roles was mirrored by another official, who commented on a perceived lack of evidence about why local authorities were best placed to develop plans, but also about how existing powers (in housing, transport and waste) could be utilised for area-based energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation. These suggestions of untested assumptions and uncertain evidence, and different perspectives within government (DECC and BEIS) and over time, illustrate the continuing tensions over allocation of responsibility to English local authorities for heat and energy efficiency strategies.

DISCUSSION Meeting net zero emission targets for buildings will require major upgrades to improve energy efficiency and decarbonise heating systems. There is, however, policy uncertainty and contestation over responsibilities across scales of government, and policy divergence between Scotland and England. This chapter applied an institutional fields perspective to explore how formal and normative rules of governing shape the scope for coordinated action across central and local governments. In both UK and Scottish government policy statements, reducing energy use is regarded as crucial for the viability of low carbon heating. The argument that varied solutions are likely to suit different places, and that locally-led planning and decision making is valuable, is not however universally accepted. In the UK Government, institutional fields have long centred around market discovery of the mix of solutions suited to least (short-term) cost (Hood and Dixon, 2015). This has been associated with uncertainty and delay in heat policy development, including ambivalence over the role of local authorities and the value of area-based planning. Energy efficiency policies have largely stalled in England since the 2010 UK Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government. Some local authorities have acted despite the lack of a consistent policy framework, promoting the value of local governance institutions through independent strategies using new sources of finance (see Tingey and Webb, 2020). The industry-led Smart Systems and Heat programme has been part of the mix, epitomising the priority given to market institutions as a key instrument of climate policy. The Smart Systems and Heat programme was not aligned with government heat policy development, missing a strategic opportunity to inform institutional innovation. Further, the use value of the resulting systems engineering tool was questioned by the local authorities engaged in testing its application to local energy planning. The tool has not yet been a means to stimulate new institutional fields with committed actor networks unlocking local planning and investment. In contrast, institutional developments in Scotland have sought to position local authorities as partners in coordinated governance, creating a potential route to systemic innovation through interlocking actor networks. The Scottish Government has fewer powers and resources than the UK Government, creating greater structural inter-dependency across scales and a motive

Local heat and energy efficiency policy: England and Scotland  241 for coordination (Nutley et al., 2012; Martin et al., 2013). As an emerging policy instrument, the proposed LHEES duty is a crucial mechanism for institutionalising local governance of energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation, in a division of responsibilities between central and local scales. In both England and Scotland, local authority capacity has, however, been eroded through austerity rules in public finances. This has been most severe in England with a 49 per cent reduction in central government funding between 2010 and 2018 (NAO, 2018), compared with a 10 per cent reduction in Scotland (Audit Scotland, 2018). Adapting to such austerity has restricted service provision to essential statutory duties; any future statutory duties will require additional resources. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, both UK and Scottish government officials perceived uneven local political engagement and leadership. In England, this is associated with significant uncertainty over the capacity of local authorities to deliver; and scepticism about the value of coordinated planning across scales. In Scotland, there was uncertainty over appropriate central support mechanisms to address any potential imbalances. Consequently, much remains to be done towards a workable consensus and innovation for systematic local heat planning with appropriate analytic tools and resources to support it. Beyond policy formation, strategies for implementing cross-sector energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation are limited in both England and Scotland, with notable absence of certain actors in current institutional fields. In particular, coordination between UK Government energy and climate change (DECC or BEIS) and housing, communities and local government specialisms appears limited. Lack of visibility of UK Government housing and communities policy makers in heat and energy efficiency policy perhaps contributes to uncertainty about local authority roles. If, as an institutionalist perspective suggests, interlocking actor networks are instrumental in such governance innovations, then disconnected specialisms inside government are likely to stymie progress. In Scotland, however, government heat and energy efficiency policy officials commented on associated institutional changes emerging through interaction across specialisms from economic development to housing, welfare, and energy and climate change. The proposed LHEES duty would, for example, be a joint responsibility of the Minister for Housing and Local Government, and the Minister for Business, Innovation & Energy. The institutional perspective makes such government structures and responsibilities central to analysis. Examining these dynamics reveals the likely differential effectiveness of institutions of government, in this case Scottish and UK, in achieving the innovations needed to deliver energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation. In both cases, elements of ambiguity and uncertainty in the distribution of responsibility and resource amongst central and local governments are apparent.

CONCLUSIONS Exisiting governance institutions are unlikely to support a collective ability to respond to the challenge of net zero emissions from buildings, and there is growing awareness of the need for institutional innovations. We have argued that insight into ‘what works’ for heat and energy efficiency policy requires understanding of interlocking political and policy making dynamics, beyond techno-economic assessment of policy options. The concept of institutional fields as

242  Research handbook on energy and society sites of strategic action offers one route to explore the perspectives of different policy actors, and to understand development, and potential outcomes. Focusing on the perspectives of policy officials in Scottish and UK governments, our analysis showed the continuing uncertainties about policy instruments and their effectiveness, as well as distinct approaches to governance innovations. There is relatively greater emphasis on partnership between central and local governments in Scotland, and greater uncertainty, if not division, over strategy in England, including the scope for local authority leadership and sharing of responsibility. In Scotland, there is continuing negotiation over whether LHEES will become a statutory duty. It is unclear whether resources will be available to make LHEES materially effective, in the context of budget reductions that have restricted local empowerment. In England, energy efficiency policy has been weakened and public funding withdrawn until now, and a heat decarbonisation policy framework (promised for 2020), has not yet emerged. Critical challenges include: UK Government decisions on the role of local authorities; halting severe local authority budget cuts; and managing regional disparities as some local authorities pursue low carbon policy, whilst others remain largely passive. The institutionalist perspective has highlighted the significant contrasts between Scottish and UK government policy strategies. Despite these differences, all current developments lack the urgency needed to meet ambitious legal carbon budget commitments. Major governance innovation for heat and energy efficiency policy is still required.

NOTES 1.

In 2016 the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change was incorporated into the newly established UK Deparment for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. 2. See https://​www​.gov​.uk/​guidance/​heat​-networks​-delivery​-unit; https://​www​.gov​.uk/​government/​ publications/​heat​-networks​-investment​-project​-hnip​-scheme​-overview; http://​www​.dis​trictheati​ ngscotland​.com/​https://​energysavingtrust​.org​.uk/​scotland/​grants​-loans/​district​-heating​-loan. 3. See https://​www​.parliament​.scot/​pa​rliamentar​ybusiness/​Bills/​114590​.aspx. 4. See https://​tp​-heatnetworks​.org/​triple​-point​-heat​-networks​-awards​-40​-million​-to​-projects/​; https://​ www​.gov​.uk/​government/​news/​clean​-energy​-projects​-receive​-24​-million​-to​-keep​-towns​-warm. There is also now a Heat Networks fund: https://​www​.theade​.co​.uk/​news/​ade​-news/​millions​-of​ -homes​-to​-be​-heated​-by​-low​-cost​-low​-carbon​-heat​-networks.

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18. Energy policy for buildings fit for the future Tina Fawcett and Marina Topouzi

18.1 INTRODUCTION Buildings provide shelter, comfort, pleasure, and spaces to work, rest and play. They are the site of most economic activities, important expressions of culture and where people spend most of their time. However, providing these valuable services requires energy: globally, buildings’ construction and operations accounted for 36 per cent of global final energy use and nearly 40 per cent of energy‐related carbon dioxide emissions in 2017 (IEA, 2018). In the EU-27, buildings accounted for 40 per cent of final energy use in 2018, 26 per cent from residential and 14 per cent from non-residential buildings (European Union, 2020). Reaching zero or net zero greenhouse gas emissions from the buildings sector is integral to reducing the risk of dangerous climate change. This chapter explores how policy and governance change can help deliver buildings fit for the future, with a focus on Europe. Globally, energy use from the building sector is increasing (IEA, 2019). In Europe, final energy use in residential buildings was similar in 2018 as in 2000, but energy use in commercial premises rose over the period (European Union, 2020). Upwards pressures on residential energy consumption result from economic and population growth as well as demographic change, leading to more and larger buildings and more appliances per household. Only energy efficiency is driving energy use downwards. Similarly, for commercial buildings, increased energy use reflects economic growth and increased commercial activity. This is only partly offset by increased energy efficiency (Rousselot, 2018). As governments have no plans to reduce economic or population growth, reducing energy use in buildings and supplying the remaining demand with zero carbon energy, by 2050 at the latest, is a huge ask for energy policy. In Europe the biggest opportunity for energy and carbon savings comes from the existing building stock, primarily from energy efficiency improvements and the adoption of low-carbon heating systems. This is because over 75 per cent of the 2050 building stock has already been built and space heating is the dominant energy demand. The current average EU building energy renovation rate is approximately 1 per cent, with much lower rates of ‘deep renovation’, where energy use is reduced by more than 60 per cent (Ipsos Belgium and Navigant, 2019). Nearly all the current building stock must be renovated by 2050. This is equivalent to a renovation rate of more than 3 per cent per year. In addition, tens of millions of new fossil-fuel heating systems continue to be installed every year across Europe. These must all be replaced or modified to run on low-carbon fuels (to the extent that is possible). Alternatives such as heat pumps or biomass or hydrogen boilers, are currently more expensive, complex and problematic than the incumbent technologies. Evidently, acceleration of deep retrofit and replacement of fossil fuel heating systems will not happen in the absence of ambitious policy. New buildings too are a challenge for policy. Unless new buildings result in no additional carbon emissions, they simply add to the problem. The low energy ‘passive house’ concept has been very influential, but numbers of homes certified as being built to this high standard 245

246  Research handbook on energy and society remains low, in the tens of thousands (Passive House Database, 2020). In the UK, a policy requiring ‘zero carbon homes’, first announced in 2006, was abandoned in 2015 just prior to planned introduction in 2016, reportedly following opposition from the housebuilding industry (ECIU, 2019). The EU standard of ‘nearly zero energy buildings’, while delivering considerable improvements, will not ensure zero emissions from the sector (Magrini et al., 2020). Buildings’ total energy consumption encompasses different phases of their lifetime: design and construction; use and management; repair, maintenance and retrofit; disposal and recycling (Gram-Hanssen et al., 2018). The energy ‘embodied’ in buildings, through their materials, is particularly important in new buildings where operational energy use is, at least in theory, low (Röck et al., 2020). Thus, the challenge goes beyond the reducing and de-carbonising energy required in daily use of buildings, to encompassing buildings’ whole life cycles. The wider energy system also needs to change. It is expected to become more decentralised with electrification, flexibility, storage, and smart systems all increasingly important (Eyre et al., 2019). These changes will affect buildings, which, for example, are expected to provide flexibility and storage services to the electricity grid. This could mean heating and cooling systems which switch off at times of peak electricity demand, incorporated in a building which can still provide comfortable conditions, and building users who welcome this new flexibility. Buildings and their occupants will also have to adapt to climate change, including higher average temperatures, more heat waves and extreme weather events. The future for buildings will be one of challenge and change, but with positive opportunities for both mitigation and adaptation to deliver social and environmental benefits. Buildings do not exist in isolation. They are part of a complex system of buildings, towns and networks that societies have constructed for their own needs (Hammond et al., 2012). They are situated within social and economic infrastructures. These complex and inter-connected systems influence the form and function of buildings and the services and energy services they are expected to provide. Policy beyond buildings and the energy system – ‘non-energy’ or ‘invisible’ energy policy (Royston et al., 2018) – is also important, but beyond the scope of this chapter (and is elaborated in Royston and Selby, Chapter 19). To explore energy policy for buildings fit for the future within this wider context, this chapter begins by making the case that energy use in buildings is a socio-technical challenge (Section 18.2). Then current building policy and its governance is briefly described, with gaps identified (Section 18.3). Evidence is presented from innovative projects and policies across Europe which showcase examples of energy efficiency, energy sufficiency and switching to low-carbon energy. These examples demonstrate various business models and focus on different actors and groups of actors (Section 18.4). Building on this evidence and the wider literature, principles for future policy design and development are introduced in Section 18.5. We end with a discussion and conclusions section which brings together key themes, highlights positive examples and suggests ways forward.

18.2

ENERGY USE IN BUILDINGS AS A SOCIO-TECHNICAL CHALLENGE

A socio-technical understanding of energy use in buildings is critical to designing effective policy and governance interventions. Before making this case in detail, alternative ways of thinking about buildings as technical or techno-economic systems are briefly explored.

Energy policy for buildings fit for the future  247 Buildings and the energy-using equipment within them are often understood as technical systems. Undoubtedly, technical characteristics and performance are very important, but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle technical approaches from the social world when seeking to deliver buildings fit for the future. For example, setting technical standards or design specifications is not sufficient to ensure buildings perform as intended. There is a significant literature on the ‘design–performance gap’, the phenomenon whereby new building and building renovations fail to deliver the energy performance expected (Gram-Hanssen and Georg, 2018). New housing in the UK, for example, routinely uses up to three times more energy than predicted (Stevenson, 2019). The design–performance gap is caused by some combination of poor-quality technical modelling, deviations between design and actual build/ construction, and occupant behaviour not matching modelled assumptions (Mallaburn et al., 2019). This gap between expected and actual performance cannot be understood or resolved solely via technical means. Improvement to the quality of building modelling is important but not sufficient. Even models that are good at predicting energy use in a set of standard use patterns, are less good at predicting energy use in real life. Energy demand can vary significantly even in similar buildings (Janda, 2011). Creating buildings which match their design specification is also a socio-technical challenge, involving improved communication of plans, appropriate technical details, and a skilled and responsive work force, amongst other things (Topouzi et al., 2019). A technical focus, while necessary, is not sufficient to either delivering a full understanding of energy use in buildings, or to ensuring that technical standards are delivered in practice. The second particularly prevalent approach to understanding buildings as techno-economic systems is in modelling of energy use in buildings via so-called PTEM models (physical, technical and economic models). These PTEM models link technical aspects of buildings with the economics of improving them, particularly their energy efficiency. This is done through modelling which allows analysis of least cost, or least lifecycle cost for setting building performance standards. Economic cost–benefit assessment methods, which look at the costs of additional efficiency versus the benefits of expected energy savings, are central to policy decision making. For example, in the EU, cost–benefit analysis within the PRIMES economic-engineering energy system model is used to support decisions on setting energy efficiency standards and targets (European Commission, 2017). This techno-economic framing works less well in understanding of decisions by individuals or organisations. There is little evidence that understanding either people or organisations as rational economic actors is a good representation of reality (Banks et al., 2012). Treating decision-makers (whether professional policymakers, construction engineers or households) as being solely motivated by economic considerations is a misunderstanding of the data. This over-simplification can lead to poorly conceived policy interventions and was one of the key factors leading to the failure of the UK ‘Green Deal’ household loan policy (Rosenow and Eyre, 2016). Contra to both the technical and techno-economic systems framing, treating energy use in buildings as a socio-technical challenge means that research and policy should include more detailed understanding of the interactions between buildings and the social world. The key argument is summed up in the title of Janda’s 2011 paper: ‘Buildings don’t use energy, people do’. The impact and potential for change of the built environment cannot be fully understood

248  Research handbook on energy and society without also considering the people and organisations who specify, build, maintain, renovate, own, rent, live and work in these buildings. Taking a socio-technical perspective is particularly important when thinking about policy and governance of the more complex areas of change, where many different actors, interests and relationships are involved. This makes it more important for building retrofit than, say for example, in setting efficiency standards for appliances. The interactions of people or organisations with buildings can be usefully considered in three ways: ● People as users of buildings and energy-using equipment and systems within buildings, their habitual behaviours or energy-using practices; ● People and organisations as investors and decision-makers, making choices for example about energy efficiency upgrades; ● People as built environment professionals or tradespeople, covering a wide range of roles from design, to construction, repair, maintenance and installation. A number of different theories have been used to investigate building users and investors in buildings, with rather less theoretical attention paid to building professions. Economic theory is most often used in connection with investment decision making (Banks et al, 2012). Theories brought to bear on people as users of buildings include social practice theory, theory of planned behaviour, actor network theory, behavioural economics, and theories of habit (Darnton, 2008). These understandings are based on different theoretical traditions. Unlike some technical or techno-economic approaches outlined above, none of these socio-technical approaches frame users as the ‘problem’, who fail to use equipment or buildings properly, or are resistant to change and need to be persuaded to ‘accept’ new technologies. Which theories are most helpful will depend on the problem policy is trying to solve. Whether or not explicitly referencing particular theories, policies and programmes can embody a socio-technical approach to delivering change – examples of innovative programmes which do so are explored later. In the following section, there is a summary of key elements of UK and European buildings energy policy. Then the current approach to policymaking and governance is set out, followed by an account of important gaps in policy.

18.3

CURRENT BUILDING POLICY AND GOVERNANCE

For an overview of buildings energy policy, it is helpful to make three distinctions between: (1) new and existing buildings, (2) residential and non-residential buildings, and (3) space heating/cooling and other energy end uses. In theory, the energy use and carbon emissions from new buildings, both residential and non-residential, can be managed via setting ambitious mandatory standards at the point of construction. Existing buildings are a more difficult challenge, being highly heterogenous, more technically complex and costly to retrofit. There may also be trade-offs between valued heritage characteristics and low energy retrofit. Non-residential buildings are much more varied than those in the residential sector in terms of building types and sizes, uses, users and the energy-using equipment within. Moving on to energy end-uses, energy use in lighting, cooking equipment and appliances is generally independent of the building it is placed in, so can be addressed via product policy. Heating and cooling, on the other hand, is intertwined with the building and its control systems, and

Energy policy for buildings fit for the future  249 is highly seasonal, posing a much greater challenge to deliver with zero carbon energy. In summary, new buildings, residential buildings and lighting and appliances are easier (but not easy) targets of policy, and existing buildings, non-residential buildings and heating and cooling are more difficult. Energy efficiency improvement has been, and continues to be, the main policy approach to reducing energy use in buildings (Cowell, Chapter 16 discusses renewable energy policy). Energy efficiency has delivered significant energy savings in some building sectors, for example energy use has been reducing by 1–2 per cent per annum in the UK residential sector from the mid 2000s onwards (BEIS, 2019). There is considerable potential for it to deliver significant additional savings (Rosenow et al., 2018). In addition, efficiency offers benefits beyond energy saving, including lower running costs, better thermal comfort, improved worker productivity and reduced fuel poverty in households. Energy efficiency policy, therefore, can meet multiple social and environmental goals (IEA, 2014). Governments generally employ a mix of policies to deliver efficiency, including information provision, mandatory benchmarking, provision of financial support as well as minimum standards for new build (Rosenow et al., 2016). In the EU, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive requires all new buildings from 2021 to be ‘nearly zero-energy buildings’. Under the Energy Efficiency Directive member states are required to create national building renovation strategies and plans, with mandatory annual renovation targets for government buildings. These are delivered via a variety of policy mixes. Product policy includes energy labelling requirements, accompanying minimum efficiency standards which progressively increase over time, and, at national level, includes financial incentives for purchasing the most efficient products. There are also non-governmental schemes promoting efficiency, such as the Passive House voluntary standard for new homes and renovations (Passivhaus Trust, 2020). There are many analyses of current gaps in policy and suggestions for improvement, from overviews at a global, European or national level, to detailed assessments of individual policies (e.g. IEA, 2018; CCC, 2019; Thomas and Rosenow, 2019). Specific gaps in policy and governance, and associated recommendations include: ● More emphasis on widescale retrofit and installation of low-carbon heating systems ● Addressing the habitual use of energy, and the work of building professionals and craftspeople, in addition to the current focus on investment decisions ● More attention, funding and institutional reform to deliver the skills, training and workforce needed to improve buildings and build to high quality (Killip, 2020) ● A greater focus on measurement, verification and enforcement of policies to improve the effectiveness of existing policies (Thomas and Rosenow, 2019) ● Local and regional/devolved government could contribute to more systematic, comprehensive and faster improvements in energy saving through explicit multi-level frameworks for action (Webb et al., 2017) ● Moving policy beyond energy efficiency, to include changing energy-using activities, switching fuel and flexing energy demand in time. Together these approaches can deliver reduced energy demand and enable switching to variable and renewable sources of energy supply (Eyre et al., 2019) ● Governance to be re-thought as the ambition and reach of policy is expanded. New experiments in governance, for example city-level and national citizens’ climate assemblies may be a route to democratic agreement for significant change (Climate Assembly UK, 2020)

250  Research handbook on energy and society In summary, to deliver significant change, the ambition of current policy approaches must be increased, the boundaries of policy must be considerably expanded, and a wider range of actors and roles involved. Next we detail case studies of pioneering policies and projects focused on improving energy efficiency; changing energy using-activities; and switching fuels.

18.4

CASE STUDIES OF PIONEERING PROJECTS AND POLICIES

18.4.1 Innovation in Retrofitting Existing Buildings Retrofitting the existing building stock to high standards is crucial to meeting EU 2050 net zero goals. A European Horizon 2020 project (STUNNING), has reviewed retrofit projects to identify barriers at the implementation stage (Laffont-Eloire et al., 2019). This analysis is based on real life examples including the most common combinations of technologies and cost-effective retrofit solutions. The key obstacles affecting retrofit uptake and fuel switching towards a sustainable energy future are summarised in Table 18.1. The obstacles affecting decision making are in most cases driven by socio-technical factors. Table 18.1

Obstacles to successful uptake of building retrofit opportunities in Europe, by actor

Actors involved

Obstacles

Homeowners, landlords,

Technical uncertainties and cost – interlinked and caused by performance gaps and product

tenants, end users

specification Lack of investment – due to high cost of opportunities and/or limited financing available Renovation time – innovation of refurbishment technologies, materials and equipment solutions that considerably increase construction time Local market inefficiencies – necessary retrofit materials or equipment not available in local market Split incentives between actors – e.g. the tenant vs landlord Information gaps – lack of knowledge, or dissemination of the benefits of deep renovations to end users

Building environment

Lack of organisation and structure of the retrofit market – market fragmentation, time and pressure on

professionals tradespeople

profit margins, and procurement barriers especially for SMEs (small and medium enterprises)

(e.g. architects, builders)

Lack of supportive regulation and continuity – limited government subsidies and programmes, local norms impeding optimal solutions or innovative technologies penetration Lack of skills and training – low implementation of optimal solutions or penetration of innovative technologies Inefficient communication and administrative confusion over sharing responsibility – between departments of the municipality

Source: Authors’ review and analysis of STUNNING project materials (Laffont-Eloire et al., 2019; Marchi and Dall’Oro, 2019; STUNNING, 2019).

Four clusters of business models or innovative approaches to retrofit, which have successfully overcome these barriers, have been identified. These involve different combinations of actors and approaches to retrofit and its financing, and can be summarised as: 1. One-stop shop. Providing retrofit customers a single point of contact. This concept can be realised in various ways: as a complementary business (e.g. offered by utilities); via

Energy policy for buildings fit for the future  251 a private–public partnership with multi-disciplinary team cooperation; a joint venture of retailers with industry and contractors; or a one-stop shop based on a ‘step-by-step’ retrofit approach and ICT tools. 2. Product Service Systems or Energy Service Companies (ESCO). Models where an energy or product service supplier makes the capital investment in retrofit, recouped through ongoing payment for service. Other examples include Energy Supply Contracting, Energy Performance Contracting and Integrated Energy Contracting. 3. New financing schemes. Making retrofit more affordable. Examples include: leasing of renewable energy equipment; on-bill financing of efficiency and renewable energy investments; property assessed clean energy financing. 4. New and innovative revenue models. Sources of additional value are created alongside the retrofit. Cases include the ‘add-on’ model where building extension and/or construction of additional building units is incorporated into the renovation strategy; adding building-level renewable generation to benefit from feed-in tariff payments; developing properties certified with a green building label; building owner profiting from rent increases after the implementation of energy efficiency. The replicability and applicability of these models depends on geographical location and the number of types of buildings to which they are suited. The two most promising business models, which have been tested most widely, are the one-stop shop trialled in Northern, Southern, Western, and Eastern EU countries, and the product service systems and energy service companies models trialled in Southern and Eastern countries (Laffont-Eloire et al., 2019). The detailed factors which led to success, the relevant building sectors and actors involved are outlined in Table 18.2. This details three variations of the one-stop shop model and one example each of the new revenue model and energy performance contracting. These models create different links and relationships between actors. In all cases, homeowners/buildings owners and building professionals/contractors are an integral part of retrofit model interactions. In some, multi-disciplinary teams or social enterprises were key to overcoming regulatory complexities. These models take an inherently socio-technical approach as they develop solutions based on combinations of technical, social, financial and regulatory/ administrative processes. They show that detailed attention is needed to actors, institutions and relationships, as well as to technical systems and financing options, from the planning stage right through to delivery. 18.4.2 Sufficiency in Buildings Moving beyond efficiency, recent work has applied the concept of sufficiency to energy use in buildings. Darby and Fawcett (2018, p. 8) explored the idea of energy sufficiency, defined as the ‘state in which people’s basic needs for energy services are met equitably and ecological limits are respected’. To move towards energy sufficiency – the safe space for humanity in terms of energy use – it is necessary to think about both the quantity and the quality of energy services delivered. Bierwirth and Thomas (2019) suggest there are many ways to move towards greater energy sufficiency in buildings. This includes examining the types of building to be built, the way they are built, the equipment used to heat them, and user behaviours and interactions between users and buildings. Building users can choose to occupy less space and

252  Research handbook on energy and society Table 18.2

Successful renovation business models, characteristics and key implementation lessons

Business model

Building sectors and actors involved Keys to successful implementation

One-stop shop model

Residential housing (single family

Organisation of the retrofit process itself

based on public–private

houses)

Level of information and leadership involved

partnerships

Actors: private homeowners,

Keeping active engagement and personal commitment, and

designers, contractors, supplier of

competence of all stakeholders (building owners, designers and

one-stop shop

contractors) during all stages of the project Planning and coordination of works aligned with the ambitions of

One-stop shop model

Residential housing (single

contractors on site Monitoring process of the retrofitting works to assure quality of

based on a step-by-step

family houses/apartments), public

installation works and operational use

retrofit approach

buildings/offices

Keeping repair and maintenance stages in line with the real lifespan

Actors: building owners (social/

of building components, systems and services

private), designer/planners, contractors One-stop shop

Residential housing (Social housing Combination of different expertise and professional capabilities in

model provided by

terraced houses and apartments)

line with integrated solutions for whole house refurbishment. This

multidisciplinary

Actors: social housing owners,

combination tackled complexity and set a new built standard in

team cooperation (i.e.

installers, contractors, local team

this market

Energiespronga)

(creation and facilitation of cluster), Integration of the owners/tenants throughout the project, in both manufacturers (off-site, modular,

planning and implementation stages and encouraging community

plug and play products)

champions to support the developments was important for their understanding of financial and building improvement benefits Creation of a cross-cutting smart city department in the municipality to tackle operational difficulties and administrative burdens Combining EU and national funding to decrease financial risks of innovative large-scale solutions

New revenue model –

Residential housing (single family

Additional steps that make renovation process more attractive

addition of volume

houses/apartments)

to financial actors and decision-makers (financial institutions,

Actors: private homeowners,

developers, managers, householders, policymakers, buildings

contractors, local government, banks owners and associations) has important environmental and social impacts Installation of Renewable Energy System technologies, carefully planned and in combination with energy efficiency measures Energy Performance

Public buildings, commercial offices A well-structured building owner organisation (social and legal

Contracting

Actors: building owners (social/

experts)

private), contractors, ESCO, utilities A balanced set of energy saving measures and a corresponding financial scheme (technical and financial experts) A clear long-term view of the real estate and its neighbourhood (social and real estate experts) Cost-effective packages of energy-saving measures; model contracts within the valid legal and financial constraints Interest from commercial ESCOs for further implementation a Note: Energiesprong is a government-funded innovation programme originated in the Netherlands promoting a whole house refurbishment and new built standard and funding approach. Source: Authors’ review and analysis of STUNNING project materials (Laffont-Eloire et al., 2019; Marchi and Dall’Oro, 2019; STUNNING, 2019).

Energy policy for buildings fit for the future  253 can also use space more effectively. This requires constructing more flexible buildings that can be used differently as needs are changing over time. The concept of sufficiency in buildings is currently being tested via the OptiWohn project in Germany (Wuppertal Institute, 2019). The project is exploring how to promote optimised use of living space. The centrepiece is the development and founding of municipal housing agencies in Cologne, Tübingen and Göttingen. The agencies will identify living space requirements in neighbourhoods and offer advice to those living in oversized accommodation. A key benefit for municipalities is that, if successful, this should help meet housing demand without building new dwellings. Strategies for supporting downsizing might include a dwelling exchange platform, support programmes for moving, or personalised advice on how to separate rooms or divide a dwelling/house into two units. The project involves interaction between homeowners, design team, local government and contractors. On completion in 2022, the project will translate its findings into municipal recommendations for action, which should also address other actors and multipliers. The aspiration is that a nationwide funding programme for space-efficient living will result. Clearly this project has the potential to deliver many social, environmental and economic benefits, beyond energy demand reduction. 18.4.3 Restricting Access to Natural Gas Governments intervening to remove access to particular fuels in buildings is not new. Many countries have restricted combustion of coal and other solid fuels in urban areas for air quality and health reasons. In England, planned additional restrictions on household combustion of solid fuels have been recently announced (Defra, 2020). The use of natural gas has long been banned in some types of high-rise buildings for safety reasons. Nevertheless, recent of cases of restricting current or future access to natural gas networks is a significant new development and an example of government policy requiring fuel switching for climate reasons. The Netherlands and the UK are the two countries most dependent on use of natural gas as a heating fuel in their building stock, particularly in housing (Eurostat, 2019). Both have plans to reduce dependence on natural gas, though the Netherlands is ahead. The Netherlands banned use of natural gas for new residential buildings from 2018. This decision was taken for a number of reasons, primarily to contribute towards long-term carbon targets of zero carbon economy by 2050, and as part of a response to earthquakes damaging thousands of homes around Groningen (where there are major Dutch gas fields, extraction rates from which have been reduced). It is not a stand-alone policy, but rather it is part of a complex transition towards a zero carbon energy system in the Netherlands (Beckman and van den Beukel, 2019). The UK Government has announced that by 2025 they will introduce a Future Homes Standard for new-build homes in England. This sets to future-proof new-build homes with low-carbon heating and world-leading levels of energy efficiency (MHCLG, 2019). This has been widely interpreted as meaning no new homes will be connected to the natural gas network after this date. These decisions by the UK and Netherlands governments require fuel switching for climate reasons, where there is no immediate benefit to the safety of the buildings or health of the occupiers. This is a new direction for policy which resonates with the future phase-out of diesel and petrol engine vehicles announced in an increasing number of countries.

254  Research handbook on energy and society Table 18.3

Proposed guidelines for policy design and development in the building sector, to contribute to net-zero goals

Theme

Key guidelines

Policy Design: Approaches to

Use a policy mix:A complex set of problems requires a complex response. Policy is needed at

policy creation

different scales, focusing on different actors, technologies, decisions, etc. (Rosenow et al., 2016). An effective policy mix could include non-energy policies which have an important impact on buildings (Robertson Munro and Cairney, 2020). Allow flexibility: This is critical given the variability of buildings, systems and users. Flexible/ adaptable approaches for some aspects of policy are needed, without compromising overall carbon reduction goals. For example, heritage buildings might not face strict low-carbon standards, or deep residential renovation could happen over extended time periods. Recognise multiple benefits:​Energy saving or shifting energy use in time (flexibility) has multiple environmental, economic and social benefits (IEA, 2014). Multiple benefits exist at all scales from the single buildings, to cities and nations, and accrue to many actors – finding ways to communicate and value these benefits will help deliver faster change. Embed policy experimentation and learning, including support for new technologies: Learning by doing will be essential, as will being allowed to tell ‘learning stories’ (Janda and Topouzi, 2015). Establish feedback loops between different scales and levels as a reflexive responsive mechanism to respond to implementation failures avoiding/reducing the design–performance gap.

Policy Development: Expand

Recognise policy connections:To make effective policy, it will be necessary to go beyond the

the boundaries of policy

boundaries of current policy, e.g. moving from energy efficiency to energy sufficiency. Previously overlooked policy areas also need to be addressed, for example, there needs to be legal reform of governance for buildings in multiple ownership, if they are to have low energy retrofits (Bright and Weatherall, 2017).

Policy Implementation: Focus

Improve skills and training:​Change cannot be delivered without a skilled construction sector that

on quality

work with sustainable values (Killip, 2020). In the UK new retrofit standards under developmenta set ambitious and minimum standards by changing the culture of responsibility and trust between multiple actors. Focus on evaluation and enforcement:​This is required to close the design–performance gap, to ensure renovation work is done to specification and to improve policy implementation. Feedback loops that reach from middle actors to top level actors are needed, from the designers, builders, suppliers to policymakers. A key concept is that a project doesn’t end at the handover stage but quality of performance continues throughout its lifespan.

Note: For example, PAS 2035/2030, Future Homes Standard: changes to Part L and Part F of the Building Regulations for new dwellings. Source: Adapted from Fawcett and Topouzi (2019). a

18.5

DESIGNING POLICY FOR BUILDINGS IN THE ZERO-CARBON TRANSITION

Table 18.3 sets out an exploratory set of guidelines for developing policy to reduce carbon emissions from buildings. This is based on a combination of analysis of the key obstacles and successful implementation factors in pioneering policies and experiments above, as well as the broader literature on buildings and energy policy. The guidelines proposed are briefly justified. These proposed guidelines build on evidence from the earlier case studies we presented. For example, retrofit innovations were created when traditional policy tools were paired with more ambitious regulatory and financial incentives to engage the private sector, an example of both a policy mix and recognition of policy connections. They also relied on acknowledging the

Energy policy for buildings fit for the future  255 important role of actors and stakeholders in shaping the retrofit landscape, and their re-shaping the relationship of buildings and building users with the wider energy system. This calls for greater attention to energy policy implementation, as included in Table 18.3 guidelines, and echoes Stafford and Wilson’s (2016) findings about the importance of the often overlooked topic of policy implementation. The guidelines in Table 18.3 also share common ground with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA, 2019) suggestion of comprehensive policy packages and with the ‘12 strategies to step up global energy efficiency’ published by leading NGOs in response to the IEA’s High-Level Commission on Energy Efficiency (ACEEE et al., 2019).

18.6

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

This chapter began by setting out the significant challenge of reducing energy use in buildings and supplying all the remaining energy demand with zero carbon energy by 2050. This is a huge ask for energy policy. By using a socio-technical lens, bringing together examples of successful projects and new policies, and by setting out principles for policy design, development and implementation, it has become clear that this transformation requires change in many other spheres too. To deliver low-energy buildings, significant improvements to training and skills are needed, new financial tools and business models must be enabled and the whole life cycle of a building including the manufacture of building components requires improvement. The ambition of buildings and energy policy must move beyond energy efficiency to address both flexibility in time of use and the concept of sufficiency. Buildings will need to interact with a decarbonising energy system in new ways. In broadening the focus beyond energy efficiency improvements to buildings, more complexity is introduced, but also more ways to meet this huge challenge. A socio-technical approach is necessary to understand energy use in buildings and to design policy and governance interventions to deliver buildings fit for the future. The evidence presented from across Europe on pioneering retrofit, sufficiency and fuel-switching policies and experiments highlights the socio-technical nature of the change needed. These interventions involve a range of actors, relationships and new services in the built environment, which must be integrated with new technologies and business models. None of this will be simple, but it is possible. As the examples in Table 18.2 demonstrated, there are approaches which can deliver these complex projects successfully. And policy can create the rules, incentives and institutions which encourage these developments. An important focus has been on retrofitting the existing building stock to high standards. However, current levels of renovation are far below where they need to be. Retrofitting is the single most important intervention to achieve the energy savings required to meet net zero 2050 goals for both residential and non-residential sectors. Setting high standards for new buildings is also critical. As Table 18.3 illustrated, this change will not happen without new policies and policy mixes, supported by appropriate governance across multiple geographical scales. A number of ways of raising ambition within the current framing of policy have been suggested including: setting more detailed policy targets and stronger standards; designing appropriate policy mixes, involving and coordinating with multiple actors at different levels of governance; changing the culture of key actors’ practices, interaction, values and skills; and considering new institutional arrangements.

256  Research handbook on energy and society The analysis in this chapter has limitations. It has not looked at buildings as part of neighbourhoods or urban areas. There is much to do to understand the policy complexity at scale beyond individual buildings, specific technologies and energy demand reduction strategies. Time is an important dimension in policy design and delivery, and in change to buildings. For example, a fast ‘deep’ retrofit intervention using new technologies contrasts a with longer-term ‘staged’ retrofit. Both may reach the same energy end point by 2050, but they are likely be very different in terms of how they are financed, the skills needed to deliver them, and the effects on building owners and occupants. The importance of adaptation to existing and future climate change has only been touched on very briefly. There are no quick fixes to changing the whole building stock. Indeed, we could hardly expect it to be otherwise. However, there are exemplar projects and policies showing how change can be delivered. Disruptions like the Coronavirus pandemic show that the ways we use buildings and policy priorities can change surprisingly rapidly. Retrofit of buildings is being promoted as a key component of a green recovery. We should, therefore, be able to deliver buildings fit for the future by creating the right policy environment, which is both resilient and responsive to new needs, and in collaboration with the many actors and institutions in the building sector and beyond.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge support from UK Research and Innovation through the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, grant reference number EP/R 035288/1.

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19. How non-energy policies shape demand for energy Sarah Royston and Jan Selby

19.1 INTRODUCTION As the contributions to this Handbook show, energy is fundamentally a social issue. Energy is not consumed (and supplied) for its own sake, but rather because it is embedded in practices that people perform; for example, moving around, working, or keeping warm. Taking this idea seriously has many implications for researchers and policy-makers attempting to understand, and intervene in, the energy demanding activities of individuals and other actors (see, for example, Shin and Chappells, Chapter 4, and Morley, Chapter 5). One implication of this social understanding of energy that has received relatively little attention to date concerns the role of policies in contributing to the constitution of energy demand. If energy demand arises through practices, then the policies that play a part in steering those practices are also steering energy demand. Policies are by no means the only influence on practices, but they do play a role in shaping them, and crucially, they are an area where some form of deliberate intervention in social life is already occurring, and thus can provide opportunities for change. The practices that demand energy are affected by many forms of policy, developed across many sectors – including policies that are not conventionally seen as ‘energy policies’. For example, when, where and how people travel is strongly shaped by policies on urban planning, school choice and employment. A focus on these so-called non-energy policies inevitably follows from an understanding of energy as social. If we are to move towards a more sustainable energy system, we need to understand the full range of policies that steer energy use. This chapter presents an overview of, and arguments for, a research agenda around non-energy policies. In using the term ‘policies’ here, we take a deliberately broad view, including standards, regulations, planning procedures and oversight processes, which may be implemented by diverse organizations, from international agencies to local institutions such as hospitals, councils and businesses. The chapter first reviews what is typically meant by the term ‘energy policy’ (Section 19.2) and shows how a commonly adopted narrow view misses many important forms of energy governance (see Kerr, Chapter 9 for more on how different rationales shape energy policy). Section 19.3 then asks: How do other policies matter for energy demand? It explores a range of dimensions, including direct and indirect effects; temporal and spatial effects; and upward and downward trajectories of energy demand. The case study (Section 19.4) provides a more detailed picture of how the processes outlined in Section 19.3 play out in practice. It draws on multiple strands of data to show how a powerful policy agenda (marketization in UK Higher Education (HE)) is playing out through institutional strategies, and reconfiguring practices. Section 19.5 reflects on the ‘invisibility’ of the policy effects that have been discussed, and some of the underlying reasons for this, before considering implications of these arguments for policy and practice. It uses examples from fields where some progress has been made, to draw 259

260  Research handbook on energy and policy out proposals for greater recognition of non-energy policy effects. Section 19.6 concludes by reflecting on what these arguments mean for social science researchers. This discussion also speaks to cross-cutting themes in this Handbook, arguing that the policy effects discussed here serve as further evidence of the need for a nuanced and trans-disciplinary understanding of energy in society.

19.2

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ENERGY POLICY?

First, it is worth considering what is meant by policy in general, and energy policy in particular. While we often think of policy as the province of states, policies are also made at the international level by governmental and non-governmental bodies and corporations, as well as at devolved and regional levels. They are also made at the local level by councils and institutions such as universities and hospitals. A look at the website of most institutions will reveal an array of formalized ‘policies’, on anything from health and safety procedures through to ethical, financial and strategic policies. Policies across these scales are often connected; for example, national policies on discrimination, or on counter-terrorism, or on climate change will inform sectoral and institutional policies. We take a deliberately broad understanding of policy, that includes plans, protocols, performance indicators, rules, standards and guidelines, that are used to establish, encode and enact an organization’s goals (see Royston et al., 2018 for further discussion of policies). The term ‘energy policies’ generally means policies directly relating to the production, distribution and consumption of energy. In theory, definitions of energy policy generally give equal weight to issues of supply and issues of demand; however, this is not always the case in reality. To give one (somewhat extreme) example, a textbook entitled ‘Understanding energy and energy policy’ (Braun and Glidden, 2014) includes seven chapters focused on energy supply, but none on energy demand. The same trend can be observed in the policy sphere, and the demand side has been called ‘the Cinderella of energy policy, receiving scant policy attention and limited financial support when compared to energy supply’ (Smith, 2009, pp. 64–65). In 2018 the UK Government’s Cost of Energy Review was described as ‘highly skewed towards considering supply-side issues and away from demand side policy’ (End Use Energy Demand Centres, 2018), while the Committee on Climate Change (2018) highlighted some significant policy gaps regarding the demand side in their evaluation of the UK’s 2017 Clean Growth Strategy (BEIS, 2018). Furthermore, when energy policies do tackle issues of demand, they often adopt a narrow framing of demand. ‘Demand-side’ policy tends to translate largely into efficiency policy. This is apparent in the framing used by the UK Committee on Climate Change, which splits measures for reducing emissions into two groups: ‘Using energy more efficiently’ and ‘Switching to low-carbon fuels’ (Committee on Climate Change, undated). Technical efficiency policies can play a part in reducing energy use; for example, Rosenow and Galvin (2013) have estimated that a German loan scheme for domestic energy efficiency improvements produced an average saving of 27 per cent of pre-refurbishment energy consumption. However, if policies focus solely on technical efficiency measures, any gains they make may easily be wiped out by escalating consumption norms. Work drawing on theories of social practice (see Morley, Chapter 5 for a description of Social Practice Theory) suggests that rather than pursuing technical efficiency alone, we need to understand what energy is for (Rinkinen et al., 2020; Shove,

How non-energy policies shape demand for energy  261 2018). Work within this field emphasizes that energy is not used for its own sake, but rather as part of fulfilling socially-constructed needs and performing largely-routinized daily activities (practices). In this sense, all energy use is ‘derived demand’. In summary, when researchers and policy-makers speak of energy policies, they generally mean policies that are: (1) explicitly focused on energy as a distinct topic; (2) mostly centred on the supply side; and (3) when they consider demand, then largely focusing on technical efficiency measures. This represents a very narrow subset of the policies that actually steer demand for energy.

19.3

HOW DO ‘NON-ENERGY POLICIES’ MATTER FOR ENERGY DEMAND?

This section explains some of the ways in which so-called ‘non-energy policies’ actually matter for energy demand (drawing on Royston et al., 2018). This is inevitably a partial account, since there are myriad effects of these policies on energy demand: in fact, it is difficult to imagine any policy which has no implication at all for how energy is used. A scoping literature review carried out by Cox et al. (2016) found that energy demand (and indeed supply) may be impacted by policies within virtually every policy sector. A first point to note is that, as highlighted above, policies affecting energy occur across multiple spatial scales and policy actors, including states, transnational institutions, devolved and regional bodies, and local institutions such as universities and hospitals. All of these play a part in steering demand for energy, to a greater or lesser extent. There are also agendas that span many different policy sectors, which have especially wide-ranging effects. One of the most important is the dominant commitment to economic growth, along with related strategies (among many policy actors) of liberalization and marketization. Liberalization here refers to a shift away from governmental provision, funding, management and control of services, and towards increasing roles and freedoms for private service-providers. Within this, marketization specifically refers to the development of markets in sectors that previously did not operate as markets. These agendas recur through many of the examples discussed below. Secondly, the effect of policies on energy demand may be fairly direct or immediate; for example, if a business decides to cut operating costs by turning off all lights at night, this will affect energy use as soon as it is implemented. More typically, though, the impact of policy decisions may be less direct, delayed, or occur over a longer time-scale or at a distance. Policy change usually represents just one moment in ongoing processes of social and technical transition, and impacts on energy demand generally materialize when, where and insofar as policies become embodied within infrastructures and social practices. For example, the growth of out-of-town shopping centres has been driven by land use policy decisions (both locally and nationally) and has contributed to significant growth in transport-related energy use over several decades (Banister, 1999). Equally, if they do become embedded in infrastructures and conventions, policy decisions can trigger path-dependent trajectories in energy demand, which may not be easy to reverse. A third feature of non-energy policies is that they can contribute either to increasing or decreasing energy demand. Many non-energy policies unintentionally contribute to rising demand: for example, the recent preference within some UK health authorities for hospital patients to have individual rooms (driven by agendas around infection and privacy) is leading

262  Research handbook on energy and policy to greater use of power-demanding equipment to facilitate monitoring when patients are less easily visible, as well as managing loneliness (Bradford, 2015; Department of Health, 2013; Pennington and Isles, 2013; Reid et al., 2015). Policies can also create or reproduce barriers to energy efficiency investment; for example, building heritage and conservation policies can obstruct insulation plans (Vera, 2014). But in certain circumstances, non-energy policies can also help reduce demand. One area where this is quite often true is in the field of environmental policies; integrating policies on climate change, air pollution and energy security can create ‘win–wins’ and improve outcomes across energy demand, carbon emissions and health, for example (Bollen et al., 2010). Thinking more widely, other policies that act to limit various kinds of consumption or production can have unintended downward effects on energy demand. For example, China’s one-child policy between 1979 and 2016 significantly reduced population growth and consequently slowed growth in energy demand (Eccleston and March, 2011; Zhuang, 2008). More recently, austerity policies implemented in European Union nations following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 contributed to major declines in energy use, while in the United States a more Keynesian approach to policy led to very different outcomes for the economy, and thus for energy consumption (Bel and Joseph, 2015; Weisbrot, 2014). This is not an argument that population control or austerity are appropriate methods for reducing demand. Rather, we wish to demonstrate the diversity of potential effects of non-energy policies on energy systems. The fourth point to note about non-energy policies is that they do not only affect the overall amount of energy demand, but also its timing (which is relevant for provision infrastructures, especially in relation to peak times, as well as to pricing policies). Non-energy policies can affect temporal aspects of the practices that result in energy demand, including when they occur, how often, for how long, and in what order. For example, Blue (2017) describes the changing rhythms involved in English hospital life, and discusses how healthcare agendas and targets (such as promoting a ‘one-stop shop’ approach to cancer treatment) have shifted the timings of appointments and care pathways. These changes have had ramifications for the resources used for patient care, including space-heating and clinical equipment, as well as affecting when the associated forms of energy demand occur. Fifth, non-energy policies can of course affect the spatial characteristics of practices, affecting where energy demands arise, and at what scale, as well as what kinds of mobility (of people and things) is demanded. For example, education policies that give parents more options regarding school choice have led to children travelling greater distances to school (He and Giuliano, 2017; Marshall et al., 2010). Globally, trade liberalization policies promoting the outsourcing of heavy industrial production to less developed countries have had major impacts on where energy is consumed in industrial production (Morgan, 2011). These policies also drive up the overall quantity of goods transported internationally, affecting fuel demand. Returning to the health sector, policies that aim to deliver care to patients in their homes (for example, in-home dialysis), rather than in hospital settings, transfer the location of the associated energy demand to these decentralized locations (see, for example, British Renal Society, 2015). Lastly, it is worth noting that the effects of these policies on energy are often entangled and interacting, not least because there are multiple intersecting agendas in any policy sector, and indeed, within any policy actor. Fundamentally, since every policy interacts with social, technical and economic processes (which are themselves often connected to other policies) it

How non-energy policies shape demand for energy  263 is often extremely difficult to identify and describe, let alone to quantify, policies’ effects on energy demand.

19.4

CASE STUDY: MARKETIZATION IN UK HIGHER EDUCATION

This section serves to illustrate some of the points raised in Section 19.3, by exploring energy demand impacts of marketization in English higher education (HE) since 2010. We draw on research conducted within the DEMAND centre, 2015–20191 on English universities. This involved semi-structured interviews with: sustainability managers; other senior and middle managers such as directors of IT, of services and of finance; and sustainability professionals in policy bodies. Interviews focused both on participants’ direct engagement with energy issues, but also wider changes occurring in their work which might affect energy use. We also analysed institutional, sectoral and national policy documents, and national datasets. This mixed methodology aimed to provide rich detail on institutional energy governance, complemented by a wider view of socio-technical changes steering UK energy demand. See Royston et al. (2020) for further details. The UK HE sector is a major energy consumer, using 714 ktoe in 2018 (BEIS, 2019). Until 2012, the main funder of English universities was the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). In 2010 HEFCE published a carbon reduction strategy, which set the sector a 43 per cent carbon reduction target by 2020, against a 2005 baseline, in line with the 2008 Climate Change Act (with similar sectoral strategies adopted in other UK nations). HEFCE began to link its funding to universities’ compliance with carbon policies. However, from 2012 HEFCE’s funding role was significantly reduced, and in the ensuing policy vacuum some universities removed their absolute carbon targets, adopted lower targets, and/or stopped updating carbon plans. HEFCE was abolished in 2018, and at time of writing in 2020, sustainability strategies are still under development by the two new regulators (the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation). Based on the latest UK data (for 2017/18), the sector has achieved a cut of only around 29 per cent.2 The progress reported so far has been largely through national grid decarbonization and changes in supply chains (BriteGreen, 2017). Many policies not conventionally seen as energy policies play a role in steering energy demand in universities. The most important ‘non-energy’ change currently occurring in UK HE concerns an agenda of marketization and liberalization, as summed up in a 2015 Green Paper which set out aims to ‘empower students, strengthen competition, drive quality, eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and save taxpayer money’ (BIS, 2015, p. 57). The trend towards liberalization in HE, both in the UK and internationally, has been extensively discussed (e.g. Deem and Brehony, 2005; Hemsley‐Brown and Oplatka, 2006; Lynch, 2006; Molesworth et al., 2011). This broad agenda encompasses many dimensions, including changes in governance (the abolition of HEFCE, as noted above); professionalization and liberalization within HE institutions’ internal services; marketization and competition across the sector; economic efficiency and austerity; growth; and internationalization. Here, we focus on one particularly important policy change to illustrate the diversity of its implications. This is the reduction in state grants to English universities, alongside the shift to higher (£9,000) tuition fees in 2012. Tuition fees and education contracts now make up 51 per cent of income for English HE providers, and 49 per cent for the UK as a whole.3 This national-scale policy change has

264  Research handbook on energy and policy a range of ramifications for institutional policy and practice, many of which may have unrecognized implications for energy demand. These include the increased prominence of a ‘student experience’ agenda, which emerged as a strong theme from interviews with a wide range of university professionals. Now that much of universities’ income is from tuition fees, recruiting students is essential to their financial survival. This has made student experience a priority, guiding policy and planning across virtually all university functions, and creating new temporal patterns, such as the extension of opening hours for libraries, computer rooms, launderettes and help-desks. Interviewees also suggested that this agenda governs the provision of spaces, facilities and equipment; for example, accommodation is becoming larger, with more en-suite bathrooms, and internet connectivity is expected everywhere, all the time. One senior manager at a university said student expectations have Hugely changed … If you’re paying £9,000 fees … you have a higher demand on what the facilities at the university are. We see it all the time … People complain … The demand on good facilities is really high’.

Another senior manager said, ‘IT … they want it probably faster than we can conceivably deliver it... And completely on wireless, you can’t have a dead spot anywhere.’

Student experience is also closely related to a growth agenda. Some universities perceive that to maintain financial stability (both through tuition fees and research income) they need to grow in size. One staff member said, ‘growth is a way of avoiding being swallowed up. It is a way of generating extra revenue. Our student numbers will go up because we need to generate more revenue’.

Inevitably, more staff and students require more energy, and growth often means constructing new buildings. New buildings may be more ‘efficient’ in terms of building fabric than older buildings, they may also reflect new expectations about spaces and services (e.g. with greater provision of power sockets). Wadud et al. (2019, p. 824) conducted econometric modelling of energy consumption in UK HE and found that if a university’s floor area, income and number of students/staff are each increased by 10 per cent, there is an increase in energy consumption of 6.3 per cent. In other words, there are some ‘economies of scale’ associated with growth, but not nearly enough to offset the overall increase in energy use. While it is extremely difficult to attribute causation, and many overlapping social and technical changes are implicated here, this brief overview highlights some of the likely implications of non-energy policy for energy demand within the HE sector, and illustrates several of the points made in Section 19.3. First, this is a clear example of the ratcheting of norms of service provision. This phenomenon has been highlighted by, for example, Shove (2003), who explains that shared social expectations (such as those around comfort, cleanliness and convenience) have tended to increase over time, with serious environmental implications. Our analysis suggests that this ratcheting can be driven, unintentionally, by specific policies such as marketization. As Wadud et al. (2019) show, energy use is likely to increase in future unless there is significant change in the policies currently driving growth (of various kinds) in the UK HE sector. Second, it highlights policies’ impacts on temporal dimensions of energy

How non-energy policies shape demand for energy  265 use, for example, through the escalating duration of opening hours.4 Third, it illustrates the interconnected levels of governance that steer energy demand, including building level management, institutional strategy, national policy and transnational agendas. Specifically, the agenda underpinning all this change appears to be one of liberalization. Since this agenda, and associated policies of marketization, commodification and growth, are extremely pervasive, we might expect to see similar ratcheting effects on energy demand in other sectors.

19.5

WHY ARE THESE POLICIES’ EFFECTS ‘INVISIBLE’ AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THEM?

One reason why the effects of non-energy policies are poorly understood is that truly interdisciplinary research on energy remains rare, with much work being dominated by technical and economistic agendas and frameworks (as described by Royston and Foulds, 2019). This dominance is also associated with the equation of consumption with demand (Shove, 2018); the assumption that people need energy, and that such needs should always be provided for. Such approaches fail to recognize that these ‘needs’ are constructed by, and mediated through, infrastructures, technologies, practices and policies. However, while social scientists are increasingly engaging with energy demand as an outcome of social practices (as mentioned above), relatively few of these have so far paid attention to the role of non-energy policies. Another problem is that the issue of ‘non-energy policy’ is so wide-ranging and complex that it is difficult for researchers and policy-makers to find practical action points. This is compounded by a paucity of data, as highlighted by Cox et al. (2016). Furthermore, recognizing the impacts of non-energy policy might mean touching on sensitive priorities, breaking boundaries and building new cross-organizational ways of working: these are not simple tasks. Professionals tasked with managing energy demand often encounter institutional obstacles in trying to bring about a more holistic approach to energy demand management (see Royston et al., 2020). Fundamentally, any institution will have its own core business or agenda, and other concerns such as energy demand will hold a more peripheral status. However, recognizing such ‘peripherality’ does not imply that this status is inevitable, absolute or permanent. Obviously, there are major challenges to any efforts to ‘integrate’ or ‘mainstream’ non-energy policies into energy agendas, and vice versa. However, we can learn from experiences in other sectors; for example, agendas around equality and diversity. In the not-too-distant past, these objectives were seen as relatively peripheral in relation to the priorities of many institutions. However, equality and diversity agendas have to a significant, albeit uneven, degree become ‘mainstreamed’ into institutional ways of working (Moser and Moser, 2005). They are becoming gradually embedded throughout institutions’ employment and pay, workload management and the design and operation of buildings. Of course, this mainstreaming is by no means finished, nor has it been uniformly successful (Rees, 2005). Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that institutions of all kinds can and should meet equalities objectives alongside their core goals. It is at least possible that energy demand agendas could be similarly mainstreamed. Another field that suggests useful precedents is that of health. Increasingly it is understood that people’s health is not just affected by policies directly on healthcare, but a wide range of areas of life. Over several decades, such thinking has led to the mainstreaming of health-related agendas into other fields, for example by focusing on the safety of people at work (health and

266  Research handbook on energy and policy safety policies), supporting those with physical and mental conditions (occupational health policies), regulating food standards, and so on. These examples remind us that societies and institutions are pervaded by diverse governance agendas, and tensions between these agendas are not new. At the same time, it is notable that each attempt at mainstreaming has involved centralized legislation with judicial enforcement, alongside new cultures of best practice. We can infer from this that mainstreaming a focus on energy demand across sectors and institutions is not impossible. The most obvious change needed is much stronger legislative action on energy demand and its consequences; for example, carbon emissions. In the UK, some sectors (e.g. UK central government, NHS England, Higher Education in England) and local institutions (e.g. local authorities, NHS Trusts, universities) have set carbon reduction targets (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Cabinet Office, 2016; Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2014; Sustainable Development Unit, 2014). However, these targets are mostly voluntary or lack meaningful enforcement, and often exclude ‘indirect’ emissions from transport, procurement and so on. An emissions target for the public and HE sectors in England was introduced in the 2017 Clean Growth Strategy, but is also purely voluntary. This debate on mandatory versus voluntary standards is an international one; for example, de Melo et al. (2018) call for mandatory standards for vehicle efficiency in Brazil, arguing that voluntary standards have proved inadequate; while Takahashi (2019) suggests voluntary approaches have largely failed across a range of environmental and human rights issues in Japan. Compulsory emissions reduction targets, backed up by appropriate monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, would ensure that energy and carbon shifted from a peripheral issue to a real concern for institutional and sectoral decision-makers. Effective mainstreaming also means looking at the boundaries that separate energy and non-energy matters within institutions. We do not see ‘joined-up policymaking’ (Ling, 2002) or ‘environmental’ or ‘climate policy integration’ (Adelle and Russel, 2013; Jordan and Lenschow, 2010) as a panacea, and these things are notoriously hard to achieve in practice. However, some reconfiguring of institutional roles, responsibilities and remits is likely to be needed. For example, institutional energy managers need to play an active role in the development of all strategies that are likely to affect energy demand; such as growth or business development strategies. Implementing these kinds of change would not suddenly remove conflicts and tensions between energy goals and other priorities. However, identifying these at an early stage, and assessing their impacts, is a prerequisite to informed decision-making. It may be that core business goals will still outweigh energy goals in most instances; we are not suggesting organizations should abandon their main priorities.5 But at the very least, an early awareness of the conflict and likely outcomes will assist with organizations’ planning; for example, additional effort may be required to cut demand in other areas. More positively, there may be ways to manage the way core policies are designed and implemented to mitigate unwanted energy effects. Within the higher education sector, for example, mainstreaming energy concerns might lead to the revision of academic promotion criteria to reduce pressures for international conference attendance; changes to academic calendars to limit international student travel; new targets on local procurement; or new guidance on opening hours of services. Finally, pursuing these kinds of change could also help identify win–wins across different policy goals. The idea of co-benefits is increasingly discussed in energy studies, and an awareness of non-energy policies’ intersections with energy demand can help researchers and policy-makers capitalize on opportunities for policy alignment. A good example comes

How non-energy policies shape demand for energy  267 Table 19.1

Selected energy-saving measures in the health sector

Proposed energy-saving measure

Tonnes CO2e saved in 2020 (estimate)

Solar – thermal Solar – photovoltaic

2,350 2,690

Lighting – high efficiency

18,800

Support patients to quit smoking

42,200

Provide better psychiatric care in Emergency departments

84,500

Source:

Adapted from Sustainable Development Unit (2016).

from the English health sector, where a report by the NHS’s Sustainable Development Unit (2016) took a ground-breaking approach to energy and carbon reduction. It assessed the likely implications of a range of potential interventions in the health sector, including conventional energy efficiency and supply-side measures. However, it also included measures that intervene in how healthcare is actually delivered, or models of care. Five of the interventions assessed are shown in Table 19.1. As the table shows, the conventional energy interventions were found to have relatively small impacts on emissions. In contrast, two interventions that apparently have no relation to energy (relating to smoking cessation and psychiatric care) have enormous impacts on emissions. These are preventative interventions that protect people’s mental and physical health, and so are predicted to reduce the number of medical appointments and treatments that patients actually need. Every use of a healthcare service involves extensive energy costs: heating, lighting, medications, equipment, transport etc. (with one patient spending one day in hospital estimated to generate 91kg CO2e (Sustainable Development Unit, 2012)). The analysis found that most of the best ways to reduce energy and carbon in healthcare are measures that reduce patients’ use of services; which simultaneously have massive benefits for people’s health, and service costs. It is important to be very cautious about any claims of ‘avoided’ service demand, as highlighted by Shove (2018), and of course unintended effects may result from these changes. However, this example illustrates how an awareness of non-energy policies’ impacts on energy opens up exciting new possibilities for demand reduction. However, integrating new agendas is not just a question of rewriting impact assessments or spotting win-wins. It is also a deeply political process that requires new forms of problem definition, and the application of new types of knowledge. We conclude this chapter by reflecting on this challenge, and the role that social scientists can play in addressing it.

19.6

CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: AN EMERGING FIELD OF INQUIRY

In this chapter we have outlined a novel way of looking at energy demand and its governance, that is grounded in an understanding of energy as a societal phenomenon. We have explained how ‘non-energy’ policies have important, though largely unrecognized impacts on energy. What does this mean for social science researchers: how can we help address the energy impacts of non-energy policies? Fundamentally, research has a key role to play in describing the interactions of non-energy and energy systems, so as to pinpoint the diverse routes and mechanisms through which

268  Research handbook on energy and policy non-energy policies steer energy demand. We also need new means of assessing which connections are more/less important, and which are more/less amenable to change; and methods for evaluating the effects of demand reduction efforts. In this, researchers can draw on data that is already available, for example on transport patterns, but use it in new ways. For example, researchers might analyse the mobility demand effects of commitments such as providing ‘superfast broadband coverage to 95 per cent of UK premises by the end of 2017’ (Priestley et al., 2017, p. 4). Social scientists (and others) from many disciplines can contribute to such analysis, for example exploring the different types and modes of journey that are ‘replaced’ or adapted, and how these effects influence other aspects of everyday life, with ramifications for energy demand. A key challenge for researchers is to break down complex webs of relationships into parts that can be analysed, while retaining an awareness of wider systemic processes. Researchers will need to be open to diverse forms of cross-sectoral influence, and to all kinds of ‘rebound’ and ‘spillover’ effects, far beyond those conventionally addressed by energy studies. They will need to creatively integrate data, draw on diverse techniques to explore causal relationships, and forge new relationships across disciplinary boundaries. One example of exciting work in this direction is that of Blue (2017) on the temporal rhythms of healthcare. Another excellent example of how non-energy policies can be researched in practice is provided by Greene and Fahy (2020), who connect policy agendas of growth, modernization and neoliberal development, as well as specific policies on work, education and health, with shifts in energy-demanding practices in everyday life. Energy researchers can also draw on theoretical concepts from other fields, for example, in the health field there is a concept of ‘obesogenic environments’ (Egger and Swinburn, 1997), referring to environments which contribute to obesity. We might ask what kinds of spaces and places would contribute to a less-energy demanding way of life (Kirk et al., 2010). Within transport studies it is generally accepted that mobility demand is ‘derived’ and affected by ‘non-transport’ policies, such as land-use planning, economic and employment policies, or those on education or leisure (Brown, 2017; Hallsworth et al., 1998; Santos et al., 2010). In these two examples, we are not suggesting that research has fully taken on board the implications of cross-sectoral thinking. But there is a degree of understanding that consumers’ ‘needs’ are not fixed: rather, they have trajectories, and are subject to many forms of intervention. Recognizing the implications of non-energy policies for energy demand opens up new questions for research and policy, as well as revealing new opportunities for intervention and change. Ultimately, the processes of cross-sectoral governance discussed here serve as further evidence of the need for a nuanced and trans-disciplinary understanding of energy in society.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the DEMAND: Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand Research Centre funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/K011723/1] as part of the Research Councils UK Energy Programme and by EDF as part of the R&D ECLEER Programme. This chapter draws on the authors’ work in collaboration with Elizabeth Shove.

How non-energy policies shape demand for energy  269

NOTES 1. 2.

The Centre for the Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand; see: www​.demand​.ac​.uk. We analysed Estates data provided by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), accessed 28 January 2020 at www​.hesa​.ac​.uk/​data​-and​-analysis/​estates/​environmental. 3. Analysis of Finances data from HESA, accessed 28 January 2020 at www​.hesa​.ac​.uk/​data​-and​ -analysis/​finances/​table​-7​#. 4. The importance of building opening hours has also been highlighted by work on 24-hour labs at Oxford University; see: www​.su​stainabili​tyexchange​.ac​.uk/​files/​midnight​_oil​_case​_study​_aug​ _2012​.pdf. 5. An emerging field focuses on quantifying and communicating how energy efficiency can support organizations’ core goals, e.g. the M-Benefits project (see www​.mbenefits​.eu).

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20. Debating energy futures on Lewis: energy transition, the politics of land use and law, and the question of the commons Annabel Pinker

INTRODUCTION It is widely accepted that we are in the midst of an energy revolution, transitioning from carbon-based fuels to renewable and, in some cases, more decentralised forms of energy production. Less frequently – though increasingly – addressed is the role that such shifts are likely to play in the transformation of political and social life. Put another way, what are the world-making capacities (Jensen and Morita, 2017) of new energy infrastructures? Engaging with the observation that ‘new infrastructures are promises made in the present about our future’ (Appel et al., 2018), this chapter explores the possibilities and promises that coalesce around new and emerging arrangements of energy production. It deploys ‘infrastructure’ both as ethnographic research site and conceptual apparatus to explore how moves towards renewable energy generation may work to reconfigure existing arrangements of power and politics, technology, law, expertise and everyday life, and what sorts of emergent futures such changes might imply. This chapter draws inspiration from recent scholarship exploring the entanglements between socio-political life and energy infrastructures – what Dominic Boyer has dubbed ‘energopower’, after Foucault’s concept of biopower (e.g., Mitchell, 2011; Boyer, 2014; Howe, 2014; Bakke, 2016). Centralised forms of energy infrastructure, such as electricity grids, tend to concentrate resources and political power. On the other hand, more localised renewable energy systems drawing on wind and solar power, enabling previously ‘end-of-wire captive consumers’ to form closer connections with energy generation and supply (Walker and Cass, 2007), have the potential to reassemble social and governing relations, and support the emergence of a vibrant, more participatory politics (Devine-Wright, 2007; Walker and Cass, 2007; Pinker, 2018). Such claims suggest that the reconfiguration of energy infrastructures can open up experimental – even ‘revolutionary’ (Boyer, 2018) – spaces through which it may be possible to redistribute political authority and resources along more just lines. An increasing body of literature, especially from within anthropology, science and technology studies, critical geography, and urban studies, is addressing infrastructures’ world-making capacities (e.g., Chalfin, 2017; Harvey, 2017; Jensen, 2017; Reeves, 2017). Brian Larkin, for example, has noted that infrastructures are at once ‘objects that create the grounds on which other objects operate’ and ‘also the relation between things’ (2013. p. 329). Similarly, Dominic Boyer notes that ‘infrastructures are apparatuses that allow things to happen’; they ‘enable, persistently, at scales greater than their elements’ (2017, p. 174). Meanwhile, Jensen and Morita point to the capacity of infrastructures to ‘produce novel configurations of the world’ by ‘mediating between, and thereby transforming, spatially and temporally distributed 272

Debating energy futures on Lewis  273 practices’ (2017, p. 618). If infrastructures are understood as ‘experimental systems that generate emergent practical ontologies’, they argue, then the shape of politics and power is not simply grounds for but also an outcome of infrastructural experiments. By ‘simultaneously (and massively) transforming material environments’, such as living conditions and economic opportunities, ‘infrastructures change worlds’, bringing about ‘new forms of sociality, remaking landscapes, defining novel forms of politics, reorienting agency, and reconfiguring subjects and objects, possibly all at once’ (ibid., p. 620). The emancipatory potential ascribed to infrastructures by such perspectives is almost bewitching. Yet, the outcomes of infrastructural processes are often unexpected relative to the hopes nurtured about them (e.g., Cross, 2019; Shin, 2019). Moreover, the continuing predominance of existing, often centralised, infrastructures in many parts of the global north both contours and constrains the possibilities for imagining and realising ‘revolutionary’ rearrangements. The installation of (and struggles to install) new infrastructures that are more fit for anthropocenic times unfolds in terrain already shaped by pre-existing systems, technologies and logics. In this sense, temporalities of ‘the future’ are not simply linear and progressive; they unfold unevenly in the interstices of existing infrastructural arrangements. In this chapter, I will explore some of the issues at stake in crafting new energy futures – with the potential to redistribute resources, expertise and socio-economic power – in the context of ongoing infrastructural trajectories, such as centralised electricity grids and systems governing land use. I do this by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2017 and 2019 on the Hebridean Isle of Lewis, where energy futures are actively being imagined, mapped, and debated. The island is no stranger to fossil fuel extractivism; a significant proportion of its workforce sustains livelihoods by virtue of offshore contracts with oil and gas companies operating in the North Sea. However, it is also increasingly pitched as a potential renewable energy hub, offering – given its position on Britain’s gusty north-east edge of the Atlantic – among the most reliable wind and wave power in Europe. But what such an energy hub should look like – and the linked questions of who should own and install energy infrastructures, and what land is for and who should control it in an era of transition – is highly contested. In Scotland, a pronounced shift towards renewable energy production – partly driven by ambitious climate targets set by the Scottish Government – has co-arisen with a burgeoning land reform movement that has seen a growing proportion of private and government-owned estates pass into community hands. Thus, in some cases, energy decentralisation has played a key role in reworking power relations inscribed in land use and ownership (see Hunter, 2012), particularly on the Western Isles, where a large proportion of land is now community-owned (see below) – with some novel effects. As an island enjoying dense connections between different aspects of life (political, religious and crofting practices are multiply interwoven, for example), the layered and ambivalent implications of crafting alternative energy futures are rendered peculiarly visible on Lewis. The fault lines between the different possibilities implied by these potential futures have been thrown into relief by an ongoing controversy over plans to build the island’s first large-scale, commercial windfarms. This chapter addresses the futures that are promised and contested through the debates that have fractured around one of these windfarms, as well as the island’s wider experiments with energy decentralisation over the past two decades. Through this exploration, I will explore how the political and material effects of moves towards renewable energy generation on Lewis are at once reworking and constrained by existing arrangements of power, technology and – most particularly – the land and legal systems governing crofting – contribut-

274  Research handbook on energy and society ing to the emergence of unexpected forms of political action. I also suggest that the effects of transition on Lewis make themselves felt not simply through debates around energy justice per se, but also – and perhaps predominantly – through the politics surrounding transformations in land use (see also Mackenzie, 2013).

THE CROFTING SYSTEM, LAND REFORM AND COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP ON LEWIS Lewis has been heavily shaped by crofting, a landholding system specific to the Scottish Highlands and Islands that combines ‘private enterprise and communalism’.1 Crofting communities came into being with the Highland clearances, which largely took place between 1750 and 1860, and saw both highland and lowland settlements (or ‘townships’) cleared of their inhabitants – in many cases, but by no means all, to make way for sheep (see Dodgshon, 2012, p. 131). Those displaced were given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, which were organised to serve the interests of the landlords that owned the estates on which the tenants lived and worked. By contrast with the communal run rig landholding system that it replaced, crofting enshrined a two-part structure: firstly, a five to ten-acre plot of land (the croft itself) located within a township and tenanted by an individual crofter; and, secondly, the crofter’s share in a large area of poorer quality common grazing, usually located immediately beyond the boundaries of the township.2 Landowners ensured that crofts were too small to enable crofters and their families to sustain themselves from crofting alone, obliging them to work at tasks that supplied growing markets for fish, kelp, whisky, military manpower and cattle. In this way, crofters were meant to be ‘labourers first and peasant farmers only second’ (Devine, 2019, p. 120). The clearances were effectively brought to an end by the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886, legislation that arose from the findings of the Royal Commission into crofter conditions in the Highlands and Islands, which published its report in 1884 (ibid., p. 343). Since then, crofting has been established as a secure form of tenantry that enables tenant crofters to pay minimal rent for their crofts, whilst enjoying strong rights against eviction and other landowner interference, providing the crofter complies with regulations.3 Many have pointed to the defining role of the clearances and the crofting system in shaping lives and practices in the Highlands and Islands (e.g., Hunter, 2018; Devine, 2019; Combe et al., 2020). Most relevant for this chapter, crofters and crofting laid the groundwork for Scotland’s contemporary community land movement, which has seen a number of privately and publicly owned estates bought out by local collectives over the last three decades (McMorran et al., 2014). This began with the purchase of the North Lochinver Estate by the Assynt Crofters Trust in 1993 in response to plans to break up the estate – a landmark case that prompted a stream of smaller-scale buyouts by crofting and community groups (ibid.). In most cases, the groups seeking to secure buyouts have established themselves as ‘community trusts’, sometimes in the early stages of negotiations as a means of coordinating local efforts, but ultimately to administer estate land after its passage into local hands. Having gained control over the land, these trusts have sought to deploy community ownership as a basis for devising responses to local issues (Currie et al., 2019). The Western Isles have been at the forefront of the post-Assynt community land ownership movement, with the first buyout on the islands taking place in North Harris4 in 2003. Several have since followed. However, long before the Assynt buyout, in 1923, Lewis had seen the

Debating energy futures on Lewis  275 first transfer of a Scottish landed estate into community hands, when a portion of the estate of Lord Leverhulme, who owned South Harris and the entirety of Lewis at the time, was turned over to islanders. A community organisation, the Stornoway Trust, was established to administer the 28,000 hectares, all of which surrounded Lewis’ capital, Stornoway. Currently, around 70 per cent of Lewis is under community ownership, a particularly high figure relative to other parts of the Scottish Highlands and Islands (Currie et al., 2019). As elsewhere in the Highlands and Islands, several of the buyouts that have taken place on Lewis were instigated in the face of changes that were considered potentially harmful to crofters. Some in particular – such as in the Lewis estates of Pairc and Galson – were forged in an attempt to provide autonomy and protection for crofting communities that would otherwise have been subject to landowner-led developments – in these cases, proposed windfarms – that were seen as disadvantageous. Renewable energy has also played a crucial role in the trajectories of emergent community trusts after buyouts have taken place. Partly due to changes in regulations regarding energy developments, those communities that secured buyouts and established trusts earlier on – such as the Galson Trust, which was set up in 2007 – have become self-sustaining to a degree not been matched by those entering the fray at a later stage. These trusts were able to take advantage of government subsidies available for energy schemes between 2003 and 2015 (when feed-in tariffs were significantly cut) to install energy infrastructures, particularly wind turbines. The funds arising from such projects have enabled these trusts to cover core staff costs and push forward some of their own initiatives, whilst also attracting financial support through their capacity to match-fund incoming grants. In this respect, they are extending themselves well beyond the role of ‘community landlord’, effectively becoming instigators of local development (Currie et al., 2019). It is often noted that the buyouts have charted new territory in the reform of Scottish landownership. Perhaps less commented upon, however, are the close entanglements between trajectories of community landownership and energy transition. Writing of Harris, Fiona Mackenzie has noted that ‘claims to a new energy commons are allied to the working of a new property commons’ (2013, p. 166). Similarly, on Lewis, the development of wind energy on the island has been refracted predominantly through the prism of land relations, and perhaps somewhat less through debates around sustainability and energy citizenship in and of themselves (ibid.) – themes that have tended to garner more attention in transition literatures.

THE STORNOWAY WINDFARM AND THE GANG OF FOUR In recent years, a conflict over who should have the right to build a large-scale windfarm on crofting land has opened up a further embattled chapter in this history of entangled relations between land use and ownership and energy transition on Lewis. When I first arrived on Lewis, in late 2017, a heated debate was underway around the construction of one of three windfarms proposed for the island. Lewis Wind Power (LWP) – a consortium made up of EDF; the Stornoway Trust (Scotland’s oldest and largest community landowner); and Wood Group (a multinational company specialising in energy infrastructures, based in Aberdeen) – was planning to build a 36-turbine, 180-megawatt development on common grazings land (see above) belonging to the Stornoway Trust estate. Four crofting communities that exercise use rights over the common grazings land pegged for the development opposed the scheme. The four grazing committees5 that represented

276  Research handbook on energy and society the communities argued that common land should be used to build windfarms owned by communities – asserting that they are of greater benefit to local people – rather than by large multinational corporations. This Gang of Four – as some of their supporters fondly refer to them – planned to contest the Lewis Wind Power scheme via three principal means. Firstly, they aimed to use Section 19A of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993, the key legal framework governing crofting, to register their objections to the Stornoway windfarm. Secondly, they intended to use Section 50B of the Act, titled ‘Use of common grazing for other purposes’, in a way it had never been used before: to gain new rights to develop their own windfarms on common grazings land. Thirdly, they intended to seek planning permission to build four wind energy projects on the site already pegged for the Stornoway windfarm. Such a determined and multi-pronged response to a proposed windfarm development – deploying legal, political and technical tools – carries echoes of the sustained local and external opposition garnered by plans (ultimately rejected by the Scottish Government in 2008) to build what would at the time have been Europe’s largest windfarm on Barvas Moor, to the north of Lewis, in the early 2000s. Both controversies attest that some on Lewis do not necessarily regard wind energy projects as a simple panacea to fossil fuel use, as they are so often cast by governmental and dominant environmental narratives. There was little doubt amongst windfarm opponents that commercial wind energy infrastructures could be as tied up with extractivist logics – by which natural resources are removed, commodified and sold – as any oil rig.

A TALE OF TWO INTERCONNECTORS Much of the contestation around the Stornoway windfarm, and the future of wind energy on Lewis more generally, revolves around the weighty question of the interconnector, the undersea cable that transports electricity between Lewis and the mainland. The Stornoway scheme is not the only windfarm planned for Lewis. Proposals for two other windfarms on the island – a 48-megawatt development planned in Tolsta, to the north of Stornoway, and the 162-megawatt Eishken scheme in the Lochs area were granted planning permission in 2019. In all three cases, developers have applied for planning permission to increase the windfarms’ installed capacity. The planned windfarms are all designed to export the electricity they generate to the mainland. However, the current interconnector, which passes between the islands of Harris and Skye, has reached its full capacity of around 20 megawatts (see Watts, 2019 for a discussion of a similar scenario in Orkney).6 Given the substantial increase in generation that would be introduced by the proposed windfarms, in 2019 Ofgem (the UK’s energy regulator) tentatively approved plans to install a new interconnector with the capacity to carry some 450 megawatts of electricity between Stornoway and the mainland. But the approval came with a caveat: the costs of building the new interconnector could only be justified if sufficient energy production could be guaranteed on Lewis. This would mean that both the Stornoway and Eishken windfarms would need to win the Contract for Difference (CfD) auctions,7 the UK Government’s subsidy mechanism for supporting low-carbon electricity generation, which would provide the financial incentive needed to make their construction a worthwhile commercial investment. However, in September 2019, it was reported that whilst the Tolsta and Eishken schemes had both been awarded subsidies, the Stornoway development had failed in its bid.8 Given that the windfarm

Debating energy futures on Lewis  277 is unlikely to go ahead without a CfD subsidy, the proposed construction of a new subsea interconnector has – for the time being – been thrown into doubt.

THE PROMISE OF A NEW INTERCONNECTOR Despite the Stornoway windfarm’s failure to win a CfD subsidy, many – including the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (the Western Isles Council) – continue to see the construction of a new interconnector (and the commercial windfarms that would come with it) as a crucial lynchpin of Lewis’s economic future. Until now, they have regarded the existing commercial proposals for energy generation as the most reliable means of pursuing this goal. If both the Eishken and Stornoway windfarms were constructed, the Council and the Stornoway Trust would – if they had the resources to invest – garner a reliable income over the 25-year life of the schemes. In 2018, Lewis Wind Power offered the Council a 30 per cent share in the Eishken windfarm and the Stornoway Trust a 20 per cent share in the Stornoway windfarm. Lewis Wind Power has since returned Eishken windfarm to the landowner as they did not feel it was a viable development for them; it is not clear whether the share agreement remains in place with the new developer. The Council and the Stornoway Trust also argue that a new 450 (the case has been made for 600) megawatt interconnector would have enough surplus capacity to permit the installation of a number of smaller wind energy schemes. Some have proposed that these could potentially be developed by a group of the island’s community landowners and development trusts, of which some already manage successful renewable energy schemes.

THE PROMISE OF ENERGY SELF-SUFFICIENCY ON LEWIS However, some argue that the Stornoway windfarm’s failure to secure a subsidy poses an opportunity, pointing out that if no new interconnector is built, there is potential for crafting an altogether different approach to energy generation on the island. Where a subsea cable would carry electricity generated on Lewis for mainland consumption, the argument goes, its absence could open up possibilities for islanders to seek ways of increasing energy demand and storage in situ. Islanders often point out that energy prices on Lewis are disproportionately high by comparison with the mainland. Some ask why electricity generated by island windfarms shouldn’t be used by residents and businesses based on Lewis, rather than distant consumers – not only for light, but for heat too. In this view, limited connectedness with the mainland is regarded not as a loss, but rather as a means of stimulating more connectivity on Lewis – not only in terms of developing new grid and energy generation infrastructure, but also by (thereby) constituting and revivifying new and existing forms of collective life, since new energetic connections would – it is argued – help to foster the growth of local businesses and organisations.

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A HYBRID APPROACH TO ENERGY GENERATION Others (including members of the four crofting communities who are contesting the Stornoway windfarm) have argued for a middle way. They are keen to use any means of establishing more community-owned energy installations on the island – including by exporting electricity through an upgraded version of the Skye interconnector. Their key concern is that Lewis windfarms should be owned not by multinational corporations, such as EDF, but by local people, who would reap financial rewards far greater than the amounts commercial developers typically make available to localities in the form of community benefit. This is not a pie-in-the-sky prospect, they argue, pointing out that many community landowners and development trusts on Lewis have successfully installed large-scale wind turbines in order to support community projects. Amongst these, Point and Sandwick Trust’s 9-megawatt windfarm, Beinn Ghrideag (see below), remains the largest community-owned wind energy scheme in the UK. Accordingly, when the Skye interconnector was damaged in October 2020, community groups campaigned for the replacement of the faulty 33kV cable with a 132kV link.9 Not only would this improve power quality, they argued, it would also provide scope for prospective community generation, especially if Ofgem opted to limit the capacity of any future Stornoway interconnector to 450 megawatts, which they argue wouldn’t offer sufficient scope for larger-scale community projects to export energy. However, in December 2020, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks announced its decision to replace the Skye–Harris cable with an increased capacity of only 8–10 megawatts in order to expedite its installation, which is expected to take place in August 2021.10 Thus, aspirations for future large-scale community-owned renewables projects remain – as yet – a far-off prospect.

POWERING THE OPPOSITION TO THE STORNOWAY WINDFARM The likely limits on larger-scale, electricity-exporting, community-owned renewable energy schemes on Lewis – even if a wholly new interconnector is built – is one of the forces driving opposition to an EDF-owned Stornoway windfarm. Point and Sandwick Trust, a Development Trust11 established in order to take forward the Beinn Ghrideag community windfarm in support of Lewis’s Point area, has served as a key source of support and inspiration for the Gang of Four, not only in opposing the Stornoway windfarm via the Scottish Land Court (see below), but also in putting together (and submitting for planning permission) their own wind energy projects for the same site that Lewis Wind Power seeks to develop. Wind energy consultants working on these projects declared to me in 2018 that they had never heard of two separate projects submitted for planning permission in close succession by two separate developers for the same site. One of the arguments made against the crofters taking forward a project of this kind is that they do not have the capacity or experience to do so. Part of the crofters’ aim in developing these schemes is to demonstrate that this view is mistaken. A similar observation might be made of the crofters’ legal struggles. During 2017 and 2018, the Gang of Four made various submissions concerning the Stornoway windfarm to the Crofting Commission, the body that regulates crofting in Scotland. Firstly, aided by a solicitor working pro-bono on their behalf, the crofters informed the Commission of their opposition to Lewis Wind Power’s application, under Clause 19A of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993,

Debating energy futures on Lewis  279 to build the Stornoway windfarm on the common grazings they used, which fell within the boundaries of the Stornoway Trust estate. They also submitted an application contending that Section 50B of the Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993 conferred on them – as crofters – the right to build wind turbines on the same site pegged for the Lewis Wind Power development. The Crofting Commission passed the Stornoway Trust’s 19A application to the Land Court – a court of law with the authority to resolve disputes, including between landlords and tenants, over Scotland’s agricultural and crofting land – for consideration. Meanwhile, in September 2018, the Commission refused their 50B application, and the crofters duly decided to appeal the decision in the Land Court. In the latter half of 2018, in preparation for the ensuing hearings, the crofters contracted a high-level team of lawyers to represent their cause. The crofters thus embarked on two separate, though related, legal battles. Recognising that the outcome of the 19A hearing would be at least partly contingent on the outcome of the 50B case,12 the Scottish Land Court scheduled the 50B hearing first, in June 2019, stating that a decision on the matter should be forthcoming before any further hearing was held with respect to Lewis Wind Power’s 19A application.13 Just over a month later, on 17 July 2019, the Land Court rejected the crofters’ 50B appeals – largely because their proposals were considered detrimental to the Stornoway Trust’s existing plans to build a windfarm on the same site. A key plank of the crofters’ argument had been that the Crofting Commission, in rejecting their 50B application on this basis, had simply vetoed their alternative development proposals because they went against landowner interests – rather than undertaking a balanced consideration of the relative merits of the different projects. After the Land Court’s decision was issued, the crofters took their case to the Court of Session, Scotland’s supreme civil court, which similarly turned down their appeal, on 19 August 2020. Although the case went against the crofters, the Court of Session acknowledged in a postscript that their decision had been constrained by crofting legislation that might be regarded as no longer fit for purpose. Thus, it noted that the case identified ‘general concerns about the development of what might be underused croft land, including common grazing’, observing that ‘the needs of the crofting communities are not identical to those in the late Victorian era’. It suggested that given these changing needs, including the possibility of using common grazings land for infrastructure development as well as crofting – which has been in steep decline – it could be left to the Crofting Commission to decide on the appropriateness of a project applied for via the 50B legislation, ‘having regard to everyone’s interests’, in the same way that it did for other kinds of crofter applications.14 It pointed out that this was not permitted under the current provisions of the 50B legislation, and that such a change would require the repeal of one of its sections.15 In response to the Court of Session’s decision, and postscript, the crofters issued a press release stating the following: Whereas the Crofting Commission has a clear duty under the Act to reach its decisions on applications made to it by balancing the full range of affected interests, including the interests of the landowner, the estate, the crofting community and the wider public interest, applications made by crofting communities to develop their common grazings are uniquely subject to what our case has shown is an effective veto by the landowner alone, without consideration of the other interests. This veto is not right or sensible. Moreover, as it affects half a million hectares of common grazings in the Highlands and over 500 crofting communities, it is crippling the potential of crofting communities to use their common land for sustainable development such as community energy projects that we wanted to pursue. We believe the Court was absolutely right, therefore, to say that our case has highlighted a real problem in the Crofting Acts and we believe it is now up to the Scottish Parliament … to

280  Research handbook on energy and society reform the law along the lines indicated by the Court. Section 50B(2) must be repealed to remove the landowner veto so that future development proposals that have come from crofting communities can be considered by the Commission in the normal, balanced way, taking proper account of the interests of all the parties involved.16

In short, whilst the crofters’ struggles over the Stornoway windfarm have thus far not borne fruit in strictly legal terms, they and others point to the ambitious precedent they are setting in mobilising crofting law as they have done. Firstly, as the language of the crofters’ press release suggests, they have proposed that common grazings land be regarded simply as common land, and that crofters should duly have the right to apply not only for changes to crofting land in the service of crofting, but also to ‘develop’ it – via, for example, the installation of windfarms. In so doing, they have made the case for fundamentally transforming what crofting land should be used for and who should have the right to convert it to such uses. Secondly, through deploying 50B of the Crofters Act, which had never before been used by crofters to apply for permission to install wind turbines on crofting land, they have at once mobilised crofting law for new purposes whilst also drawing attention to the limits both of the law and of the practices of the institutions upholding or acting within it – including the Crofting Commission. These limits were exposed by the postscript from the Court of Session – a Court that is itself rarely used for the purposes of arbitrating disputes over crofting land – querying the relevance of some of the provisions of the Crofters Act. Thirdly, the documents, spaces of contestation and range of experts marshalled by the crofters’ legal struggles have served as powerful political tools, opening up space for the legitimacy of large-scale commercial schemes to be called into question by local people.17 In particular, the crofters’ legal journey, punctuated by the preparation, anticipation and receipt of documents, and multiple court hearings, has disrupted the image of fluid progress so often portrayed by developers when promoting mega-infrastructural projects of this kind, whilst working to defer the material realisation of a specific windfarm.

CONCLUSIONS: MAKING THE FUTURE – INFRASTRUCTURES PAST AND PRESENT In some portions of the literature examining socio-technical transitions, such as strategic niche management and multi-level perspectives, there has been a tendency to separate the technical from the social and political dimensions of systemic change, and to constitute the political in somewhat schematic or abstract terms (e.g., Geels, 2014; see Pinker et al., 2020 for further discussion). Ethnographically informed approaches to socio-technical transitions can instead open up space for exploring the emergent, place-specific and heterogenous ways in which processes of power shape and take shape through systemic transformations, highlighting in particular the entanglements between human and non-human actors and institutional, technological and political practices across scales (Pinker et al., 2020). This chapter has attempted to take this approach in exploring some of the legal, political, technical and material interweavings implied by the dynamics surrounding the Stornoway windfarm. They suggest that, despite the claims of policy documents, developers and others, the issues raised by the installation of renewable energy infrastructures are never narrowly technical. They are also highly political, in that the various proposals made for organising energy production on Lewis imply different ways of imagining island futures – and with them different arrangements of power, expertise and collective life. I have also suggested that the

Debating energy futures on Lewis  281 lineaments of these distinct visions for future forms of political practice, by which I mean new ways of organising and articulating difference, are materially constituted – in that they are shaped by existing infrastructures, not least Lewis’s electricity grid and interconnector, and crofting practices, institutions and law. Finally, I have suggested that as infrastructural promises for the future interact with the limits and possibilities posed by these current technological, legal and land tenure systems, relations on the island may be reconfigured with unpredictable and emergent effects, potentially exposing, disrupting and reworking existing power relations. On Lewis, this is particularly apparent with respect to land. Debates about the island’s energy futures tend to be closely tied up – directly or otherwise – with debates over land – what it is for, and who should control it. Such entanglements yield concrete effects. As we have seen, existing arrangements structuring land use and ownership have opened up possibilities for the legal contestation of large-scale renewable energy schemes. It is the crofting system that has enabled the Gang of Four to contest the Stornoway scheme on legal terrain. Without it – as one of my research participants put it – the Stornoway Trust could have gone ahead with its windfarm project unopposed and the crofters would not have been able to lay any claim to the development site or propose their own uses for it. In short, the controversy has demonstrated that existing legal arrangements governing crofting land have served as a tool for local people to disrupt assumptions around who should build and own renewable energy schemes, and how their benefits are distributed. In the process, crofting law is being repurposed for infrastructural disputes it was never designed to address, raising questions around not only how land is used, but also who decides over its use in an era of transition, challenging the frameworks and institutions that have historically governed it.18 It also seems likely that similar projects to the Stornoway windfarm may help to catalyse further transformations in the crofting system. Even as crofting has provided the framework for the communities’ legal and political campaign, members of the Gang of Four and some of their supporters acknowledged that the construction of large-scale wind energy projects on common grazings land is likely to lead to the commodification of land and the crofting system. On the other hand, as noted above, some have put forward a positive case for transforming common grazings from crofting land (since only a small minority of Lewis residents continue to graze sheep beyond their own crofts) into common land with multiple potential uses – including the construction of infrastructure, such as turbines and housing. In short, the dispute over the windfarm has prompted the revaluation of land that has historically been constituted as marginal and unproductive, and with it introduced debates and legal challenges that may catalyse further reconfigurations around how land use is governed under the crofting system. Beyond crofting and the legal frameworks governing it, it is clear that other infrastructural processes too have played a crucial role in shaping the unfolding dispute surrounding the Stornoway windfarm. One of these is Lewis’ recent history of energy decentralisation, which has contributed to material transformations in power relations associated with land use and ownership on Lewis. As noted above, a high proportion of the buyouts on Lewis were facilitated at least in part by the promise that wind energy schemes, subsidised by generous UK government feed-in-tariffs in existence at the time, could become a vital source of income for nascent community landowning trusts. A number of trusts on Lewis (both those that own land and those that do not), buoyed by funds particularly from renewable energy infrastructures they have installed, are now coming into their own as drivers of local development. Point and Sandwick Trust, for example, which currently draws a net income of around £900,000 a year from its windfarm project and is expected to generate £2 million a year once the capital

282  Research handbook on energy and society costs of the scheme are repaid, has spent around £1 million supporting local projects since the installation of the turbines in 2015. It has also kickstarted a major project aimed at converting to hydrogen the ferries that run between Lewis and the mainland. Elsewhere, the Galson Trust, a community landowner, which installed three smaller wind turbines between 2013 and 2015, is contemplating a large-scale investment in a scheme to build an innovative care home in partnership with the Western Isles Council. Such moves by community trusts newly empowered by funds gleaned from investments in wind energy are in turn slowly beginning to reshape dominant institutional and power dynamics on the island, which have tended to revolve around the joint activities of the Western Isles Council, the NHS, the Crofting Commission, and the development agency, Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Crucially, the expertise and funds these trusts have garnered through renewable energy projects have helped lay the ground for the Gang of Four’s legal challenge to the Stornoway windfarm. The support of Point and Sandwick Trust in particular has enabled them to fight a case that is opening up and reworking the politics around how land is used. Lewis’a interlinked dynamics of energy decentralisation and transformations in land ownership have fairly clear policy implications: most obviously, they point to the limits of addressing energy transition and land reform as separate processes. A just transition demands that renewable energy infrastructures are built with due regard to human and non-human actors. Accordingly, a justice-informed approach to energy transformations would seek to introduce debates over how land is used and owned in transition times, and who should own and benefit from any new energy infrastructures hosted by that land. This is likely to demand slower, more participatory decision-making processes, and a demotion of reductive, economistic measures of value in favour of an emphasis on locally led development and the public good (although neither of these are simple categories). One further factor is worth pointing to. Lewis’s energy transition is complicated by the dynamics introduced by the frictions, contingencies and inter-dependencies between Lewis’ existing and promised electricity generation, transmission and distribution infrastructures. Each of these, working at distinct spatial and temporal scales, opens up and forecloses different possible energy futures. Thus, for example, the planned 450-megawatt interconnector promises to transform Lewis from a largely dependent consumer of electricity via the existing Skye–Harris connection to a producer with the capacity to export a significant supply of energy to the mainland. The world-making possibilities of such a shift are often debated in Lewis’ institutions. Many Council staff, for example, regarded renewable energy generation and export via a new interconnector as a central plank of Lewis’s economic prosperity – perhaps one to one day rival Shetland’s oil fund, a source of envy for many on Lewis. And yet, this interconnector’s carrying capacity is expected to be taken up mostly by the electricity generated by the large-scale windfarms already pitched to justify its construction to Ofgem, the energy regulator that must approve it, potentially preventing community organisations from building larger windfarms for electricity export. Currently, the entire interconnector project is mired in uncertainty since Lewis Wind Power’s failure to win the subsidy necessary for the Stornoway windfarm to go ahead. Meanwhile, some point to the world-making possibilities should the new interconnector fail to materialise, suggesting, for example, that Lewis could use energy generators built on the island not for export, but rather to service data centres, helping to position the island as a hub for high-tech industry. This in turn would entail a radical overhaul of Lewis’s existing electricity distribution networks, which are almost at capacity,

Debating energy futures on Lewis  283 and were not designed to carry large amounts of energy generated by multiple windfarms to local users. In short, trajectories of energy decentralisation on Lewis point to the interdependencies between the infrastructures implicated in the construction of further infrastructures – ‘the infrastructure of infrastructure’, as Carse (2016) and Hetherington (2019) have put it. Infrastructural development on the island thus proceeds through (at least) a double movement: one that is oriented towards planning the infrastructures that serve as both guarantee and outcome of a new interconnector, and another oriented towards planning island futures around its lack. Wind is, of course, the key actor animating Lewis’s energy transition. Anyone on the island who remembers the uproar over the Barvas Moor windfarm could tell you that wind is not only a force of nature, but also a political catalyst. What is new now is that, partly by virtue of policies instigated by the UK and Scottish Governments (see Pinker, 2018), wind power is increasingly being harnessed in locally scaled ways, by community trusts and crofting groups – with effects that are helping to shape debates around the sorts of troubling question that are being asked in many other places beyond Lewis. These include: What does community look like and how can it be sustained in lively and dynamic ways at a time when practices – such as crofting – that have in the past been its central fulcrum are diminishing or radically transforming, whilst other processes – such as industrial agriculture and large-scale infrastructures – predominate? In these times of the Anthropocene and the existential threat of climate change, how, by whom, and for what purposes should land be managed? What kinds of future are generative and sustaining for humans and non-humans alike, and how far can they be achieved through existing institutions and configurations of power? On Lewis, the unfolding controversy over the Stornoway windfarm attests to the promises made about the future by renewable energy infrastructures. But it also suggests that revolutionary futures – those that propose new ways of organising resources and articulating difference – are crafted through the creative hybridisation of past, existing and emerging infrastructural systems. One effect is that new energy infrastructures are reworking the very infrastructures – in Lewis’s case, of crofting land and law – that enable them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the many people that generously participated in this research – from Lewis and beyond. I am particularly grateful to Calum Macdonald and Lewis Kermack for their time and insights. The Leverhulme Trust supported my research on Lewis through an Early Career Fellowship (ECF-2015-239) between 2015 and 2018. My thanks also to the editors and the two reviewers whose astute comments significantly improved this piece.

NOTES 1. See https://​www​.croftingyear​.org​.uk/​userfiles/​file/​history/​townships/​index​-2​.pdf. 2. See https://​www​.croftingyear​.org​.uk/​userfiles/​file/​history/​townships/​index​-2​.pdf. 3. See https://​basedrones​.wordpress​.com/​2020/​08/​29/​crofting​-community​-commons​-and​-land​-use​ -development​-of​-common​-grazings​-but​-on​-whose​-terms/​. 4. Harris is an island that forms the southern part of the same landmass occupied by Lewis.

284  Research handbook on energy and society 5. Locally elected bodies that oversee the administration of communities’ common grazings. 6. On 16 October 2020 the Skye–Harris subsea cable developed a fault; it is awaiting replacement in 2021. The fault has largely prevented Lewis’s windfarms, including those that are community-owned, from exporting all but a fraction of their generated electricity (Community Energy Scotland briefing, November 2020). 7. See https://​www​.gov​.uk/​government/​publications/​contracts​-for​-difference/​contract​-for​-difference. 8. The CfD auctions saw Lewis’s proposed windfarms placed in competition with several other prospective wind energy projects elsewhere in Scotland, and only the lowest subsidy price bids are successful. 9. See https://​renews​.biz/​64100/​call​-for​-upgrade​-to​-failed​-western​-isles​-interconnector/​. 10. See https://​www​.4coffshore​.com/​news/​ssen​-unveils​-subsea​-cable​-replacement​-plans​-for​-skye​-and​ -harris​-nid20701​.html. 11. Community land trusts should be differentiated from community development trusts. The former are landowners; the latter are formed to administer assets and infrastructures, such as community energy projects, for local benefit. 12. That is, if the Court were to deem that the Crofting Commission had acted unlawfully in its refusal to grant permission to the crofters to install their own turbines on common grazings land pegged for the Stornoway Trust development, this would establish the legal legitimacy of the crofters’ right to build. The Land Court would then have to take this into account when deciding over the lawfulness of Lewis Wind Power’s 19A application to build its own windfarm. 13. The 19A hearing is scheduled to take place in Spring 2021. 14. They suggest instead that 50B applications could be decided in the same way that applications under Section 58A(7) of the 1993 Crofting Act are decided. 15. Specifically, of section 50B(2)(b). 16. Crofters’ Press Release, 20 August 2020. 17. Non-crofters opposing such schemes cannot resort to crofting law to protest against planned commercial developments; this has caused problems in areas where windfarms planned for construction on crofting land are supported by crofters but opposed by other non-crofting members of the same community. 18. Arguably, infrastructural trajectories usually work like this – see Shin 2019, for example.

REFERENCES Appel, Hannah, Nikhil Anand and Akhil Gupta (2018), ‘Introduction: Temporality, politics, and the promise of infrastructure’, in Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel (eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure, Durham: Duke University Press. Bakke, Gretchen (2016), The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future, Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Boyer, Dominic (2014), ‘Energopower: An introduction’, Anthropological Quarterly, 87 (2), 309–333. Boyer, Dominic (2017), ‘Revolutionary Infrastructure’, in Penny Harvey, Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita (eds.), Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 174–186. Boyer, Dominic (2018), ‘Infrastructure, potential energy, revolution’, in Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel (eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 223–243. Carse, Ashley (2017), ‘Keyword: Infrastructure’, in Penny Harvey, Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita (eds.), Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 27–39. Chalfin, Brenda (2017), ‘“Wastelandia”: Infrastructure and the commonwealth of waste in urban Ghana’, Ethnos, 82 (4), 648–671. Combe, Malcolm, Jayne Glass and Annie Tindley (2020), Land Reform in Scotland: History, Law and Policy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Debating energy futures on Lewis  285 Cross, Jamie (2019), ‘No current: Electricity and disconnection in rural India’, in Simone Abram, Brit Ross Winthereik and Thomas Yarrow (eds.), Electrifying Anthropology: Exploring Electrical Practices and Infrastructures, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 65–82. Currie, Margaret, Annabel Pinker and Andrew Copus (2019), ‘Strengthening communities on the Isle of Lewis’, RELOCAL Case Study Report. Devine, Tom (2019), The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600–1900, Penguin UK. Devine-Wright, Patrick (2007), ‘Energy citizenship: Psychological aspects of evaluation in sustainable energy technologies’, in J. Murphy (ed.), Framing the Present, Shaping the Future: Contemporary Governance of Sustainable Technologies, London: Earthscan. Dodgshon, Robert A. (2012), ‘The clearances and the transformation of the Scottish countryside’, in Tom M. Devine and Jenny Wormald (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geels, Frank (2014), ‘Regime resistance against low-carbon transitions: Introducing politics and power into the multi-level perspective’, Theory, Culture & Society, 31 (5), 21–40. Harvey, Penelope (2017), ‘Waste futures: Infrastructures and political experimentation in southern Peru’, Ethnos, 82 (4), 672–689. Hetherington, Kregg (2019), ‘Introduction. Keywords of the Anthropocene’, in Kregg Hetherington (ed.), Infrastructure, Environment and Life in the Anthropocene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–13. Howe, Cymene (2014), ‘Anthropocenic ecoauthority: The winds of Oaxaca’, Anthropological Quarterly, 87 (2), 381–404. Hunter, James (2012), From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops: Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Balallan, Isle of Lewis: Islands Book Trust. Hunter, James (2018), The Making of the Crofting Community, Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd. Jensen, Casper Bruun (2017), ‘Pipe dreams: Sewage infrastructure and activity trails in Phnom Penh’, Ethnos, 82 (4), 627–647. Jensen, Casper Bruun and Atsuro Morita (2017), ‘Introduction: Infrastructures as ontological experiments’, Ethnos, 82 (4), 615–626. Larkin, Brian (2013), ‘The politics and poetics of infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 327–343. Mackenzie, A. Fiona D. (2013), Places of Possibility: Property, Nature and Community Land Ownership, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. McMorran, Robert, Alister Scott and Martin Francis Price (2014), ‘Reconstructing sustainability: Participant experiences of community land tenure in North West Scotland’, Journal of Rural Studies, 33, 20–31. Mitchell, Timothy (2011), Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, New York: Verso. Pinker, Annabel (2018), ‘Tinkering with turbines: Ethics and energy decentralization in Scotland’, Anthropological Quarterly, 91 (2), 709–748. Pinker, Annabel, Lucia Argüelles, Anke Fischer and Stefanie Becker (2020), ‘Between straitjacket and possibility: Energy initiatives and the politics of regulation’, Geoforum, 113, 14–25. Reeves, Madeleine (2017), ‘Infrastructural hope: Anticipating “independent roads” and territorial integrity in southern Kyrgyzstan’, Ethnos, 82 (4), 711–737. Shin, Hiroki (2019), ‘At the edge of the network of power in Japan, c. 1910s–1960s’, in Simone Abram, Brit Ross Winthereik and Thomas Yarrow (eds.), Electrifying Anthropology: Exploring Electrical Practices and Infrastructures, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 101–120. Walker, Gordon and Noel Cass (2007), ‘Carbon reduction, “the public” and renewable energy: Engaging with socio-technical configurations’, Area, 39 (4), 458–469. Watts, Laura (2019), Energy at the End of the World: An Orkney Islands Saga, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

PART IV CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES AND ENERGY FUTURES

21. Knowledge infrastructures for sustainable energy transitions: marine renewable energy in Scotland Shana Lee Hirsch

INTRODUCTION As governments around the world search for ways to transition to lower-carbon energy systems, nascent and early-stage alternative technologies have become more desirable. One of these emerging technologies includes marine renewable energy – wave, tidal, and current energy. Marine energy is often posited as a renewable, reliable, abundant, and predictable energy source that can complement existing energy generation, and its potential to power emerging sectors in the ‘blue economy’ such as aquaculture, ocean mining, ocean observation, or other applications and industries, is only beginning to be recognized (LiVecchi et al., 2019). Despite this potential, marine energy research and development is still at an early stage, especially when compared with the wind energy industry, which began earlier and has advanced at a much faster pace (Mueller and Wallace, 2008). This is due to a number of challenges, including logistical and engineering issues caused by the nature of the marine environment, long design cycles, a lack of technological convergence, as well as a lack of financial incentives for development due to the structuring of energy economics and policy (Hannon et al., 2017). Globally, marine energy is therefore at a stage where support for innovation, research, and development is critical (OES, 2018). For some nations with ample access to marine resources, energy derived from waves and tides has become a locus of innovation and investment. In Scotland, fostering innovation for marine energy has gone hand-in-hand with the emerging narratives and strengthening national imaginary of Scotland as a place for renewable energy innovation. The Scottish Government has marketed Scotland as a ‘climate pioneer’, positioning itself as different from the rest of the UK by drawing on the politics of territorial identity (McEwen and Bomberg, 2014). Yet the Scottish Government’s success is partly due to its investment in knowledge infrastructures to support innovation in marine renewable energy. Knowledge infrastructures support scientific work. They are the ecosystems and networks of material, conceptual, and institutional actors and artifacts that produce and extend knowledge (Bowker and Star, 1999; Edwards, 2010). Thus, knowledge infrastructures include both ‘abstract’ elements such as protocols, standards, and collaborations, as well as ‘concrete’ elements such as test sites, instruments, demonstration projects, and financial resources (Bowker et al., 2010). Because the marine energy industry is at an early stage of development and scaling, knowledge infrastructures to support research and innovation in this domain are particularly dynamic at this point in time. Energy transitions are also enmeshed in national (Anderson, 1983), sociotechnical (Jasanoff, 2015), and environmental (Peet and Watts, 2002) imaginaries of energy futures, and the Scottish Government has used these imaginaries to make the relatively small 287

288  Research handbook on energy and society nation of Scotland have an outsized impact on the global marine energy sector. Yet innovation in renewable energy does not occur in a stepwise process from idea to policy to implementation. Instead, ongoing experimentation is required in order to both cultivate imaginaries and translate strategies, white papers, and long-term visions into futures (Verschraegen and Vandermoere, 2017). While these dynamics are often highlighted at the macro-scale, they also take place at the micro- and meso-scale of designing and creating knowledge infrastructures to support renewable energy innovation. This chapter uses a grounded-theoretical approach (Charmaz, 2005; Clarke, 2005) to explore how knowledge infrastructures support or hinder innovation in marine renewable energy. Through this case analysis I demonstrate the importance of considering knowledge infrastructures in understanding innovation and developing research policy to support sustainability transitions. In doing so, the study also argues that qualitative, grounded-theoretical methods that uncover the role of knowledge infrastructures make an important contribution to energy research more broadly. The chapter begins with an overview of the case of marine energy innovation in Scotland, followed by an outline of relevant literature on knowledge infrastructures that identifies the gap that this kind of analysis can fill in energy research. Finally, using qualitative data from an empirical study, three examples of knowledge infrastructures in marine energy in Scotland are given, along with the implications for energy research more broadly. These examples demonstrate the way that knowledge infrastructures are an often invisible, but crucial part of fostering innovation in this emerging energy sector.

RENEWABLE ENERGY INNOVATION: THE CASE OF MARINE ENERGY IN SCOTLAND The United Kingdom (UK) Government has looked to both energy policy and investment in infrastructure, research, and development to facilitate innovation in the marine energy sector (Corsatea, 2014). Much of this investment, either from the UK, European Union (EU), or Scottish governments, and the research, development, and testing that has occurred has taken place in Scotland. Yet, as a devolved part of the UK, Scotland has jurisdiction over some of the policies that might be used to facilitate marine energy development, but not all of them. Therefore, the Scottish Government has been forced to be creative in terms of furthering its own energy agenda. Even though most regulatory power over energy was not devolved to Scotland, devolution of some powers to the Scottish Parliament in 1998 set off a move to create a Scottish national energy strategy. These strategic shifts were followed by an increase in UK-wide decarbonization policy in the later 2000s, which also spurred investment in renewable energy innovation in Scotland (Winskel et al., 2014). Following the International Energy Agency, the Scottish Government has emphasized ‘accelerated technological development as the key to facilitating a rapid energy transition from reliance on North Sea oil to renewables’ (Winskel et al., 2014). The Scottish Government’s 2008 energy policy overview states: ‘Scotland is rich in energy resources and we must be ambitious in their exploitation. We are planning now for the huge export potential of renewable energy and clean energy technology’ (Scottish Government, 2008, p. 4). In order to realize this ambition, the Scottish Government invested heavily in onshore and offshore wind, solar, as well as marine renewable energy (indeed another Scottish case, on the Isle of Lewis, is discussed in Pinker, Chapter 20).

Knowledge infrastructures for sustainable energy transitions  289 Despite lacking control over the ability to regulate energy transmission and pricing, the Scottish Government has looked for novel ways to foster development in the renewable energy sector. This has included facilitating both marine and terrestrial spatial planning, modifying environmental regulation, and granting planning consent (see Cowell, Chapter 16). To overcome the inability to make structural changes in energy policy, the Scottish Government has also launched several high-profile research enterprises and initiatives and invested in knowledge infrastructures to support renewable energy innovation, especially marine renewables (Graziano et al., 2017). Some examples of investments that specifically target marine energy (to varying degrees) include: the Saltire Prize for marine renewable energy, the Forum for Renewable Energy Development in Scotland (FREDS), the Scottish Energy Laboratory, the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), the International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ), the Energy Technology Centre, the Energy Technology Partnership, as well as multiple regional and local grants for community-based energy such as Community Energy Scotland, and local development of industrial supply chains or research through Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Although some investment for these projects has come from the UK and the EU, the Scottish Government has successfully framed Scotland as a globally important location that supports innovation in marine renewables (Hamilton, 2002). These investments in marine energy have not only benefited Scotland: the testing and demonstrations projects that are taking place in Scotland have the potential to reduce costs of marine energy generation globally, making deployment of commercial, large-scale devices possible (Wright et al., 2018; UK Marine Energy Council, 2019). In Scottish waters, large-scale tidal installations, including Simec Atlantis Energy’s MeyGen project have already generated over 30GWh of energy to the grid. Meanwhile, wave energy converters at EMEC have also generated over 130MWh (UK Marine Energy Council, 2019). In both of these instances, Scotland was able to claim global firsts in marine energy generation to the grid. Yet there have also been setbacks in this effort to accelerate marine energy R&D. Devices have been slow in reaching commercial scale. Public failures of devices have influenced perceptions, and some projects have fallen short of the economic benefits promised to local communities. In addition, UK-wide, energy pricing has not aligned to facilitate investment in renewables, especially nascent technologies such as marine energy, therefore stifling research and development across the country. A recent report by Hannon et al. (2017) examined the effectiveness of innovation policy and research support for wave energy in the UK. The authors found that despite almost 200 million GPB of public funding investment in wave energy innovation since 2000, the sector has not delivered a commercially viable device. Yet many (but by no means all) of the technological challenges faced by the sector are problems that must be supported by science and innovation policy (Mueller and Wallace, 2008). Hannon et al.’s (2017) analysis found that lack of knowledge exchange and support at critical turning points in the sector has resulted in poor innovation outcomes and a withdrawal of multi-national investors. Their research also highlighted that more recent investment in establishing new R&D programmes, facilitating actor networks, and creating world-leading testing sites has led to increased and measurable innovation performance in the wave energy sector, attracting developers from around the world (Hannon et al., 2017). Interdisciplinary understanding is needed to overcome these challenges, and social science research on knowledge and innovation in the marine energy sector has been recognized as a key gap (Kerr et al., 2014). Hannon et al.’s (2017) report not

290  Research handbook on energy and society only highlights the important ways in which innovation policy has significant and measurable impacts on an emerging industry, but it also points to the need to understand how innovation is being supported (or hindered) by knowledge infrastructures.

CONCEPTUALIZING KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURES Knowledge infrastructures are the ‘robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds’ (Edwards, 2010, p. 17). Knowledge infrastructures support scientific work – both the way it is conducted and how it is applied (Bowker and Star, 1999). Knowledge infrastructures can be material, but they can also be conceptual or social in nature. Either way, knowledge infrastructures can have material effects, having lasting consequences for the science that results from their use (Edwards et al., 2013). Infrastructures are thus ‘paradoxical’ because they can be used to facilitate change in research trajectories, but they can also hinder adaptation (Star and Ruhleder, 1994). According to Bowker and Star (1999), this is tied to the nature of infrastructures: in order to facilitate knowledge exchange, knowledge infrastructures must be standardized enough to extend work practices across organizations while at the same time remaining locally useful. The infrastructures constructed today will therefore impact knowledge production in the future, and considering the way they may be able to adapt to changing technologies or environmental conditions is therefore important. This tension between the need to be rigid yet remain flexible becomes especially clear in large-scale infrastructures where sociotechnical systems have a spatially and temporally broad reach (Star and Ruhleder, 1994), like those surrounding energy innovation and development. In marine energy development, the dynamics of change and adaptation in knowledge infrastructures are particularly apparent because the nascent technology and emerging sector necessitates a highly flexible knowledge infrastructure. Knowledge infrastructure studies has its roots in science and technology studies (STS), and as such, draws on qualitative and ethnographic methods that focus on the techniques that actors use to deal with and work within knowledge infrastructures. Examples of these techniques include using grounded theoretical methods (Charmaz, 2005). Using these methods, researchers gather qualitative data from participants and then use coding techniques to locate themes and devices that participants use to explain, interact with, or relate to knowledge infrastructures (Star, 1999; Ribes, 2014). By employing grounded-theoretical methods, scholars have been able to explore the ways that researchers rely on knowledge infrastructures, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, Ribes (2014) found that researchers working on a large-scale geosciences network (GEON) used scalar devices, or tools to facilitate work across a large-scale project in order to build and maintain a lasting knowledge infrastructure (Ribes and Finholt, 2009; Ribes, 2014). Actors may also be actively involved in creating infrastructure, or infrastructuring (Pipek and Wulf, 2009), which can be observed at both the individual and organizational level (Ribes, 2017). Since infrastructures can be studied by recognizing the techniques that actors use to deal with them and work within them, by focusing on these dynamics, it can even be possible to normatively design and implement adaptive knowledge infrastructures. For example, by tracing the shifting needs of HIV researchers, Ribes and Polk (2015) conclude that by ‘repurposing, elaborating, and extending’ the ‘kernel of research’ infrastructure,

Knowledge infrastructures for sustainable energy transitions  291 researchers were able to meet current infrastructural needs while at the same time remaining flexible to future changes. Importantly, for understanding energy transitions, those researching knowledge infrastructures have found that, once established, knowledge infrastructures can be difficult to reverse, as they institutionalize norms, values, and virtues that endure into the future (Ribes, 2017). Understanding the dynamic of change in knowledge infrastructures has been identified as one of the key research challenges for infrastructure studies (Edwards et al., 2013). This aligns well with research in energy and sustainability transitions, which seeks ways to adapt socio-technical systems to increase sustainability. Understanding how socio-technical systems can support societal goals for sustainability in sectors such as energy, transport, and agro-food has been a goal of sustainability transitions research (Grin et al., 2010), and a growing number of empirical case-studies have tested and refined methods and analysis, providing a rich set of tools for science and innovation policy researchers to draw from (Kohler et al., 2019). Research in the field of sustainability transitions is usually explicitly prescriptive and focuses on ways to facilitate and manage sustainability transitions (Kemp and Rotmans, 2005; Kemp and Loorbach, 2006), often through ‘strategic niche management’ (Hoogma et al., 2002; Smith, 2003). While transitions management considers the role of power and agency in transformative work (Avelino and Rotmans, 2009), the field has also been criticized for focusing too much on meso-level analysis of socio-technical systems (Geels, 2004), as opposed to macro-scale political-economic analysis or micro-scale individual behaviors and practices. Recently, however, there has been increased interest among STS and sustainability transitions scholars in calling for interdisciplinary studies that bring concepts from both fields together to help fill this gap (Hess and Sovocool, 2020). Knowledge infrastructures is one such concept, and the following case will give examples of the empirical and conceptual work that can be done by adopting knowledge infrastructures as a frame. In the case of innovation in the Scottish marine energy sector, for reasons outlined above, many policy and economic reforms are not available as transition tools for the Scottish Government. Instead, national sustainability transitions are relying on constructing and maintaining appropriate knowledge infrastructures that will support the innovation necessary to make these sociotechnical shifts. A need for new knowledge to support an emerging technology means that existing knowledge infrastructures must be adapted to align with new research trajectories. Therefore, conceptual and empirical work on knowledge infrastructures can provide a nuanced view of how sustainability transitions take place across many contexts, and the Scottish case provides an interesting one because it highlights how energy transitions may be advanced by building supporting knowledge infrastructures.

LOCATING KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURES IN MARINE ENERGY Research on knowledge infrastructures uses grounded theoretical methods to identify knowledge infrastructures from the perspective of individuals themselves (Star, 1999). Using these methods, this study located several ways that knowledge infrastructures are supporting marine energy research, development, and innovation in Scotland. The following analysis is based on 27 semi-structured interviews with policymakers, researchers, engineers, and developers involved in the marine renewable energy sector in Scotland. In addition, the research included

292  Research handbook on energy and society participatory observation at eight conferences on marine renewable energy (three in the United States and five in Scotland); webinars and workshops aimed at marine energy researchers and developers; as well as both online and physical archives, including meeting minutes, historical political files, and policy documents from the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish National Party, among others. These materials were coded and analysed using a modified grounded-theoretical situational analysis approach. Situational analysis is a multimodal approach to doing grounded theory that uses situational mapping techniques to analyse diverse sets of data including interview transcripts, policy documents, ethnographic memos, and visual collections (Clarke, 2005). Participants identified many knowledge infrastructures that were supporting their work, but only three are outlined below. They were chosen because they were discussed by participants across many roles within the sector and they became important sensitizing concepts when viewed through a knowledge infrastructures perspective. The three described include: (1) networked and nested testing and demonstration centres, (2) standards for instrumentation and testing, and (3) university–industry collaboratives. After brief examples of each, I describe how they act as important knowledge infrastructures for supporting innovation in marine energy, and then consider the implications for understanding these knowledge infrastructures in energy research more broadly. Networked and Nested Testing and Demonstration Centres The network of physical testing and demonstration centres that have been established across the region is enabling marine energy innovation across Scotland. Yet, while the physical infrastructures, such as the testing facilities themselves, are important, participants also identified the formal and informal social networks that have formed between them as critical to their functioning: participants rely on the networked and nested nature of the centres to forge connections between industrial and academic research. The marine energy research and testing demonstration centres in Scotland stand out as the most extensive and developed globally, and researchers and developers come from around the world to use Scotland’s testing infrastructure. Scotland is home to the largest full-scale offshore marine energy testing and demonstration site in the world, the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). Located in the Orkney Islands in Scotland, it has been granted 36 million GBP in public funds, and has the most comprehensive facilities for open water testing of marine energy devices. EMEC attracts developers because it has both demonstration-scale and full-scale, grid-connected berths for testing both wave and tidal devices. The marine energy testing infrastructure in Scotland also includes smaller-scale testing facilities, many of which are located at universities that have had long-standing research programmes in marine energy. One of these is FloWave, a test tank located at the University of Edinburgh. FloWave opened in 2014, but has a much longer history stretching back to some of the earliest wave energy experiments (Salter, 2016). It is a circular, multi-directional wave and tidal testing tank with the ability to simulate complex sea states, including the EMEC test centre’s seas in Orkney. As one researcher pointed out, the tank is able to replicate a ‘piece of the sea’ from Orkney (Billa Croo, where EMEC is located), so that smaller-scale devices can be tested in the tank before heading to the open ocean test births (Draycott et al., 2019). One participant spoke of the usefulness of this kind of nested test-centre network, that brings ‘real-world ocean conditions into the lab’, stating:

Knowledge infrastructures for sustainable energy transitions  293 I guess the real advantage is that you get truly realistic conditions and you start to learn about what your device might be like in a very specific site (if you already know where you’re going to go). You can use that data to actually recreate those conditions and understand the performance and the survivability as well. So, if you know the site-specific nature of the extreme conditions, you can also reproduce those and de-risk it for that site.

The network of testing facilities is helping developers scale-up devices so that they do not have to put them in the ocean until, as another participant put it, ‘you think you have nothing more to learn’. This nested network of testing and demonstration centres allows researchers to save resources and time, supporting them in testing out potential devices and technologies in simulated seas. Researchers and developers in this study not only found the nested nature of the testing sites supportive, but also highlighted the ways the informal and formal research networks and relationships between these facilities supported their work. The test centres provide networking and cyberinfrastructure, assistance with the creation of testing protocols and standards, and workshops and training for researchers from around Europe and the world. They also work closely with clients to make sure that they can use their test time effectively. Through interaction at these workshops, researchers not only gain knowledge, but relationships between them are also strengthened, enabling interdisciplinary ideas to converge. Because of their nested nature, many researchers work across the testing sites, for example bringing Orkney’s seas into the test tank and simulating conditions using models from EMEC’s test facility. These connections build relationships and exchange knowledge in both formal and informal ways, making them an important knowledge infrastructure. Standards for Instrumentation and Testing Engineering standards are developed to ensure safety and reliability, but also to enable more seamless and faster communication of information and knowledge transfer. These standards for instrumentation and testing are another, less visible, but no less important, knowledge infrastructure supporting innovation in marine energy. A lot of time and effort is being put toward creating and establishing these industry technical standards in the marine energy sector. This is being facilitated through the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Established in 1906, the IEC is made up of committee members from around the world, and both academic and industry researchers in Scotland have played a leading role in creating industry standards through the creation of standards such by TC-114 – the technical committee for marine energy, including wave, tidal, and other water current converters. Standard setting is an important aspect of enabling innovation, and the work often goes unnoticed or taken for granted once they have been established (Bowker and Star, 1999; Lampland and Star, 2009). It is also a key component of ‘infrastructuring’ (Karasti and Blomberg, 2018; Parmiggiani and Karasti, 2018). Infrastructuring refers to the creating and becoming of infrastructure – a process that includes diverse participants and relationships. While development of the international standards is ongoing, the location of the cutting-edge testing infrastructure in Scotland has encouraged engineers and developers working with this infrastructure to take a leading role in standard-setting. Their work, along with others on the international committee is helping facilitate the measurement and modelling of marine energy devices globally. Some of the first standards for wave energy converters were developed for EMEC’s test site, and as such, many of the IEC standards have been built off them. In August,

294  Research handbook on energy and society 2020, EMEC also became the first marine energy testing center to be certified as a Renewable Energy Testing Laboratory (RETL) by the IEC. The IEC standards also extend to tank testing guidance and instrumentation that is used at FloWave and other testing sites. Engineers at EMEC and FloWave have therefore played a key role in establishing standards for marine energy that will be used internationally, and have created a baseline from which other devices will be measured globally. As studies of knowledge infrastructures have shown, once standards are created, they can become embedded and difficult to change (Star and Ruhleder, 1994). Yet, this does not mean that they are not adaptable. In fact, many researchers adapt previous infrastructures as they shift to focus on different objects of research (Ribes and Finholt, 2009; Ribes and Polk, 2015). This adaptive infrastructuring process can also be seen taking place in relation to the standards being developed for the marine energy sector. As one participant noted, these standards aren’t ‘built on a blank slate’, but instead have been evolved from other energy industries – they have been developed from other standards, both from the oil and gas industry, and from wind energy. By paying attention to the work that standards do as supporting knowledge infrastructures, energy researchers can see how different standards are enabling different technologies in different fields, and how knowledge infrastructures may be resistant or flexible to changes in research occurring as developers shift to renewable energy. University–Industry Collaboratives The challenges introduced by marine energy innovation require collaboration between different disciplines and sectors, many of which are beyond those traditionally engaged by energy engineering and research. Bringing tools and concepts from multiple disciplines and fields can help solve problems and generate new ideas, but interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral innovation requires novel knowledge infrastructures. One way the sector is addressing this need is through increasing university–industry interaction. While this transaction is often viewed as relatively straightforward, for example, a university can provide consultancy research for industry or industry can commercialize university-developed ideas (Poyago-Theotoky et al., 2002), when focusing on the knowledge infrastructures that support these interactions, we find that these interactions are complex and multivalent, as well as both formal and informal (Gray, 2011). Examples of knowledge infrastructures that support university–industry interaction include cooperative research centres that promote collaboration to address a single problem or goal, such as innovation hubs or university-led research centres. In Scotland, examples include: the International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ) in Glasgow, or the Fife Renewables Innovation Centre. Another type of university–industry collaborative includes educational programmes that engage cohorts of graduate students from different disciplines in order to address an interdisciplinary issue or collaborate with industry. The Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) was created to fill this need. IDCORE is a partnership between several universities and industry leaders that funds students to train for a four-year Engineering Doctorate, in which they are partnered with one or two companies, who then sponsor a project. In addition to coursework, their research project focuses on an industry problem. So, in addition to producing much-needed trained experts in marine renewables, the programme also generates partnerships between academia and industry, and prepares graduates for leadership roles. Participants highlighted how important it was to them to make

Knowledge infrastructures for sustainable energy transitions  295 sure that their research was ‘industry relevant’. The strength of this kind of programme is that it can ensure research relevance in an emerging sector. While ITREZ and IDCORE are good examples of support mechanisms designed to foster university–industry collaboration, using a knowledge infrastructures perspective to ask participants what they are relying upon to do their work, we uncover some other, less formal networks, often initiated by industry needs. Collaborative organizations between the oil and gas industry and renewables are one surprising example of this. There are now several of these organizations located in Aberdeen, Scotland alone, including the Oil and Gas Technology Centre and the National Subsea Research Initiative. Organizations like these are focused on making sure that expertise, industrial infrastructure, and technologies are transferred from oil and gas to the renewables industry as the energy transition takes place, and part of this work includes interfacing academic and industrial research. As many participants pointed out, subsea technologies, engineering infrastructure, and expertise with many marine energy applications already exists, where people are ‘already used to working offshore’. Fostering collaboration across subsea sectors could provide much of the innovation that is needed for offshore renewables. For example, moorings, connectors, materials, and instruments and monitoring devices from oil and gas can be more-or-less directly adopted for applications in renewables. As one participant put it: ‘there is no reason to reinvent the wheel’. These surprising dynamics between renewables and oil and gas – often viewed as competing, or even incompatible, sectors – were identified as important by participants. Individuals have found creative ways to solve some of their problems by relying on engineering tools, environmental data, or industry knowledge that cross disciplinary landscapes. Prior experience and relationships between individuals and organizations, both informal and formal, are also important (Bruneel et al., 2010; Meyer-Krahmer and Schmoch, 1998). Informal, previously established ties between industry and universities are crucial in determining successful collaboration because they have already established trust (Thune, 2007). These kinds of relationships can introduce flexibility into a dynamic field such as marine energy. In the end, cultures that view interdisciplinary work as valuable and foster interaction between diverse disciplines and sectors need to be created, and one way that this occurs is through supportive knowledge infrastructures. Many of these networks began at meetings and conferences, as individuals from across the subsea engineering sector interact across disciplines. A contextual understanding of the frameworks, barriers, and mechanisms that facilitate interdisciplinary work across institutions is therefore necessary, and a focus on knowledge infrastructures can provide this potentially overlooked perspective to energy researchers seeking ways to foster innovation through collaboration between universities and industry, and across potentially diverse, or even competing sectors.

CONCLUSIONS In order to meet climate change goals, technology- and location-specific innovation policies will be needed (Jacobsson and Bergek, 2011). While not exclusively hinged on research support, the technology innovation and knowledge transfer necessary to address sustainability can be facilitated by science policy (Biagini et al., 2014). Research has shown that investment in national-scale innovation policy and infrastructures that facilitate testing and demonstra-

296  Research handbook on energy and society tion are important for driving innovation (Gray, 2011). But this perspective can often lead to a focus on top-down policy mechanisms, which are often unavailable to those working towards renewable energy transitions. Employing a grounded-theoretical approach to explore how individuals relate to the knowledge infrastructures that support their work highlights different dynamics. This includes locating knowledge infrastructures that might be otherwise overlooked by understanding what individuals rely on to support their research. It also involves exploring the diverse ways that individuals interact with and create infrastructures through practices of ‘infrastructuring’. While it is no doubt important to consider how national systems of innovation develop in materially different ways, we cannot ignore micro-scale practices of individual researchers as they work to innovate in the energy system. In order to ensure innovation in renewable energy research, we therefore must understand the knowledge infrastructures that currently exist, the ways in which they are fostering or hindering innovation in the sector, and how they might be developed in order to increase the capacity for innovation. This chapter has outlined some of the ways that knowledge infrastructures enable innovation by facilitating the work that engineers and scientists do: in training experts, facilitating connections between academia and industry, setting standards, and facilitating adaptation by transitioning knowledge from one sector to another. Understanding knowledge infrastructures is therefore an important aspect of understanding the underlying support mechanisms that facilitate or hinder innovation to enable sustainability transitions and energy research in contexts well beyond marine energy in Scotland.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Robin Williams and the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh for the opportunity to present this work to them. I would also like to thank David Ribes and the Data Ecologies Lab at the University of Washington for their feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback. Funding for this research was provided by the US National Science Foundation SES-STS grant #1826737.

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22. ‘A little self-sufficient town close to the beach’: local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things Nick Pidgeon, Christopher Groves, Catherine Cherry, Gareth Thomas, Fiona Shirani and Karen Henwood

INTRODUCTION This chapter describes how scenarios for future energy system changes constructed at a place-based level can be used for social technology assessment. Social scientists have only recently begun to explore how publics can engage with the potential societal benefits, uncertainties and drawbacks of pathways for decarbonizing energy systems (Pallet et al., 2017). To do this, researchers have drawn upon different variants of what are sometimes termed ‘anticipatory’ (Rip et al., 1995; Guston and Sarewitz, 2002) or ‘upstream’ (Wilsdon and Willis, 2004) technology assessment. The aim of such approaches is to engage interested parties, typically from beyond the traditional science and engineering communities, and in particular a range of different publics, to consider the most socially acceptable as well as socio-technically viable ways of developing novel or emerging technologies. In the energy domain such studies have typically focused either on technical elements of a future decarbonized system such as novel energy storage (Thomas et al., 2019), or on proposals for siting energy infrastructure (Woolley, 2010; Devine-Wright, 2011). By contrast, there have been few attempts to engage publics with scenarios representing the ways in which energy systems might change as a whole. Studies which have attempted this tend to represent future systems in terms of abstract portfolios of distinctive technical options (e.g. Fleishman et al., 2010; Scheer et al., 2013), or as scenarios depicting an interacting set of national-level changes (Pidgeon et al., 2014). Public participants involved in such studies have often drawn on public values in reflecting on energy system change: for example, values around not overusing finite resources, minimization of waste, social justice and fairness, autonomy and power, improvement and quality, security and stability, and environmental protection (Butler et al., 2015). Studies of this kind, while valuable, tend to be abstracted from the ways in which ensuing changes to the energy system might impact the everyday lives of people and their communities (Henwood et al., 2015; Roberts and Henwood, 2017). This matters because we know that the ‘public acceptability’ of technological change is typically complex, often ambivalent, and almost always conditional upon aspects of social and geographical as well as technical context (Pidgeon, 2020). A need therefore exists for public deliberation around locally realistic scenarios of system change and their impacts upon everyday life. This chapter focuses upon scenarios at the level of a whole industrial town, and the new forms of energy production and consumption that a full-scale local system decarbonization might entail. Our case-study focuses on Port Talbot in South Wales, UK, currently dominated by heavy industry with all of the consequent impacts for local populations and the environment this entails. Our 299

300  Research handbook on energy and society approach draws upon a longstanding tradition of ethnographically inspired interpretive and socio-cultural environmental risk research (e.g. Edelstein, 1988). It views localized understandings of risk and technology as part of a process of active sense-making on the part of varied publics. As Irwin argues, ‘environmental problems do not sit apart from everyday life (as if they were discrete from other issues and concerns) but instead are accommodated within (and help shape) the social construction of local reality’ (2001, p. 175). Socio-cultural, geographical and political characteristics of places shape local risk perceptions, motivating broader questions from people about the impact of change on immediate and long-term concerns, and on their values, lives and identities (Henwood and Pidgeon, 2014, 2016). Alongside interpretive understandings of risk, two additional ideas frame the methodologies and analytic lenses we adopt: those of citizen participation; and of ‘public things’.

‘PUBLIC THINGS’ AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AS A FORM OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Citizen participation in technology assessment may be undertaken for various reasons (Fiorino, 1990). These may be normative, for example to protect people’s democratic right to have a say in proposals which directly affect them. Or instrumental, as resistance to technological change becomes more likely without participation. Or substantive, given that ignoring citizens’ perspectives may restrict understanding of the societal problems which technological change is intended to tackle, resulting in unforeseen consequences. As well as the motivation, the timing of participation can also vary. Upstream deliberation on early-stage technoscientific developments which may relate to as-yet speculative technologies has been advocated as a way of ensuring that the goals of technological proposals are not allowed to become set in stone too early without evaluation (Rip et al., 1995; Wilsdon and Willis, 2004; Rogers-Hayden and Pidgeon, 2007). Early citizen participation has also been advocated in land-use planning (Scolobig et al., 2008), to help avoid reducing debates too early to questions about where a pre-determined facility or technology should go, rather than whether the proposal as a whole is appropriate (Owens, 2004). If early engagement is useful, a corollary is that participation should, ideally, allow participants to develop their own criteria for evaluating developments based on their own definitions of what matters (Macnaghten, 2010). With this last consideration in mind, and with the goal of anchoring our energy scenarios case study with ‘local’ concerns, we have explored how deliberative activities can be made sensitive to what Bonnie Honig has, drawing on the work of Donald Winnicott, called ‘public things’ (Honig, 2017). Public things, in the sense of ‘thing’ used in object relations psychology, are objects of common concern that ‘act as an anchor for democratic politics’ and provide ‘attachments and adhesions’ (Newman, 2019, pp. 27–8) to something beyond the self. ‘Objects’ in this sense do not have to be physical things. An endangered local library might be one example, as could an institution like the UK’s National Health Service. Public things provide affective anchor-points for a common public issue space, in which questions about what matters to people can be posed. The concept of public things, we argue, can help frame engagement activities in ways that elicit the place-related meanings and historical processes important for how people make sense of prospective socio-technical changes. In doing so, it can also counteract restricted framings of what is at stake. As Macnaghten (2017) argues, simply providing participants with infor-

Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  301 mation from experts to help frame what is at stake can result in participants feeling directed to consider the proposal in relation to a limited range of ‘legitimate’ issues (for example, safety risks or economic benefits). Macnaghten suggests it is often preferable to begin by framing a proposal obliquely, by identifying potential ‘proximal relations’ to a topic. For example, a deliberative activity could begin by discussing a focus group’s common interest in gardening before talking about the potential impacts of synthetic biology on agriculture. Where energy system changes implicate specific places, participants’ connections to places, and the public things associated with them, also provide such proximal links (also Mabon et al., 2015). Using such a framing allows participants to share knowledge of history and localized concerns relevant to understanding how place might shape the form technical proposals eventually take (Moore and Hackett, 2016). They also help to establish a common framing for dialogue that is not dominated by expert discourses.

METHODOLOGY The location of our study is the coastal industrial town of Port Talbot (PT) in South Wales, home to the largest steel plant in the UK. Currently owned by Tata Steel, steelmaking has been located on the site for 150 years. The steelworks alone produce about 15 per cent of Wales’ territorial carbon emissions. With its seaward side dominated by Aberavon Beach, popular for recreation with locals and visitors, inland the elevated M4 motorway runs above the length of the town. PT was chosen in 2017 as a site for the development of a range of demonstration projects by the FLEXIS project (http://​flexis​.wales), a research collaboration between engineers from Cardiff, South Wales and Swansea universities (with the current authors contributing social sciences expertise), industry and local government partners. A structured set of workshop activities was developed to facilitate PT community engagement with four localized scenarios for energy system decarbonization. These were developed following interviews carried out with FLEXIS project experts (Groves et al., 2021), and include both technological and linked social changes (see Table 22.1). Four scenarios were considered optimum, to avoid the pitfalls of presenting either too few or too many for consideration (Groves, 2013). Five day-long workshops, each with 6–8 community participants, took place at a PT community centre from May to September 2019. Each workshop group comprised people from across the town with distinctive relationships to PT (groups of residents, workers, people engaged with the local environment etc.): ● Multi-generational residents (MG) – people from families that have lived in PT for at least three generations. ● Steelworkers (SW) – people now/formerly employed on the Tata Steel site, either employees or contractors. ● River users (RU) – people who use the River Afan and the pathways along it for leisure activities (e.g. angling, boating, walking). ● Young professionals (YP) – people under 30 years old in employment or training, particularly in IT-related roles. ● Green-fingered residents (G) – people involved with horticulture, either in private gardens or in allotments or community gardens

302  Research handbook on energy and society These groups were designed such that each workshop could bring different aspects of social change in the town to the fore as the basis for discussions. To assist, before each workshop participants were interviewed and completed a community mapping task annotating maps of PT with coloured stickers to identify locations that they felt fell into one or more of several categories (Figure 22.1). Each workshop began by reviewing a composite of the maps produced individually, to provide a framing for discussion shaped by people’s proximal relations to the town and in relation to any public things they identified collectively. Following this, participants drew and discussed doodles of one or more aspects of the energy system as they understood it (Thomas et al., 2019). Each group then discussed the scenarios, which were presented using a variety of styles of information, including pictorially with localized timelines tracking change from 2020 to 2050. Responses were registered on each scenario using post-it notes. Finally, participants took part in a ‘personas task’ for each scenario, completing worksheets to imagine specific characters who might live in PT in 2040–50. The group were provided with a selection of simple pictorial representations to use as the basis of characters for whom they then had to provide more detail on lifestyle and circumstances. Using proxy characters in this way enabled participants to also take a reflective distance from their own preferences, and to think more broadly about how social structures, everyday life, and aspects of life in PT identified in the mapping task might change under each of the different scenarios for people from different social backgrounds. Finally, the day ended with a group discussion to explore how participants now evaluated the scenarios. This approach differs substantially from other examples of mixed methods research on visions for energy transition, for example the approach of Morrissey et al. (2017), which combines expert-derived scenarios with bottom-up community surveys and ‘brainstorming’ about future energy systems. Our approach integrates participatory mapping of ‘what matters’ to inhabitants of specific places with assessment of detailed socio-technical scenarios, making possible a more contextualized exploration of alternative futures constructed with experts (Raven and Elahi, 2015; Vervoort et al., 2015). Audio recordings of interviews and workshops were transcribed and anonymized. Analysis utilized a qualitative thematic approach based on a version of grounded theory. With localized sense-making and the public things discussed earlier acting as the initial orienting concepts for coding and data analysis, close readings of the transcribed data are used to identify emergent detailed themes arising (Charmaz, 2000; Henwood and Pidgeon, 2003). Our analysis illustrated one of the well-documented features of ‘grounded’ theory analysis – and indeed all such interpretive data analysis – that the researcher cannot approach raw qualitative data as a tabula rasa, hence always has to bring concepts and theory from existing literature to bear critically upon the emergent account and to make sense of the data as the analysis proceeds. However, the original stricture associated with grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), that is, to stay as close to the original meanings offered by participants as is possible, remains. Using NVivo 12 software, this identified how participants’ perspectives on the scenarios were both localized and also related to more abstract values under which people expressed support for particular scenarios (Butler et al., 2015).

Figure 22.1

Pictorial representations of the four scenarios

Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  303

Energy Island

solar panels and batteries. source heat pumps.

2. Homes rely on electric heating, using air

via peer to peer trading. Homes without

holders around the town.

neighbours or from the national grid.

agement systems or HEMS) in each home which are able to learn and adapt to the

rather than the national grid.

select from a range of pay-ahead contracts for ‘warm hours’ and ‘power services’.

deals, but best deals only available to those

who can adjust the times they use energy.

needs of the household.

artificial intelligences (home energy man-

4. One local heat and power-company supplies

energy from one of several local suppliers

5. Large utilities still dominate; smart meters

but people in Port Talbot now buy their

4. Electricity and gas bills are still a part of life 4. Energy trading is done continually by

heat and power to consumers, who can

ing countryside.

on carbon capture and storage (CCS).

winter.

in every home allow consumers to switch

turbines on rooftops and in the surround-

generated locally by solar panels and wind 3. Hydrogen is also used as a heating fuel in

solar panels can still buy energy from their

each other and the backbone national grid

as an energy storage medium, stored in gas

3. Most of the electricity used in the town is

are now able to trade surplus energy with

make hydrogen from water by electrolysis

heating system.

2. Electricity in excess of daily needs is used to 3. All homes and businesses in Port Talbot

wind and some other sources.

Virtual Marketplace 1. Most buildings in Port Talbot have their own

homes and businesses through a district

sites is now used to provide heating to

steam methane reforming (SMR), relying

4. Large-scale production of hydrogen via

warehouse-sized assemblies of batteries.

3. Storage for electricity largely with

nuclear power plants.

large-scale wind, tidal, solar and also

2. Waste heat from Tata and other industrial

the town produced by decentralized solar,

tion in the town.

grid, hydrogen is used in heating.

2. All electricity is from low carbon sources:

national electricity grid, with all power for

taken far more control over energy genera-

tricity is still provided through the national

Industrial Hearth

1. Neath Port Talbot Council and industry have 1. Port Talbot is largely separate from the

Grid Town

Summaries of the four scenarios

1. A largely centralized energy system: elec-

Table 22.1

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ANALYSIS Mapping Public Things In the initial discussions of the community mapping task, several public things were identified that helped in ‘setting the agenda’ (Honig, 2017, p. 18), by highlighting central concerns about life in PT. Registering negative, positive and ambivalent emotional attachments to the town, these objects served as foci for accounts of the town’s history as well as uncertainties surrounding its future, recalling Sherry Turkle’s observation that ‘we think with the objects we love’ (or fear, or feel troublingly undecided about) (Turkle, 2007, p. 5). The four objects (in Honig’s sense of objects of emotional attachment) that fulfilled this role consistently across the five workshops are the Tata steelworks, Aberavon Beach, Margam Park (a country estate open to the public, owned by the Council), and to a lesser extent the hills above Baglan and central PT (Figure 22.2). Through discussion of the past and potential future significance of these objects, participants also evaluated the role and actions of key actors within the town. These discussions of actors and their relationships to public things influenced subsequent discussions of the scenarios. The main centre of emotional gravity in discussions of the community mapping task was undoubtedly ‘the works’. Not only was the steelworks pivotal for discussions of PT’s past and future, but also when people discussed the identity of PT as a specific place: ‘That’s what makes Port Talbot, is the steelworks’ (Herbie, young professionals [YP] group). The plant was seen as influencing the very shape of the town: ‘they built the infrastructure and tried to fit the people into the, the infrastructure’ (Emma, multi-generational [MG] group). The economic fortunes of PT were seen as very closely tied to those of the works across changes in ownership over 40 years from British Steel to Corus to Tata, and parallel closures of other industrial sites like the former British Petroleum (BP) petro-chemical works. In general, people saw employment levels at the steelworks as having changed radically, from 20,000 on-site employees at its peak under British Steel in the 1970s to around 3,000 today, with a move also from direct local employment to contracting out much work beyond the town: ‘you won’t get a job in the steelworks now’ (Anne, MG). Even in the steelworkers [SW] group, this was seen as a process of continuing decline, one which placed the future of the works in question, and with it, the future of PT itself. While a few in the SW group were confident that UK government reliance on the plant’s steel for transport, energy infrastructure and military uses would keep it open, many others believed this was unlikely. There was general consensus, however, about the consequences of closure: ‘You shut the works, you shut Port Talbot’ (Gordon, SW). At the same time, some saw the industrial identity of the town as being part of a developmental trajectory that could not be escaped: ‘[w]hat we’ve got to accept is that the town is steeped in history of iron and steel and coal. And it won’t change’ (Geoffrey, river users [RU] group). Through images and recalled experiences of pollution, feelings of ambivalence were expressed towards those aspects of the presence of the works in the town which had led to the label ‘Port Toilet’ (Anne, MG) being used by outsiders, an epithet some saw as humorous and others as offensive (cf. Simmons and Walker, 2004). Some aspects of pollution were highly visible, if localized, like ‘the pink stuff that everybody’s got on their windowsills and their washing’ (Anne, MG) in areas downwind of the works like Taibach (central PT) and Margam (towards Margam Park). Less visible effects were also suspected as potentially more widespread, linked to the works but also other industrial employers like the former BP site:

Figure 22.2

Public things in Port Talbot showing the four public objects identified by participants

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Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  307 ‘I think cancer is a massive thing in Port Talbot’ (Dai, green-fingered [G] group). Echoing the findings of Irwin et al. (1999), such observations contributed to a sense of PT as a ‘faulty environment’ in which a variety of interlinked social, environmental and health problems existed. A related feeling, expressed in the workshops, was that a once broadly accepted trade-off between employment and environmental or human health was becoming a subject of greater ambivalence for the community. And while many saw the works as handling safety on site responsibly, management attitudes to possible off-site effects were a source of distrust (also Horlick-Jones et al., 2003). In relation to these concerns, another feature common to all workshops was the account given of the role of the Council as a key local actor and as responsible for PT’s future well-being. Descriptions of actions taken by the Council were used to translate the decline narrative associated with the works into one associated with the whole town. It was in relation to these descriptions that the collective importance of the other public things identified across the different workshop groups became apparent. These places, together with the surrounding hills were also seen as central to PT’s identity for its residents, but often overlooked by outsiders. For many people, being on the beach, in Margam Park or up in the hills granted them a sense of being ‘in’ PT but also being separated from its industrialized identity: ‘I’d say the beach and the mountain, and just go, go outside and go for walks. There’s just nothing, switch your phones off and just go’ (Steve, MG). The beach and Margam Park were seen by many people as representing another, non-industrial side of PT that had almost become hidden under successive waves of development. Consequently, these other public things stood for the prospect, some felt, of a different potential future: ‘Just because we’re an industrial town doesn’t mean to say we want to stay an industrial town’ (Gordon, SW). However, the Council were perceived to be prioritizing the link between industry and the town as a source of prosperity, envisaging a future for PT in ways which continued to evoke the past: ‘the Council said, but we’re not a tourist area, what we want to do is reopen the mines’ (Richard, G). This continued attachment to the industrial past was seen as exacerbated by short-termism in other areas: ‘They’ve never had the onwards thinking in Port Talbot, the Council’ (Gloria, RU). This was thought to have entrenched deprivation and underdevelopment in areas of PT such as the centre and Aberavon, while areas like Margam and Baglan included pockets of affluence. Inequalities deriving from misplaced priorities were seen by many participants as reflected in economic development around the beach: ‘[the] Council seem to be pre-occupied in developing Aberavon beach for the benefit of the few, not of the many’ (Frank, SW). Whereas the beach and Margam Park, as free attractions, represented community assets which all could access, redevelopment was associated with high-cost attractions (like the new leisure centre near the beach) which were less accessible. To maximize accessibility, and thus the potential of areas like the beach for attracting visitors from out of town, redirected investment was seen as necessary, for example to improve ‘the infrastructure to get, get to the beach’ (Richard, G). Scenarios and Persona Tasks The central concerns and narratives identified above, as well as being reflected in responses to the re-presentation of the community maps (i.e. the ‘public things’), subsequently threaded through discussions of the four scenarios. They were particularly pronounced in the personas task (see Methodology section) which invited participants to use their local knowledge to help

308  Research handbook on energy and society identify the implications of the four scenarios for the residents of PT, given their understanding of the town’s historical trajectory. These central themes and concerns can themselves be seen as reflecting higher-level, more abstract values, and in particular some of those identified in a key national-level study by Butler et al. (2015). Of the five themes identified by Butler et al., ‘Efficiency and waste’ was not reflected in workshop discussions, perhaps because of the focus in the four scenarios on energy production and distribution infrastructure. We organize our discussion below using five groups of these higher-level values as headings. Autonomy and power Across the scenarios, participants were concerned about how decarbonizing the energy system would reshape the distribution of power both at local level and across the energy system nationally. Participants began to make early evaluative distinctions between scenarios interpreted as featuring more monopolistic ownership of energy infrastructure, and those in which end-user autonomy received greater emphasis, whether imagined in terms of consumer choice or some form of community ownership of energy assets. These distinctions were informed by participants’ ambivalent feelings about the steelworks, evident in feelings that it was not to be relied on either as a long-term source of prosperity or as contributing in other ways to PT, and widespread distrust of the Town Council as a steward entrusted with PT’s future. This was most evident in Industrial Hearth, in which the ownership and management role accorded to Tata Steel and the Council attracted very negative responses: ‘it seems to be big bodies are running us rather than us running ourselves’ (Marcus, MG); ‘there’d be a very large barrel they’ve [Tata] got the town over’ (Richard, G). By contrast, Grid Town, in many ways the scenario least divergent from the present offered a vision of consumer choice within a more or less competitive market populated by a range of utility companies offering primarily time-of-use based tariffs. When participants began to imagine future personas, consumer choice was widely seen as allowing at least some control over their lives: ‘People want choice. I don’t think people want to have no choice’ (Claire, SW). Responses to Energy Island often moved from early distrust of the possibility of another monopoly, with the Council having a major role, towards more positive expectations about a form of autonomy distinct from familiar market models. Some participants in the personas task characterized consumer markets for energy in the UK as a cartel, where ‘the bigger companies have had control for so long now’ (Emma, MG). If this future were to bring community ownership of elements of the energy system, then this could fulfil a different set of priorities, more fundamental than choice between what might be bad alternatives. Many participants saw Virtual Marketplace (seen as the scenario most divergent from the present) in a similar way. Here, familiar models of consumer choice were to be replaced by control over energy production and consumption together, mediated by home energy management systems (HEMS), and thus adaptable to the competences of household members and preferences: ‘You could opt in for a control management system, couldn’t you, to be done for you?’ (Luke, SW) ‘or it could have full hands-on’ (Gordon, SW). Social justice and fairness Initial identification of issues relating to inequality and fairness focused on whether costs would increase under either private or public monopolies. With Grid Town, people thought that issues they had already experienced within a liberalized market for domestic energy provi-

Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  309 sion, such as double-billing when switching suppliers, were likely to continue. Generally, this scenario was interpreted as perpetuating a situation in which ‘[i]t’s not necessarily fair but it is regulated’ (Claire, SW). In the other scenarios, concerns arose about how costs associated with the transition would be distributed. Such costs were seen as particularly significant in Virtual Marketplace where technological additions to home energy systems would be required. During the personas task, however, issues arising within everyday life became more of a concern, particularly relating to experiences of billing, and in particular, how such changes under specific scenarios might be experienced by those on low incomes. Hence, a move to pay-ahead billing for heating, similar to mobile phone contracts, in Industrial Hearth was seen as potentially disadvantaging households containing vulnerable individuals with needs that could vary significantly and perhaps unpredictably over time. In Virtual Marketplace, the potential in a peer-to-peer near-real time market for rapid fluctuations in energy costs was seen as implying that lower income households ‘can’t budget’ (Tommy, YP). Differences in capability could undermine people’s capacity to cope with such novel infrastructure: ‘I struggle with mental health issues. I think, my God, all this new stuff, I can’t cope with’ (Marcus, MG). The next most frequent concern, accompanying the creation of future personas, was around emergent spatial inequalities. The narratives of decline and associated inequalities between districts within PT surfaced again as participants explored what living in different areas of the town might be like under each scenario. Across three of the scenarios, and in contrast with Grid Town, localizing energy production and distribution was seen as potentially reinforcing other inequalities between urban and more rural communities around the town, as well as creating new ones. A district heating network would only extend over a particular delimited territory with sufficient heating demand: ‘is that gonna reach me on top of my hill?’ (Monica, G). Being outside the reach of a new system and thus excluded from its benefits was also seen by many as an issue for Energy Island and Virtual Marketplace: ‘how would you manage up the valleys?’ (Gloria, RU). These spatial effects might result in PT becoming more desirable and experiencing an influx of people (‘everybody’ll wanna come down’ [Sharon, RU]) from the Aberafan Valley and other more rural areas. Housing might become less affordable in currently cheaper areas: ‘at Lower West End where you can buy a house for £35,000 … house prices are going to skyrocket’ (Sheryl, YP). Further, exclusion from participation, either through location or cost, might create new social hierarchies and forms of stigma. This was felt to be particularly likely under Virtual Marketplace, should some areas find it harder to benefit from solar energy production. Households might therefore become ‘buyers’ rather than ‘sellers’. One persona character was described as feeling ‘like people are judging her’ (Elaine, YP), due to being unable to afford solar panels. Security and stability Energy security is a complex concept (Chester, 2010). Among two of its meanings are stable supply and means of access, which were discussed within the workshops in both technical and also more social (particularly institutional) senses. Once again, perceptions of local institutions and particularly local actors like the steelworks and the Council framed how these concerns were represented. Initially, many participants were concerned about technological reliability in relation to the scenarios other than Grid Town. This was the case particularly with Virtual Marketplace (thanks to the complex interacting technologies involved), and with Energy Island (which evoked suspicions about more dynamic, localized methods for balancing supply

310  Research handbook on energy and society and demand): ‘would you know how much storage of capacity of electric you would need from the winter months to the summer?’ (Marcus, MG). Grid Town by contrast was seen as reliable thanks to the central role still played within it by a national energy grid: ‘there’s a resilience in there’ (Richard, G). During the personas task, the practicalities of how localized networks might mesh together were discussed in detail. Decentralized supply infrastructure was seen as potentially being affected by faults that might cascade: ‘if there’s a problem with one person, there’s a problem for all people’ (Sheryl, YP). By the same token, decentralization could perhaps create resilience through interconnection: ‘[with Energy Island] if one went down, at least you have the backup of the other five or six local companies’. Other concerns related to control and who would take responsibility for localized systems. With Virtual Marketplace, the role of regulation and who would be responsible for setting up the rules that would govern peer-to-peer trading raised the most questions: ‘we weren’t sure who was governing that – who was running it’ (Sheryl, YP). Some (as we saw) interpreted Virtual Marketplace as promising a kind of control not available under familiar models of consumer choice, but others saw in it a removal of effective agency: ‘who controls – you say the computer balances it out, but who controls the computer?’ (Geoffrey, RU). These kinds of concerns became more intense where links were made between localized energy futures and ambivalently regarded or distrusted local actors. Participants often saw local and/or community owned energy companies in Energy Island as more trustworthy than either large private companies or the Council. However, a countervailing view was that the Council’s current management of economic development around the beach raised doubts about how ownership in an Energy Island-style system would be distributed: ‘I can’t see there being several suppliers in Port Talbot. It would become like the Aberavon beach where you've one owned by one person where they can set their own tariff’ (Gordon, SW). Similarly, the role of the steelworks in Industrial Hearth was interpreted as exposing the town to deep uncertainty, reaching into its energy supply as well as its economic life: ‘[my friend’s] been [at Tata] about 10 years, I don’t ever remember her thinking her job was secure’ (Jodie, YP). Improvement and quality/protection of environment In general, participants rightly or wrongly made strong associations between the most decentralized scenarios and environmental improvement, contrasting these potential futures (Virtual Marketplace and Energy Island, seen as ‘clean, fresh’ [Rhiannon, G]) with the present. A significant reduction in pollution was expected in those parts of town seen as disproportionately affected currently: ‘It’s not like it’s an eyesore because it’s rubbish or a skip, is it? It’s there to make her life healthier’ (Rhiannon, G). Industrial Hearth was not seen as representing a significant improvement either aesthetically or environmentally, perhaps because of its association with the steelworks. While Grid Town was also associated with environmental improvement, thanks to the increase in renewable energy production, ambivalence and more negative feeling generally emerged across groups as people moved into the personas task. First, long term risks and unknowable environmental processes associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS, a core component for many models for decarbonization in energy policy) were discussed. A more forcefully expressed view was often that Grid Town represented a continuation of the status quo, not only in terms of infrastructure, market relationships and energy system governance, but in terms of aesthetics and the town’s current identity: ‘it’s just gloomy-looking, isn’t it?’ (Rhiannon, G).

Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  311 This perspective, which was represented with notable consistency across workshops, positions Grid Town negatively because, despite the security of supply people associated with it, it also represented a future that kept PT on an industrialized trajectory that people associated with a failure to ‘make more of’ assets like the beach. Localization of a decarbonized energy economy This theme brings us to a further focus of concern, but also aspiration. The sense of suppressed potential, discussed by many participants in relation to the mapping task, was also reflected in later discussions of how each of the four scenarios might represent elements of a different trajectory for change in PT, distinct from narratives of decline or continued industrial development. In particular, the scenarios (except for Grid Town) were seen as offering opportunities for reconstructing the town’s resource economy. People’s strongly negative views of Industrial Hearth, as we have seen, reflected participants’ ambivalence towards the town’s relationship with industry. Despite many seeing value in the use of waste industrial heat for district heating, one of the few times values relating to waste and efficiency (Butler et al., 2015) were explicitly discussed, the local implications of this technology were discussed primarily in terms of how it could reinforce the town’s unhelpful dependence on one economic actor, potentially exposing the town to uncertainty in the future. Virtual Marketplace and Energy Island attracted more positive responses in general (though neither universally). Virtual Marketplace was seen as providing opportunities for controlling energy assets in ways that could provide collective benefits, rather than just to individual households, such as allowing residents to contribute to the provision of amenities currently lacking in the town: ‘you’ve created so much energy for the National Grid this month that you’ve managed to pay for the Christmas lights or whatever’ (Sheryl, YP). Others criticized the potential in the scenario for exacerbating community tensions arising from a spatialized redistribution of inequalities: ‘people will earn more electricity than others just because of where their house is’ (Monica, G). Energy Island drew the most mixed, intense expressions of both support and criticism. Some saw it as potentially catastrophic, thanks to a lack of ‘backup’ energy generation (Geoffrey, RU). Its supporters were sometimes ambivalently supportive of its radical divergence from what was familiar: For coping-wise, I’m probably leaning more towards grid town, but my heart lies with energy island. I want energy island. That’s … out of all of them, that’s the one that I was immediately drawn to, and that’s the one that I would hope for. (Tina, SW)

Some saw the prospect of community ownership, perhaps with local government or private industry also playing a minor role, as giving Energy Island the potential to turn PT into a ‘self-sustaining’ town (Dai, G), thus radically transforming its identity, turning it into ‘a little self-sufficient town close to the beach’ (Sheryl, YP).1 The kind of localized economy which people associated with Energy Island was seen as offering more than just self-sufficiency in energy, also providing an opportunity to reflect more explicitly and publicly on the needs of people in PT: ‘it would generate thinking about ways forward, bringing the area into the future’ (Dai, G).

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DISCUSSION In discussions of energy policy, scenarios often depict high-level projections of possible future configurations for a national energy system, as with National Grid’s influential Future Energy Scenarios in the UK (National Grid, 2017). Their purpose is to facilitate strategic decision-making by allowing outcomes of variations in system parameters to be explored. Our development and use of the four scenarios reported here had a different purpose. By allowing community participants to engage with diverse socio-technical reconfigurations of energy systems framed by participants’ familiarity with Port Talbot and its history, the scenarios and workshops brought to the surface the potential future consequences of extensive change to a place and its social context, issues which higher-level scenarios by their nature cannot address. Beginning with interviews and the mapping task, collectively defined ‘public things’ served as a lens for understanding the potential impacts of possible decarbonization pathways, not only on how energy might be produced, distributed and consumed locally, but on other aspects of life in the town. Collective local knowledge of place helped make sense of the unfamiliar futures sketched out in our four scenarios in ways not immediately dominated by expert frames (Irwin et al., 1999). The forms of local knowledge touched not just on everyday life, but also on the wider social-structural characteristics of the town and its historical background, relating to issues such as poverty and other dimensions of inequality such as environmental quality. Participants’ evaluations of the scenarios developed throughout the course of each workshop, as people brought to bear a variety of detailed localized knowledge (environmental, social, political, economic). Interpreting the scenarios followed similar patterns in each workshop, typically beginning with people familiarizing themselves with details, asking questions and expressing concerns relating mainly to issues regarding the technical viability of a given scenario or issues like fairness at a more abstract level. The subsequent personas task elicited further potential relationships between the scenarios and aspects of everyday life in the town. What was particularly interesting about these explorations was that all groups began from very similar common definitions, established in the morning session, of what public things mattered the most to life in PT and how they stood for different and differently evaluated images of the past of the town, alongside the challenges it faced in both the present and its potential future(s). Conditional support for specific scenarios among individual participants, where it was established, was a product of collective reasoning and imagination that traced the ways in which the meaning of public things and the meaning of the scenarios were closely interrelated. Certain key actors were identified as mediators between the historical reality of place and future socio-technical potential, with the Council being most prominent, and others (like businesses other than Tata, social landlords, and various socio-economically and demographically differentiated segments of the town’s population) playing additional roles. Overall, the steelworks itself represented for many a source of troubling uncertainty for both the present and future, both environmentally in terms of contribution to local poor air quality, and in terms of its economic contribution to the town. Whilst being the main employer, it was also symbolic of a seemingly inescapable and unstable trajectory of industrialization – a contributor to the community but also a workplace which increasingly employed non-residents. Whether people (conditionally) supported specific socio-technical options or saw them as undesirable was strongly influenced by how they interpreted the future relationships between elements of the scenarios, public things and key mediating actors. As we saw, groups carried

Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  313 out these assessments based on what they expected the localized implications of scenarios to be for certain values and concerns – social justice and fairness, autonomy and power, environmental improvement, and security and stability. Industrial Hearth was judged consistently across groups to be the least desirable, perhaps because it was seen as spreading the existing uncertainties associated with the steelworks across domains, from the economy into energy production and supply. People also judged Industrial Hearth – but also sometimes Energy Island – negatively to the extent that they were seen as reinforcing historical accretions of power within the town, by industry but also by other businesses, and required the (only partially-trusted) Council to act as a counterweight to these actors. With Grid Town, participants who judged it positively saw it as reducing uncertainty by continuing existing relationships and keeping an element of power for the consumer in the face of unpredictable change. But even those who were positive about Grid Town often shared with its detractors a sense that it represented a missed opportunity, one which vested power in existing, often distrusted large actors, and which also maintained a markedly industrial trajectory of development for the town. This industrial trajectory was generally seen as representing a failure to tie development more closely to aspects of life in the town that people valued positively, and which they saw as embodying unrealized potential (such as the beach and Margam Park). Where conditional support for particular scenarios was more evident, this appeared to be associated with the extent to which people saw in them the potential for more radical transformation, although this was often seen as a fragile prospect. For example, especially in Energy Island and to a lesser extent in Virtual Marketplace, many participants seemed to see not only potential for the localization of the economy in PT based on assets like the beach, but also for a redistribution of political power within the community.

CONCLUSION We set out by stressing that participatory and anticipatory societal technology assessment is important for understanding both the benefits and downsides of decarbonization pathways. We also noted that research on methodologies for upstream societal technology assessment often echoes themes in the sociology and geography of risk, which emphasize how people use place-based knowledge to make sense of localized socio-technical change. On this basis, we developed a unique methodology for societal technology assessment, drawing also on the concept of public things. In our interviews and workshops, we designed activities that first identified such objects and then provided, through scenario- and persona-based tasks, opportunities for participants to use them as ‘things to think with’, allowing them to explore in rich detail the significance of decarbonization technologies for a range of locally embedded public values. Our approach drew out the ambivalence characterizing participants’ relationships with their industrialized environment, and also demonstrated that, by employing careful combinations of methods, socio-technical scenarios can be useful for public deliberation at scales other than the national. There are limitations to our approach, which will need to be addressed in future work. Imagining how some future technologies (e.g. in Virtual Marketplace) might mesh with everyday life in detail is difficult, particularly given the short space of time participants had to assimilate complex information. Further, eliciting how beliefs, values and practices might

314  Research handbook on energy and society differ in the future is also difficult as, while our approach benefits from its focus on everyday life, this may also mean that the values, belief and practices produced by the personas task may resemble too much of the present. Equally, the key strength of our approach is that it demonstrates how adequately understanding potential obstacles to and opportunities for energy system change requires a better understanding of how the localized unevenness of such change might play out, creating injustices and inequalities. As an aid to decision making, employing relationships to place and residents’ understanding of local socio-economic histories as a lens for evaluating potential socio-technical change may therefore build a sensitivity to a broader range of values into evaluative activities, values that would otherwise perhaps remain entirely overlooked.

NOTE 1. This phrase was used earlier in one workshop by a member of the research team and picked up on enthusiastically by some participants.

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Local energy system transformation through the lens of place and public things  315 Henwood, K.L, Pidgeon, N.F., Groves, C., Shirani, F., Butler, C. and Parkhill, K.A. (2015), Energy Biographies – Final Report, ESRC/EPSRC. Cardiff University. https://​www​.academia​.edu/​18644066. Honig, B. (2017), Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair. Fordham University Press. Horlick-Jones, T., Sime, J., and Pidgeon, N.F. (2003) The social dynamics of risk perception: Implications for risk communication research and practice. In N.F. Pidgeon, R.K. Kasperson and P. Slovic (eds.) The Social Amplification of Risk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., pp. 262–285. Irwin, A. (2001), Sociology and the Environment: A Critical Introduction to Society, Nature and Knowledge. Cambridge University Press. Irwin, A., Simmons, P., and Walker, G. (1999), Faulty environments and risk reasoning: The local understanding of industrial hazards. Environment and Planning A, 31, 1311–1326. Mabon, L., Shackley, S., Vercelli, S., Anderlucci, J., and Boot, K. (2015), Deliberative decarbonisation? Assessing the potential of an ethical governance framework for low-carbon energy through the case of carbon dioxide capture and storage. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 33 (2), 256–271. Macnaghten, P. (2010), Researching technoscientific concerns in the making: Narrative structures, public responses, and emerging nanotechnologies. Environment and Planning A, 42 (1), 23–37. Macnaghten, P. (2017), Focus groups as anticipatory methodology: A contribution from science and technology studies towards socially resilient governance. In R.L. Barbour and D.L. Morgan (eds), A New Era in Focus Group Research: Challenges, Innovation and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 343–364. Moore, S., and Hackett, E.J. (2016), The construction of technology and place: Concentrating solar power conflicts in the United States. Energy Research and Social Science, 11, 67–78. https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1016/​j​.erss​.2015​.08​.003. Morrissey, J., Axon, S., Aiesha, R., Hillman, J., Lennon, B., and Dunphy, N. (2017), Energy System Visioning and Low-carbon Configurations (ENTRUST Project Deliverable D6.1). Liverpool John Moores University. National Grid (2017), Future Energy Scenarios 2017. Warwick: UK National Grid. Newman, J. (2019), The political work of reimagination. In D. Cooper, N. Dhawan and J. Newman (eds), Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities. Routledge. Owens, S. (2004), Siting, sustainable development and social priorities. Journal of Risk Research, 7 (2), 101–114. Pallet, H., Chilvers, J., and Hargreaves, T. (2017), Mapping Energy Participation: A Systematic Review of Diverse Practices of Participation in UK Energy Transitions, 2010-2015. London: UKERC. Pidgeon, N.F. (2020), Engaging publics about environmental and technology risks: Frames, values and deliberation. Journal of Risk Research, 24 (1), 28–46. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​13669877​.2020​ .1749118. Pidgeon, N.F., Demski, C., Butler, C., Parkhill, K., and Spence, A. (2014), Creating a national citizen engagement process for energy policy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (Supplement 4), 13606–13613. Raven, P.G., and Elahi, S. (2015), The New Narrative: Applying narratology to the shaping of futures outputs. Futures, 74, 49–61. Rip, A., Misa, T.J. and Schot, J. (1995), Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. London: Pinter Press. Roberts, E. and Henwood, K.L. (2017), Exploring the everyday energyscapes of rural dwellers in Wales: Putting relational space to work in research on everyday energy use. Energy Research and Social Science, 36, 44–51. Rogers-Hayden, T., and Pidgeon, N.F. (2007), Moving engagement ‘upstream’? Nanotechnologies and the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering inquiry. Public Understanding of Science, 16, 346–364. Scheer, D., Konrad, W., and Scheel, O. (2013), Public evaluation of electricity technologies and future low-carbon portfolios in Germany and the USA. Energy Sustainability and Society, 3 (8), 1–13. Scolobig, A., Broto, V.C., and Zabala, A. (2008), Integrating multiple perspectives in social multicriteria evaluation of flood-mitigation alternatives: The case of Malborghetto-Valbruna. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 26 (6), 1143–1161.

316  Research handbook on energy and society Simmons, P., and Walker, G. (2004), Living with technological risk: Industrial encroachment on sense of place. In Å. Boholm and R. Löfstedt (eds), Contesting Local Environments. London: Earthscan, pp. 90–106. Thomas, G., Demski, C., and Pidgeon, N.F. (2019), Deliberating the social acceptability of energy storage in the UK. Energy Policy, 133, 110908. Turkle, S. (2007), Introduction: The things that matter. In Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Boston: MIT Press, pp. 3–11. Vervoort, J.M., Bendor, R., Kelliher, A., Strik, O., and Helfgott, A.E.R. (2015), Scenarios and the art of worldmaking. Futures, 74, 62–70. Wilsdon, J., and Willis, R. (2004), See-through Science: Why Public Engagement Needs to Move Upstream. Demos. Woolley, O. (2010), Trouble on the horizon? Addressing place-based values in planning for offshore wind energy. Journal of Environmental Law, 22 (2), 223–250.

23. Disrupting markets with peer-to-peer energy trading Alexandra Schneiders, Anna Gorbatcheva, Michael J. Fell and David Shipworth

INTRODUCTION In a time of climate emergency, it is becoming clearer that new solutions to reduce carbon emissions, and to meet targets such as those in the 2015 Paris Agreement, are needed more than ever. Innovative renewable energy technologies are disrupting the energy market, increasingly challenging the role of established market players. The intermittent nature of the renewable energy fed into the grid requires new approaches for energy system management and operation, to balance out power fluctuations and guarantee system stability. In the United Kingdom alone, over the past ten years more than 900,000 small-scale solar rooftop photovoltaics (PV) (≤4kW) have been installed (BEIS, 2019b), indicating a shift from passive energy consumers into active energy ‘prosumers’ generating their own energy (in contrast to this, the making of energy consumers is discussed in Shin & Chappells, Chapter 4). These installations have been largely incentivized by subsidies such as feed-in-tariff (FiT) schemes. However, the phaseout of FiT schemes (Ofgem, 2019) has reduced the financial returns for prosumers, which could lead to reduced PV installation rates in the short term. To counteract this trend a more consumer-centric approach to energy markets such as peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is emerging, allowing prosumers to actively engage in electricity markets1 (Ahl et al., 2019). Traditionally, the electricity grid has been designed in a centralized way, where consumers buy electricity through large suppliers, from large (unidentified) generators. P2P trading is a concept based on the sharing economy, whereby energy consumers can sell energy directly to each other (Hamari et al., 2016). Through the use of a smart meter and Internet-connected personal device, an algorithm matches buyers and sellers in a geographical area, carrying out automatic financial transactions between them and ensuring the purchased energy reaches the buyer (LO3 Energy, 2018). As set out in the next section, in many P2P schemes, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) such as blockchain are used to ensure the matching of generation and demand. Most of these are at pilot stage, due to P2P energy trading being a relatively new (and unregulated) business model. Peer-to-peer energy trading poses new challenges to the energy sector due to consumers taking on responsibilities traditionally filled by utilities such as energy suppliers. This has upsides but can also imply risks, particularly relating to fairness and inclusion, which will be set out in this chapter. In this chapter we also aim to encourage/initiate an active academic discourse to identify and find solutions to social challenges we are faced with for a successful rollout of P2P energy trading systems in the future. We do this by setting out existing research in P2P energy trading, emphasizing future research needs from a social science perspective. We then focus on a key 317

318  Research handbook on energy and society challenge for social research in this field – a fair and inclusive design of P2P energy trading platforms – suggesting areas where social researchers need to focus in order to address this challenge. The chapter then ends with a discussion on the implications of social science research for policymakers, many of which are currently assessing how to regulate P2P energy models in a fair and inclusive way.

VALUE PROPOSITIONS One of the reasons that P2P energy trading is of interest to so many stakeholders is its potential to yield ‘social value’. While there is no dominant definition for this term, we use the Social Value Portal understanding of it as where actions result in ‘[contribution] to the long-term wellbeing and resilience of individuals, communities and society in general’ (Social Value Portal, 2018). At grid level, the automated matching of supply and demand within P2P networks has the potential to ease grid constraints caused by the increased feeding in of intermittent renewable energy into the grid, and consequently lowering the associated costs (shouldered by consumers) of managing this disruption (Lavrijssen, 2017; Diestelmeier, 2019). The world’s first peer-to-peer energy trading scheme was launched by LO3 Energy in Brooklyn (New York, USA) in April 2016 (Mengelkamp et al., 2018). One of the main aims of the pilot, which has 60 participants to date, is to enable ‘better management of the grid’ to ‘avoid energy losses’ (Svetec et al., 2019). Participating residents sell excess energy from solar PV installed on their roofs to neighbours, using blockchain technology (Kim et al., 2018). Several P2P energy trading pilots in the United Kingdom, such as the Cornwall Local Energy Market (LEM) and Local Energy Oxfordshire (LEO) pilots, also focus on solving grid constraints. These are being run to explore the role of Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) in a decentralized energy market. The Cornwall pilot, being run by Centrica, aims to find ‘alternatives to expensive and time consuming grid reinforcement’ (Bray et al. 2018; N-SIDE 2019), due to an increase in renewable energy production in the region and extreme weather conditions (N-SIDE, 2019). At a community level, energy trading could lead to an increased uptake of renewable energy resources into the grid and give consumers a greater sense of control over their energy consumption. It would also make local renewable energy more accessible to those who have difficulties accessing it, such as consumers living in urban environments or with little living space (i.e. no space for renewable energy installation) (Mulvey et al., 2019). An example is the scheme being run by EDF Energy and Repowering London in Brixton, London. Residents of a social housing block of flats, with solar panels installed on the roof and battery storage in the basement, are each entitled to a share of the solar PV and battery. They can sell or donate excess energy to one another using a mobile app running on blockchain technology (Schneiders, 2019). The pilot’s aim is to show how ‘small communities in dense urban areas could benefit from a low carbon and local energy system’ while ‘reducing their overall costs’ (EDF Energy, 2019) (the uptake of smart grids in a rural setting is discussed by Lovell in Chapter 24). Similarly, the De Ceuvel project being run by Alliander in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) is a P2P energy trading pilot calling itself a ‘bottom-up movement’ in the transition towards a ‘100% renewable energy supply’ (Svetec et al., 2019).

Disrupting markets with peer-to-peer energy trading  319 Additionally, P2P energy trading could help meet common social goals, such as supporting members of the community. This is thanks to participants being able to choose who they wish to sell or donate energy to (Wilkins et al., 2020). Potential benefits also include local job creation, wider economic and community benefits (such as providing a funding source for community initiatives), and increased community cohesion (Gall and Stanley, 2019). An example is the Transactive Energy Colombia project, a P2P energy trading pilot launched in Medellín (Colombia) in October 2019. Participants include three low-income residents and a community centre in the low-income area with solar PV on their roofs, and three residents of a high-income area (living in apartments). The aim of the pilot is for low-income residents to sell energy to high-income residents. This could be a substitute for the cross-subsidization system currently in place in Colombia, where domestic households pay different rates for their electricity depending on the area they live in. Those living in high-income areas pay more for their electricity, subsidizing the energy of those living in the poorer areas (who end up paying less for their energy). In a P2P energy trading situation, consumers living in high-income areas might be more willing, due to the social aspect of trading, to pay more for their energy. Peer-to-peer could therefore become a manner of cross-subsidization between socio-economic strata. It could also be used in rural areas recovering from conflict, as a way to build community projects supporting the social transition (Schneiders, 2019).

CONCERNS The downsides of P2P energy trading strongly depend on how it is regulated, and how P2P networks are designed. We classify the types of concern that are expressed around P2P energy trading into three broad categories: consumer protection issues (e.g. complaints, credit protection, etc.), public policy issues (e.g. distributional impacts, health, etc.), and ideological issues (e.g. role of market vs state). The first category is around individual rights and protections. Individuals trading on a P2P network may be exposed to risks caused by legal uncertainty around the status and obligations of prosumers selling energy. It is also not clear how some functions that traditional energy suppliers fulfil would be dealt with. These include provision of price comparison and other tariff information, complaints handling, ombudsman funding, and arrangements in the case of supplier insolvency. At the other end of the spectrum, there is a more ideological debate around the appropriateness of ‘hypermarketization’ of the energy sector, where every individual householder has the potential to become a market player. The potential of ‘sharing economy’ models to contribute to sustainable transitions has been questioned, and instead it has been compared to ‘a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism’ (Martin, 2016). Between these concerns we position a middle category of public policy issues, which pertain to the relative benefits and disadvantages that might be experienced across society due to the emergence of P2P energy trading models. Such differences could result from households’ (or organizations’) ability or desire to participate in a scheme, and/or their ability to capitalize on the benefits of participation. These and related issues are the focus on the remainder of this chapter. Taking part in a P2P energy trading platform requires certain hardware equipment to be in place, including at least a smart meter providing energy generation and/or consumption

320  Research handbook on energy and society data in near real-time. Only a sufficient quality of smart meter data transmission will enable a household to actively participate in P2P energy trading schemes (Diestelmeier and Kuiken 2016, p. 44). Additional devices such as solar rooftop PV or storage systems and flexible energy devices can enrich the service portfolio that each household provides to the platform. The need to provide flexibility services when reacting to dynamic pricing can lead to discrimination of households without storage systems or flexible load profiles (Lavrijssen and Carrillo Parra, 2017). The more extensive the hardware system installation, the more services a household can offer to a local community, by acting as an energy supplier, consumer or flexibility provider (Gall and Stanley, 2019). Nevertheless, these installations require a certain up-front investment. Low-income households and households already affected by fuel poverty in particular will not have the required financial reserves to afford such installations. Besides the availability of financial resources, some local communities or households might simply not be able to connect to a P2P energy trading network for geographical reasons or due to constraints from local authorities and landlords (Mulvey et al., 2019). Where and how P2P energy trading schemes can be accessed might also depend on factors such as population density, regional governments and community groups, which will most likely be unevenly distributed across a country (Gall and Stanley, 2019). The operation, maintenance and development of energy infrastructure is usually paid for by customers as a component of the energy bill they receive from a supplier or utility. Current approaches to network charging generally reflect the total amount of electricity they purchase from a supplier – they do not represent the actual use a customer makes of the electricity grid at a given place or time (that is, they are not cost-reflective). A customer with their own generation or storage can avoid network charges by self-consuming more of the energy they generate – arguably fairly, since they are imposing less of a burden of use on grid infrastructure. The current system is based on the general understanding that households’ consumption behaviour in one energy user group is comparable. Therefore, they should contribute equally to system costs. The validity of this assumption is under question when considering that in future energy systems user load profiles will be diversified, with the effect that individualized costs will no longer be comparable (Lammers and Diestelmeier, 2017). If no changes to the distributed network charges will be made, the result is an unfairly distributed cost – leading to households without generation units covering the costs of houses with generation units. There is a question of fairness here, namely to which extent households which are not able to install generation or storage units must cover the network charges of households that can. A local approach to assigning electricity network charges could be taken, depending on the presence of a P2P network, however it should carefully consider individual factors and impacts (Lavrijssen, 2017). Most of the current approaches on how network charges could be calculated in the decentralized energy grid of the future are based on a network utilization charge introduced as a measurement for congestion of the network considering energy losses and power flows (Guerrero et al., 2018; Kim and Dvorkin, 2019). While these charges are technically easy to derive based on the performance of the grid, they do not necessarily represent the social or typological characteristics of energy transactions. To just name one example, a household located at a highly congested network node might be consistently overpaying for its energy transactions making the participation in a P2P energy trading platform unfeasible. In the next section we delve further into existing social science research in the field.

Disrupting markets with peer-to-peer energy trading  321

OVERVIEW OF ONGOING SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AROUND P2P ENERGY TRADING While transactive energy approaches have been discussed since the early 2000s (e.g. Chassin et al., 2004), research focus has overwhelmingly been on market design to support efficient power system operation. The vast majority of research which takes interest in socially relevant aspects of P2P trading is currently in the form of modelling studies. This includes consideration of, for example, prosumer preferences on issues such as financial return or trading partner attributes (e.g. friends, low-income residents) (Morstyn and McCulloch, 2018); economic impacts on different customers (Narayanan et al., 2018); community fairness (Moret and Pinson, 2018); and privacy (Gai et al., 2019). There are other commonalities, such as that respondents who already own decentralized energy resources are more likely to express willingness to participate than those who do not (Fell et al., 2019; Hackbarth and Löbbe, 2020), while older people are less likely to express such willingness (Fell et al., 2019; Mengelkamp et al., 2019; Hackbarth and Löbbe, 2020). Evidence on motivations to participate are mixed with, for example, Mengelkamp et al., (2019) finding that economic aspects are the main factor, while Hackbarth and Löbbe (2020) found these to play a lesser role compared to factors such as independence from a supplier and the ability to share generation. Other relevant work is based on consideration of scenarios. Smale and Kloppenburg (2020) used workshops with Dutch prosumers to understand the attractiveness of a range of fictional P2P offerings and the attributes – economic, social, and environmental – that may contribute to this. They highlight the diversity of preferences that exist even amongst a relatively homogeneous group of participants. One unifying factor was an interest in sustainability outcomes of P2P trading, which accords with the finding by Fell et al. (2019) that concern about climate change was a significant predictor for participation. The survey approach has the advantage of giving insight into possible uptake of, activity in, and motivations for P2P trading schemes before they are widely available and informing service offerings, as well as the policy/regulation which govern them accordingly. It also allows a wide range of perspectives to be captured, potentially making it more useful in identifying fairness implications than studies which only focus on small groups of early adopters. The drawbacks of hypothetical, stated intention-based work are widely acknowledged, and mainly concern the difficulty in knowing how far such intentions might translate to real participation or activity. Arguably, given the novelty of P2P energy trading, this challenge is especially acute in this area, since respondents are expected to express quick decisions based on brief introductions. Experimental approaches such as those employed by Ecker et al. (2018), Hahnel et al. (2019) and Mengelkamp et al. (2019) sidestep this challenge to some extent by focusing on the differences between experimental groups or conditions. Qualitative research approaches allow for deeper exploration of people’s views and preferences, but there has as yet been very limited work taking this approach, especially in the context of real (i.e. non-hypothetical) P2P trading situations. Singh et al. (2018) investigated real ‘peer-to-peer energy returns’ (i.e. goods and services exchanged in return for energy) in two communities in rural India. The situation was very different from those which are the main focus of this chapter – it was off-grid, with the P2P element consisting in the lending and returning of items such as solar lanterns. Nevertheless, observations are presented which seem likely to be transferable, such as differing preferences of monetary or in-kind compen-

322  Research handbook on energy and society sation depending on who the ‘trades’ were with (e.g. ‘socially distant’ vs ‘socially close’ parties). They demonstrate that people do not necessarily want to transact financially with (for example) friends, effectively turning them into customers – rather they may prefer other means of recognition for sharing energy. The authors highlight the relevance of this to the Global North context, citing a Dutch example that includes an element of timebanking.2 In the next section we highlight one key challenge for social research in P2P energy trading – that of inclusion (developed in the last section).

CHALLENGE: SOCIAL RESEARCH FOR AN INCLUSIVE TRANSITION TOWARDS P2P ENERGY TRADING Figure 23.1 (A) presents a simple illustrative model of how economic benefits of participating in P2P energy trading might be realized, while (B) shows the conditions that must be met to actually participate. The figure indicates the potential for social factors to affect both likelihood of participating in, and benefiting economically from, P2P energy trading. However, it does not capture the wide array of social factors that might play a role. Some of these can probably be inferred from the relatively rich research literature on related topics such as demand response or uptake of solar panels. But as the brief review in the previous section highlights, only a small number of initial steps have yet been taken to explore the role of the demographic, psychological, sociological, and anthropological factors. Research across these disciplines will be necessary if P2P energy trading is indeed to be inclusive in who it benefits. Set against this, however, a balance needs to be struck between breadth of coverage and depth of understanding of particular issues. Those implementing and regulating P2P trading need to make decisions now, and in the near future. These decisions can be taken with much greater confidence if they are supported by the results of multiple studies looking (at least in part) at the same question, rather than a single study which (as is inevitable) will be subject to many biases and other limitations. We therefore suggest that research is prioritized which addresses the essential conditions for participation in P2P energy trading, as set out in Figure 23.1 (B), identifying factors which systematically impact on households’ access to schemes, eligibility, awareness, and willingness to participate. By gaining a better appreciation of these factors and the reasons for them, it will be possible to inform design and targeting of schemes in such a way as to maximize participation (where appropriate), and therefore benefits. This should be combined with research evidence from other emerging models, such as energy as a service-based models (see Brown et al. (2019) for example), to help identify which models are likely to yield most benefit in a given context. Closer links also need to be forged across methodological approaches in this area. Factors identified as important in (for example) uptake of P2P in survey work should be rapidly explored in qualitative work and, likewise, themes suggested to be important in qualitative work should be operationalized and tested by surveys covering a wider range of participants. This is by no means a novel suggestion for social research, but it seems especially important here given the potential role of models such as P2P in supporting the low-carbon energy transition and the pace at which change is occurring – both in practice and regulation – in this area. A better link also needs to be forged between the empirical and modelling work. Modelling work allows us to understand how P2P trading schemes might function and the impacts they

Disrupting markets with peer-to-peer energy trading  323

Note: Dotted lines show how these illustrative factors may also influence ability to benefit even when participating.

Figure 23.1

Economic benefits for households participating in P2P trading (A) and conditions required for participation (B), including some illustrative underlying relevant social factors

could have before they are implemented in reality, making the assumptions that are fed into them important. But further, today’s models may well end up being the actual platforms used to operate P2P schemes tomorrow. For example, D3A, developed by Grid Singularity, is in large part intended as a tool to simulate the operation of a ‘decentralized energy exchange’ so that companies and other actors can understand and plan how such a service might operate in a given context. However, it is also intended to integrate hardware and accept real electricity generation/storage/usage data, meaning that it can actually be used to run a real P2P trading system (Hambridge, 2019). Some of today’s models are likely to become tomorrow’s real P2P operating platforms and it is therefore essential that, if societally important outcomes are to be achieved, they are developed in awareness of both social theory and the best available social research evidence. The next section discusses the implications of the challenges around (lack of) social science research in this area for policymaking.

324  Research handbook on energy and society

DISCUSSION An increasing number of countries are starting to recognize the right to P2P energy trading in their national laws. They will need to consider questions on how costs and risks associated with P2P energy trading can be socialized, in order to make these future energy systems inclusive. This should be addressed through policy and regulation to provide future pilots and projects with a framework of how their design can render them as inclusive as possible. Policymakers will be seeking answers to questions such as what is the social value of P2P energy trading, and why/how should it be foreseen in regulation? This raises other important questions that are relevant to industry and other implementing stakeholders, which will be providing evidence of social value to policymakers, such as: How can social value be best defined and measured? To whom does ‘value’ accrue – just participants/prosumers, or any stakeholders in the value chain (e.g. TSOs, DNOs)? (Schneiders, 2019). Further research is needed to find the right approaches to be taken when answering such questions. Alongside further qualitative research, experimentation enabled by regulators (and in which researchers have an advisory role) will be an essential way of finding answers to these questions. This is best achieved through regulatory sandboxes, enabling the testing of new business models with a limited number of consumers (Ofgem, 2018). These are being run, enabling the rolling out of P2P energy trading pilots, in a growing number of countries including the UK and the Netherlands. Furthermore, to understand the importance of social factors it is crucial to involve local communities, through for instance consultations, in the drafting of legislation or guidelines (Lavrijssen, 2017; BEIS, 2018). Currently the process is very much influenced by industry actors. It is important to be mindful that not all P2P energy trading pilots will be run by companies, but also by non-corporate entities such as community energy groups (e.g. energy cooperatives). Resulting regulation should take a principles-based approach and avoid being prescriptive, in order to accommodate differing social factors (Ofgem, 2018). For instance, a consumer selling energy will assume certain responsibilities when selling energy that are different to those of a consumer buying energy (BEIS, 2019a). Every participant will become a market player with a ‘unique profile’ according to his/her supply and demand, as well as their ability to provide other (flexibility) services (Diestelmeier, 2019). Regulation should therefore be designed to be flexible in the face of technological innovation. Policymakers will need to find ways to regulate these models by striking a balance between protecting consumers while not stifling new innovations – which is currently a dilemma experienced by policymakers grappling with new business models based on decentralization and P2P transactions in other sectors. Further research is necessary on how to design regulation to take into account social and technological factors. Lastly, a word of caution for the future: governments have been considering P2P energy trading as a potential mechanism to help meet climate targets and further involve communities in the transition to a more sustainable energy grid. The European Union has recently recognized P2P energy trading in its revised Renewable Energy Directive, its latest push to further activate energy consumers as drivers of competition and helping meet climate targets (Lavrijssen, 2017). There is a similar motivation behind the Netherlands’ regulatory sandbox. Policymakers should be cautious to take local communities’ needs and values seriously and not ignore these in favour of national top-down policy goals.

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CONCLUSION Peer-to-peer energy trading is a new business model that has the potential to revolutionize the energy sector, further empowering consumers and communities as well as improving grid resiliency. The way P2P energy trading pilots are designed will define how inclusive they are of different consumer groups. Those with less means to afford solar PV or having no smart meter will be less able to participate in P2P energy trading schemes. This has wider societal implications, such as lack of inclusivity in future energy models and the question of who will pay for maintaining the energy grid. Modelling studies, representing the bulk of social science research undertaken in the field so far, will form the basis of future P2P network design. In order for these to accurately reflect societal factors, this modelling work should be more informed by empirical research, such as surveys scoping consumers’ preferences around P2P network design. This in turn will help inform policymakers currently thinking of how to regulate these models in an inclusive manner. In light of further research needed on questions such as the defining and measuring of social value, policymakers will need to ensure that researchers not only play an advisory role in the rollout of these models within regulator-supervized sandboxes, but also that ensuing regulation is flexible enough to accommodate all societal factors and consumer responsibilities. Organizations such as the Global Observatory on Peer-to-Peer, Community Self-Consumption and Transactive Energy Models (GO-P2P), a Task of the User-Centred Technology Collaboration Programme by the International Energy Agency (IEA), aim to provide a platform for collaboration and dialogue between researchers and policymakers in the field.

NOTES 1. There are broader consumer-centric approaches to energy markets, which have overlaps with P2P energy trading, such as transactive energy (TE) and community-self consumption (CSC). This chapter will focus on the concept of P2P energy trading as there is not enough scope to focus on all three models. 2. Timebanking allows people to ‘pay’ for services through a commitment of time, rather than money.

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24. Making energy futures at the edge of the grid: smart energy innovation in rural communities Heather Lovell

24.1 INTRODUCTION In recent decades there has been much attention devoted to the development of ‘smart grids’: utility infrastructures that incorporate digital information communication technologies (ICT), and hence provide data for improved management of utility services such as water, gas and electricity. It is in the field of energy that smart grids have become particularly prevalent, as electricity infrastructure lends itself most readily to the incorporation of ICT because the resource – electrons – is relatively easy to measure in comparison to others. Smart grids embody a particular vision of our energy future; one that is data-rich, efficient, responsive and reliable. The term ‘smart grid’ also carries with it an image of cities and urban energy systems, and to date attention has mostly been focused on smart grids in urban areas, hence the rise of the term ‘smart city’. ‘Smart cities’ are seen to be the natural home of energy innovation, where there is concentration of finance, people and resources, plus a dense confluence of utility infrastructures. In this chapter I question the focus on energy innovation in urban areas, and the link between cities and smart grids. Drawing on ideas and concepts from science and technology studies (STS), the chapter explores how our attention to urban smart grids is blinding us to rural innovation already underway. Analysis shows how key aspects of our energy futures are already being trialled in rural areas, and argues that in the future rural areas are likely to see growing amounts of smart grid innovation. The chapter focuses empirically on Australia, a country at the forefront of smart grid innovation. Alongside other leading smart grid countries such as South Korea, the United States, Italy and the UK, Australia has invested heavily in smart grid development. For example, in 2009 the Australian federal government committed $AUS 100 million to a large smart grid trial, called ‘Smart Grid Smart City’, pledging that ‘the Smart Grid, Smart City demonstration project will deploy Australia’s first fully-integrated smart grid in an environment of sufficient scale to demonstrate best practice to encourage the broader industry adoption of smart grids across the country’ (DEWHA, 2009, p. 3). Concurrently one of the Australia states – the State of Victoria – implemented a mandatory smart metering program, installing digital meters in 93 per cent of households and small businesses (DPI, 2007). In addition, the national standard setter, Standards Australia, developed a roadmap for a new suite of smart grid standards (Lazar and McKenzie, 2012). Since these Australian government initiatives there have been numerous ‘bottom-up’ or ground-level energy innovations, enacted by households and state and local government. These innovations have changed the Australian energy sector considerably and made the case for smart grids stronger. In particular there has been a notable rise in the amount of household rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV): approximately 20 per cent of households (2 million) in Australia now have rooftop solar (Australian PV Institute, 2019). Because so many 328

Making energy futures at the edge of the grid  329 households have solar power and feed their spare electricity into the grid, there is an increased need for fine-grain data so that utilities can manage the local electricity distribution grid, the better to cope with the new norm of a two-way passage of electricity, to households and from households. Australia has always had one of the longest distribution line grids internationally, with a high proportion of long rural lines in its grid network, serving only a small number of customers. This makes the electricity grid expensive to run. Coupled with the rise of household rooftop solar, and more recent trend of installations of household and community battery storage, there is growing momentum behind the idea of transitioning rural communities on the existing electricity network to operate as isolated micro-grids (AECOM, 2014; Ergon Energy, 2018). In this chapter I focus on smart grid rural innovation in the State of Tasmania, Australia. Tasmania is an island state located to the south of the Australian mainland. It is connected to the national Australian electricity grid (the ‘National Electricity Market’ (NEM)) through an undersea cable. It is a rural state, with just over 500,000 residents and a population density of 7.6 people per square kilometre (ABS, 2016). Empirical research has been carried out on two Tasmanian islands where smart grids have been installed: Bruny Island, in the south east of the state, and King Island, in the north west of the state. The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. First, existing social science scholarship on rural energy innovation is reviewed, along with attention to relevant STS theories (Section 24.2). Second, the case study methodology that was used is outlined (Section 24.3). Third, key findings from the primary empirical research in Tasmania is explored, with an emphasis on differences emerging from a rural smart grid context (Section 24.4). Third, the chapter is summarised (Section 24.5) and the value of social science research into rural energy innovations is considered, with knowledge gaps and further research needs identified.

24.2

CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ON RURAL ENERGY INNOVATION

There are two general points to make about smart grids academic scholarship: first, that the field of smart grids research is dominated by technical research – typically from engineering and computer science (see for example Bozchalui et al., 2012; Dörfler et al., 2013); and, second, that within the social sciences the majority of smart grids research is about urban areas, with rural smart grid innovation relatively neglected, both conceptually and empirically. Urban smart grid scholarship has predominately concentrated on large or ‘world cities’, wherein urban areas are viewed as ‘hotspots’ or ‘living labs’ of innovation. Here the capital required for smart grids (finance, human resources) is present, and there is a confluence of dense utility infrastructures (Hollands, 2008; Gabrys, 2014; McGuirk et al., 2014; Viitanen and Kingston, 2014; de Jong et al., 2015; Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2016). In this chapter I explore the three most promising areas of rural social science enquiry, namely: governance by experiment and living labs; energy and islands; and scholarship on low- and middle- income countries’ (see Tomei and To, Chapter 10) rural energy innovation. Before doing so, I briefly outline relevant overarching STS theories of innovation.

330  Research handbook on energy and society 24.2.1 Socio-Technical Transitions Theory STS theories about socio-technical transition have a common focus on innovation in particular localities, be it cities, rural areas or islands. They can, therefore, be seen as part of a broader set of concepts in STS and economic geography about the geographies of innovation, and more specifically the tendency for innovations to cluster in particular locales (Breschi and Malerba, 2001; Truffer and Coenen, 2012; Truffer et al., 2015). The STS term ‘innovation niche’, defined as ‘incubation rooms for radical innovations’ (Geels, 2004, p. 79), captures a number of these ideas in its focus on the bounded nature of experimentation and innovation, and the finding that innovation niche boundaries are most often geographical boundaries (Smith and Raven, 2012). Innovation niches are part of a wider set of ideas about socio-technical transitions; a large literature which is not covered in any detail here for reasons of brevity (see Markard et al. (2012) for a good overview). In summary, socio-technical transition concepts seek to better understand the pattern of long-term change in large infrastructures such as energy, and include analysis of where new innovation is most likely to occur. To date, there has been a bias towards innovation in urban areas (Hodson and Marvin, 2010; Hodson et al., 2010), with limited attention to rural locations (for an exception see Murphy and Smith, 2013). 24.2.2 Governance by Experiment and Living Labs Scholarship on governance by experiment and living labs draws on a mix of STS and political science theory. Although the specific term ‘innovation niche’ is not used, there are similar ideas and concepts at play. Scholars working in this area position policy and technology experiments (such as smart grid trials) as an increasingly normal, routine part of governance; an acceptable and desirable way to govern in an era of increasing risk and uncertainty. For example, Kullman (2013) describes experimentation as a governance response to significant challenges facing society at a global scale; challenges that we have imperfect knowledge about, and are inherently complex. As Kullman (2013, p. 881) explains, ‘Such challenges often evade expert control and blur the institutional boundaries between politics, science and technology, thereby calling for more adaptive and collaborative solutions’. Similarly, Bulkeley and Castán Broto (2012, p. 372), in their analysis of urban climate change experiments, explain how ‘experiments are not some side show to the main business of urban climate governance, but rather they are a critical means through which governing is accomplished’. This insight helps explain the rise of policy and technology experiments, including smart grid experiments. There are a number of complex challenges facing the energy sector in Australia and internationally, including climate change, social inequality, and rising energy prices, and it is mostly through designated experiments that smart grids have been implemented to date (see, for example, Langham et al., 2014). Another term used for this kind of policy and technology experiment is ‘living lab’. The term ‘living lab’ reflects the open, fluid and public nature of these experiments. To date the large majority of experimental living labs that have been studied are situated in urban areas (Evans, 2011; Evans and Karvonen, 2014; Bulkeley et al., 2016; Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2016). However, there is no inherent reason why such definitions and approaches could not also apply to rural energy experiments. For instance, in his analysis of cities as ‘learning machines’, McFarlane (2011, p. 362) acknowledges that ‘it is equally plausible that the conception of learning developed here might be applicable to non-urban contexts’. Rural areas

Making energy futures at the edge of the grid  331 of course differ from cities in that they lack a concentration of expertise, capital and political power. But there is growing empirical evidence to show how in the energy sector rural areas can also be important sites of experimentation and learning, in particular because of the fragility and expensive upkeep of their ‘edge-of-grid’ energy infrastructure. In other words, specifically with regard to the energy sector and other large-scale utility infrastructures, there are increasingly compelling reasons why experimentation is more likely to occur in rural areas at the edge of the grid. In the section below I turn to examine the modest existing scholarship about such rural energy experimentation. 24.2.3 Rural Energy Innovation Studies Scholarship on rural experimentation has tended to focus more on issues of farming, food, agriculture and environmental management than on energy (see, for example, McKitterick et al., 2016; Reis Neto et al., 2016). Scholarship specifically on rural energy innovation and experimentation has predominantly focused on rural electrification in low- and middle-income countries (Patil, 2015; Azimoh et al., 2016; Reis Neto et al., 2016; Cloke et al., 2017). There are also a number of studies of high-income country community energy initiatives, but these have tended to focus on new community renewable energy infrastructure, in particular wind farms, rather than smart grids (see, for example, Cowell et al., 2011; Hall et al., 2013). Across the broad field of rural innovation scholarship it can be observed that experiments in rural areas typically arise from a clear and reasonably pressing practical problem (Azimoh et al., 2016; Bock, 2016). This is distinct from the looser more emergent forms of experimentation discussed within cities, conceptualised as coming into being in a more ad hoc and less crisis-driven manner (McFarlane, 2011). Specific to the energy sector in low- and middle-income countries, a key research theme is about access to energy services at affordable cost (see for example Patil, 2015; Cloke et al., 2017). Azimoh et al. (2016) point to the high failure rates of new experimental energy projects, often for quite practical reasons such as lack of spare parts for key equipment. Cloke et al. (2017) provide a valuable contrast to the often-technical focus of low- and middle-income countries’ energy innovation scholarship by proposing a social energy systems approach to explore energy literacy. Criticising the ‘top down techno-logic’ that predominates in the renewable energy sector, they argue that: ‘Projects implemented without an in-depth understanding of the sociocultural context in which the projects are to be embedded often fail to engage with the ways in which local communities envision their own futures and the role of energy in delivering and sustaining such visions’ (Cloke et al., 2017, p. 263). Yet, despite some obvious differences, there is much that connects urban and rural scholarship on experimentation. As with urban studies approaches, examinations of rural innovation are highly attentive to place and consider local historical trajectories and context, including politics (Patil, 2015; Azimoh et al., 2016; Mjimba, 2016). Conceptualisation of innovation is also similar, commonly drawing on STS theories (Murphy and Smith, 2013; Fuchs and Hinderer, 2016; McKitterick et al., 2016). Further, in simple material terms, utility infrastructures connect the city to rural areas and are not an element unique to either. These networked infrastructures act to problematise the locational focus of experiments as either urban or rural (see Graham and Marvin, 2001; Affolderbach and Schulz, 2015; Naumann and Rudolph, 2020), and point to a need to consider carefully ‘transition–periphery dynamics’ in processes of rural energy development (Murphy and Smith, 2013).

332  Research handbook on energy and society Whilst the majority of rural energy innovation scholarship is focused empirically on lowand middle-income countries, there are some important exceptions (including Pinker, Chapter 20). For example, Watts (2018), in her book on the remote and rural Orkney Islands, explores the history of the islands and how the Orkneys’ energy system has been shaped by the island culture over time. Watts’s analysis speaks to a wider body of scholarship on island cultures and place, including the study of islands as laboratories for not just natural (ecological) studies but also human and cultural studies (Pungetti, 2012), which has notable overlaps with the ‘living labs’ approach described above. Naumann and Rudolph (2020) likewise provide an important contribution to energy scholarship by bringing together insights from rural studies and energy transitions scholarship, with a focus on Europe and North America. Acknowledging that to date energy transitions research has focused on cities, Naumann and Rudolph explore the influence of the rural context on social science energy research and what effects energy transitions have on rural areas. From this they propose a conceptualisation of three key dimensions of rural energy transitions: location, contestation and emancipation. They conclude that with a shift to use of renewable resources for energy generation, in particular wind power, rural areas are becoming increasingly important sites for energy production. Murphy and Smith (2013) similarly analyse rural energy innovation in their case study of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. A finding of their research, which draws on the concepts of resource peripheries and sociotechnical transitions to better understand rural energy development, is the diversity of rural energy projects in Scotland, as they explain: complex transition–periphery dynamics are producing hybrid schemes, each one unique and the result of particular interactions. However, the schemes involved are so diverse that we do not think such projects should be understood simply as niches which at some point in the future will coalesce to produce a single new (renewable) energy regime. (Murphy and Smith, 2013, p. 704)

This diversity and uniqueness is evident in the two case studies examined below, where the rural smart grids were received and understood in different ways.

24.3 METHODOLOGY Social research was conducted on two rural energy smart grid case studies in the State of Tasmania, Australia. Both the case studies are located on islands off the coast of Tasmania: Bruny Island in the south west of Tasmania, and King Island off the north west coast of Tasmania. The energy social research on the Bruny Island smart grid trial (hereafter ‘the Trial’) comprised in-depth qualitative research in the form of a longitudinal study (2016–19) of 34 households trialling an automated household solar-battery system. The solar-battery system allowed the power stored in household batteries to be used by the local electricity network company at times of peak demand. A range of research methods including focus groups, interviews (× 3 per household over the course of the 3-year Trial), energy diaries and physical observations of the Trial homes were used by the social research team to understand the Trial householders’ responses to their installed technologies. These comprised a battery, battery controller and solar PV. Taking an inductive, exploratory approach allowed the dynamics and variations of householder responses to the technology and the Trial to be explored, including findings relating to the rural context.

Making energy futures at the edge of the grid  333 The second case study is a desk-based study of a smart grid trial run on King Island, Tasmania. King Island is positioned between Tasmania and the Australian mainland. It has a small population of approximately 1,500 people and a strong focus on rural industries of farming and fishing, as well as tourism. King Island’s electricity grid is an isolated grid that does not have an undersea connection to Tasmania or the State of Victoria. Electricity is provided by a mix of renewable energy (solar, wind) and diesel generators. In the period 2010–13 the utilities on King Island undertook a range of energy innovations and upgrades to the existing energy infrastructure, as previously all the electricity on the island had been provided by diesel generators. The upgrade included a smart grid trial involving just under 200 households and small businesses in the main urban centre of Currie. The trial participants had a small device installed on their electric hot water system so that electricity could be diverted to support the King Island grid at peak times. Other energy innovations that occurred at the same time (2010–13) included provision of battery storage and dynamic resistors. These were part of a suite of smart grid upgrades funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Below I examine the learning about the King Island smart grid from other rural areas (almost exclusively also islands), and in particular how the rural ‘islandness’ of King Island has been important in establishing credibility for the technologies trialled there.

12.4

KEY FINDINGS FROM THE RURAL SMART GRID CASE STUDIES

12.4.1 Bruny Island The research on Bruny Island revealed in a number of ways how the rural context of the island influenced how the Trial proceeded, including how the households adapted to the new technologies in their home and what they thought of the Trial. ‘Rural context’ is taken here to mean the sociotechnical context of Bruny Island and its influence on smart energy innovation, that is the intertwined mix of social and technical factors, ranging from electricity network peak loads to growing tourist numbers visiting the island. From the outset the Trial on Bruny was in response to a key practical problem: an overloaded electricity supply cable to the island. This is in keeping with other rural innovation studies which indicate how rural innovation is typically prompted by a pressing local problem or crisis (Bock, 2016), rather than a more diffuse desire to solve a global problem, or experiment with new ideas in the absence of a crisis. As noted above, such features are more in common with urban experiments. The Bruny Island context also includes a higher than average number of electricity outages, wherein power might be lost for a few hours or a few days (Lovell et al., 2018; Watson et al., 2019). This partly stems from the overloaded undersea electricity cable, but is also because of the long electricity distribution lines running through highly forested rural areas on the island, where lines are at risk of tree fall. The frequency of outages meant that Trial participants were especially interested in using their battery system for back-up power supply. This was despite battery back-up not being a core feature of the Trial: the Trial was focused on the batteries providing power to the grid at times of peak demand, rather than provision of power to households during outages. Households participating in the Trial were required to pay several hundred dollars extra to have their battery installed in such a way that back-up power could be provided during outages. The large majority of the Trial households

334  Research handbook on energy and society did this, despite the additional cost. This battery back-up feature of the Trial technologies was a big point of discussion in household interviews and focus groups (see Watson et al., 2019). As one Trial participant who runs a small farm describes: We’ve got to run a bore pump, we’ve got to run electric fence and we wanted to have it set up so that if we did have a power outage, the batteries would supply power to those systems. Our main risk, especially in summer, is bushfire, so if we don’t have a bore pump operating we can’t really supply water around the house. Also we have troughs to the cattle that’s supplied by the bore pump as well, so they [the installers/Trial] were able to do that, and a bit more. They were able to set it up so that it supplies power to this kitchen area too … so our fridge and our deep freezer is connected to the battery. (Interview, May 2017)

Further, there was a level of anxiety within Trial households that the Trial technology could draw power from their battery at will, through the device that sits at the intersection of the network and the battery. Households explained to us in interview that there were times when they would prefer their battery to be left full of power in case of an outage, for example: The fact of it is, you’ve got to keep the battery charged, but that’s not what [the technology] wants to do … [it] discharges the battery as much it can to make you the most income, but … [then] there’s nothing left, there’s no battery back-up. (Interview, June 2017)

Interestingly this feedback from households about their desire for full batteries and greater control over their batteries in case of network outages was seen as unusual by the small urban start-up company that provided the Trial technology. It was not something they had encountered before in their largely urban and peri-urban customer base in the city of Canberra and surrounds, where outages are less frequent and shorter if they do occur. It fits with other studies that indicate the diversity of rural experimentation (Murphy and Smith, 2013), and also the ideas and visions that rural communities have for their energy services and energy futures (Cloke et al., 2017), which might be quite different from the vision behind innovation in an urban context. Further, on Bruny Island the concerns about power supply back-up raised by Trial householders were dismissed by the Trial’s energy technology company, with the households characterised as not being typical of their customer base and therefore their concerns being of less value. This is indicative of urban and rural cultural differences and biases. In keeping with existing scholarship, in particular energy research in low- and middle-income countries (see Cloke et al., 2017), it is also a case where a ‘one size fits all technology solution’ was imposed on the community with perhaps insufficient prior consultation and attention to the rural sociotechnical context of Bruny Island. 24.4.2 King Island King Island had a smart grid established in the period 2010–13, initiated and operated by the local utility with responsibility for King Island: Hydro Tasmania. The King Island smart grid, termed the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP), comprised a number of technologies and initiatives including new solar and wind generation, a battery, flywheel, dynamic resistor and a customer demand response system (Hydro Tasmania, undated). The objective of KIREIP was to reduce diesel use on King Island, and thus enable the island to be more self-sufficient in energy resources. Diesel is imported to King Island by boat, and before KIREIP powered the whole island through a 6 megawatt diesel power station. KIREIP

Making energy futures at the edge of the grid  335 successfully enabled a 65 per cent reduction in diesel consumption on King Island, through an entirely automated system. Here I briefly analyse the learning about the King Island smart grid from other rural areas, and in particular how the rural ‘islandness’ of King Island has been important in establishing credibility for the technologies in KIREIP, and learning and innovation processes more generally, as KIREIP has been a notable success in terms of its replication in other places, specifically on other islands. The smart grid technology trialled on King Island has since been implemented (in slightly modified form) on Flinders Island, Tasmania, Rottnest Island, Western Australia and Coober Pedy, a remote town in South Australia (ARENA, 2020). This implementation work has been done by Hydro Tasmania in conjunction with its commercial subsidiary, called Entura (see Entura, 2020a). Subsequent to KIREIP Entura have packaged the smart grid technologies used on King Island and developed a modularised product housed within shipping containers; this ‘Hybrid Energy Hub’ was what was implemented on Flinders Island (ARENA, 2017), another nearby Tasmanian island. The Hybrid Energy Hub has been marketed on the basis of its successful implementation and performance in a rural context, on islands. For example, in a press release by ARENA announcing the start of a similar smart grid project on Flinders Island in 2015, the links between the two projects are highlighted: The Flinders Island project will build on the success of a similar project Hydro Tasmania developed on King Island … which is delivering 100 per cent renewable energy to the island. (ARENA, 2015) The technology [being implemented on Flinders Island] was developed on nearby King Island, which was the first remote system capable of supplying the power needs of an entire community solely through wind and solar energy … based on the King Island results, Flinders Island’s power supply [will] become significantly more reliable. (Shine, 2017)

And in relation to a similar system implemented in a remote community in South Australia: The Coober Pedy hybrid renewables project builds on the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP), which led the world when it first achieved 100% renewable operation using variable wind energy in 2012. (Entura, 2020b)

The King Island case fits with existing scholarship suggesting that rural innovations tend to arise because of a pressing practical problem, in this case an overreliance on imported, expensive diesel fuel. However, it runs somewhat counter to other rural studies – including those specifically on energy, and the Bruny Island case above – that have observed diversity in rural energy innovations, with significant local tailoring and resistance to ‘one size fits all’ energy technologies imported from elsewhere (Murphy and Smith, 2013; Cloke et al., 2017). The smart grid technology trialled on King Island has in fact been implemented, with only relatively few modifications, in other similar rural isolated and island locations. However, on closer examination it is evident that there has been some modification in the King Island smart grid product as it has moved from place to place. For example, the customer load smart grid system, implemented as part of KIREIP, was not replicated on Flinders Island, because it was found not to be frequently used on King Island, and was expensive to implement. Also, some changes were made to how the technologies were packaged, as Ray Massie, the Hydro Tasmania hybrid energy solutions manager, explained: Hydro Tasmania took a different approach on Flinders Island in the way the system was deployed. ‘We have modularised the enablers and we have used the platform of shipping containers,’ Mr Massie

336  Research handbook on energy and society said. ‘It is an approach we can deploy to other parts of the world. The Flinders Island Hub is becoming a showcase of the technology’. (Shine, 2017)

It has, therefore, not been a straightforward transfer of innovations to different island contexts, but there has been a clear focus on knowledge exchange and dissemination, as well as successful operation in isolated rural areas.

24.5

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

This chapter has analysed the relatively under-explored research area of rural energy and society innovations, contrasting them with urban energy innovations. Smart grids research tends to be dominated by scientific and technical analysis, with the social sciences having made important contributions, but ones which thus far are greatly outnumbered by the physical and engineering sciences. Further, to date within social science scholarship there has been greater exploration of urban energy innovations, particularly in the field of smart grids research. In this chapter I have reviewed social science contributions to rural energy and society research, across the research topics of smart grids, governance by experiment, and rural studies. I have examined new primary empirical research from two rural energy innovation case studies in Tasmania, Australia where smart grids have been implemented on Bruny Island and King Island. Ideas from STS about the geographies of innovation and sociotechnical transitions have been used to frame the analysis of smart grid and energy innovation occurring within protected innovation niches in different places, be it cities, islands or rural areas. The current state of social science knowledge on the topic of rural energy innovations is patchy. There are excellent insights about the diversity of energy solutions according to sociotechnical context and the common occurrence of contests over energy innovation (Murphy and Smith, 2013; Sperling, 2017; Watts, 2018; Stephanides et al., 2019; Naumann and Rudolph, 2020). However, there is a clear divide between low- and middle-income country and high-income country studies, as well as studies on rural and urban areas, and a need for greater societal research on the differences and commonalities between these locales. The two case studies analysed here reveal some important issues that may be worth examining further across other cases. On Bruny Island the finding that the local context and local community objectives were different to that imagined by the (urban) energy technology company who designed and implemented the new smart grid technology fits with other studies that similarly found situations where a ‘one size fits all’ technology did not work well in diverse rural contexts (Cloke et al., 2017). On King Island the finding was a contrasting one, wherein the smart grid solution trialled on King Island has been successfully implemented on several other islands. However, the smart grid solution has been adapted as it disseminated. The two cases suggest that the concept of innovation niches needs further refinement to embrace instances of urban–rural, rural–urban and rural–rural dissemination of innovations. And, whilst it is accepted that innovations change as they disseminate from place to place, greater attention to the types and patterns of change between urban and rural areas is required. In considering our energy futures, which this section of the Handbook aims to do, it is suggested that there is likely to be an increasing rural focus to energy research as the mix of technologies generating our electricity shifts to zero carbon renewable sources. This is likely to be experienced as more of a societal change in the high-income countries than in low- and

Making energy futures at the edge of the grid  337 middle-income countries, because high-income countries’ energy systems are more centralised and uniform. In the future we are likely to see increased diversity in our energy mix, as energy systems are increasingly adaptive to the local sociotechnical context. The distinctive social science contribution in this regard is in better understanding processes of transition, in particular increasing sociotechnical diversity. This includes the starker differences that are likely to arise between energy systems supplying urban and rural areas, as rural areas shift to more diverse micro-grids, adapted to local community energy visions, existing infrastructure, and energy generation opportunities and demand.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Funding for the research and development of this chapter was provided by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), through the CONSORT project (2016–19), and the Australian Research Council (ARC Future Fellowship grant no. FT140100646; 2015-20).

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25. Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling Antti Silvast

INTRODUCTION This chapter contributes to energy and society research through examining energy systems integration (ESI). ESI, by one definition, is ‘the process of coordinating the operation and planning of energy systems across multiple pathways and/or geographical scales’ (O’Malley et al., 2016, p. 1). This integration addresses multiple energy supplies and demands – from power to heat, transportation, gas, and industrial processes – that are meant to come together in ESI processes. There have been several recent examples of ESI projects including: the linking of gas and electricity networks; formulating joint markets for electricity, gas, and heat markets; and more general consideration on how energy systems, electricity demand, the use of appliances, and power markets interrelate and interact (O’Malley and Kroposki, 2013). The promises of this energy integration, in terms of energy reliability, cost effectiveness, and sustainability, are often emphasized (Larsen and Petersen, 2015; Hanna et al., 2018). This chapter seeks to develop and nuance the ESI concept by showing how complexity, systems thinking, energy modelling, and disciplinary divides are shaping the field of ESI in ways that are not always noticed. In doing so, it argues for greater need for interdisciplinary ways of thinking about ESI and the associated modelling tools. The chapter contributes to these issues by developing a science and technology studies (STS) perspective on ESI. A wide selection of STS concepts and perspective are in use in the field of energy social research (see reviews in Silvast et al., 2013; Sovacool et al., 2020). From this larger literature, this chapter adopts a specific starting point: energy integration manifests through that knowledge which is used to understand the integration processes (see Silvast, 2017b; Silvast et al., 2020). Working from this perspective, I pay specific attention to energy models as means by which more integrated energy systems are brought into being (e.g. Liu and Mancarella, 2016; Mancarella et al., 2016). Widely used in current energy research and energy policy (McDowall, 2014; Aykut, 2019), models are representations of energy systems (Holtz et al., 2015) that apply mathematics, data, and algorithms and rely on computer software. One of the main contributions the STS perspective brings is showing that these kinds of model, whilst building on the disciplines of mathematics, statistics, and computer science, are also shaped by social, political, and economic assumptions which an STS perspective can unpack (Knuuttila et al., 2006). However, as this chapter demonstrates, the knowledge base of ESI is not limited to insights produced by models and modelling. Like systems engineering in energy more generally (Hughes, 1983; van der Vleuten, 2004), ESI has been influenced by complexity and systems thinking. This has mainly occurred by borrowing complexity and systems thinking concepts such as coupling, holism, complex systems dynamics, and interdependencies. Furthermore, ESI is strongly linked to questions about how integration happens in ‘real-world’ conditions. 340

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling  341 These conditions include different energy market designs and infrastructural and policy constraints (Abeysekera et al., 2016; Hanna et al., 2018; Jamasb and Llorca, 2019). Here, the relevant knowledge comes from systematic and economic reviews that have examined ESI processes and discussed their potentials and limitations ‘in reality’ rather than as mere academic or modelled concepts. Recently, ESI has been encompassed in emerging socio-psychological representations (Lemmen et al., 2017; Zawadzki et al., 2017a, 2017b) which address issues concerning the social dimensions and social psychological challenges of integrated energy systems. Further perspectives, combining STS with anthropology, and philosophy of science, focus on the ESI modelling process itself, the kinds of knowledge that the ESI models generate, and the dynamics of these scientific working practices (Silvast et al., 2020, 2021). These studies apply social science field research methods and take a step back from the modelled knowledge about ESI. They show how the working processes of scientists and other experts are formative for the ways in which ESI can be known, shaping its underpinning assumptions. As such, the knowledge on ESI, which this chapter studies, is a complex topic that is shaped by the uncertainty of future energy systems and technologies, expertise in modelling, and the difficulty of understanding ways of working across academic disciplines. Unpacking and analysing this kind of knowledge requires a specific methodological approach. Here, I rely on prominent anthropological and ethnographic approaches in STS that have been used for similar purposes for several decades (Silvast and Virtanen, 2019). In an ethnographic method, scientific and technological knowledge is analysed by going to where the knowledge is produced as part of daily practice. This means establishing a relationship with ESI experts, observing their practices, learning the meanings of their actions, and participating in their everyday routines. The classic site where such STS ethnographies are produced has been the laboratory (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). While the research drawn on in this chapter also started from observing university research groups that are developing modelling, it expanded its empirical basis to include grey papers, internal histories, policy reports, and conference presentations. These were sources that ESI experts themselves were producing or using to develop relevant new knowledge on energy integration issues. The chapter builds on empirical material that was collected whilst working, with a number of social scientists, amongst representatives from engineering and physics disciplines in a large research project that seeks to develop more integrated energy systems in the United Kingdom (UK), the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The data collection happened within two university terms mainly between 2017 and 2018. The chapter synthesizes a large set of empirical materials which includes key technical literature, discussion papers, existing reviews, and ethnographic fieldwork amongst research groups developing integrated energy systems. The chapter proceeds as follows: I begin by explaining the emergence of the concept of energy systems integration and how it borrowed ideas from complex systems theories. I then examine the use of computer modelling, which was envisioned to be the key knowledge production tool by the earlier ESI technical literature. The next two sections review and discuss emerging research under which the technical, economic, and increasingly social explanations for integration of energy have assumed relevance, raising the need for more interdisciplinary research on ESI. The chapter ends by examining the challenge of interdisciplinary working. It does this by discussing how an STS analysis of ESI contributes to integrated energy systems research and demonstrates how social scientists engaged in STS can generate new understand-

342  Research handbook on energy and society ing on these topical energy issues by being themselves enrolled into expert and development circles.

COMPLEXITY AND THE CONCEPT OF ENERGY SYSTEMS INTEGRATION The integrated energy issue is not entirely novel especially when it comes to highlighting the complexity of current energy systems. The academic field of systems engineering comprises the study and management of whole systems, applying interdisciplinary knowledge. It relies on systems theory that emerged in the twentieth century though never becoming a single unified theory of complexity (see Labanca et al., 2020 for further details). The link between complex systems approaches and the building of energy systems, such as electricity networks and other large infrastructures, is well established (Hughes, 1983; van der Vleuten, 2004). The UK’s network of academics, UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), is among the prominent organizations that promote systems thinking in its considerations on energy systems. Tasked with developing a whole systems approach by the national science funding organization Research Councils UK, UKERC (2009) began from the complex challenge of understanding energy systems and how they are embedded in society, the economy, and the environment. Their concept of whole systems designates energy research that involves ‘thinking about all the dimensions of change and drawing on a range of disciplines and expertise’ (UKERC, 2009, p. 5) to address that complexity. This interdisciplinary focus corresponds with a wide definition of an energy system as ‘the set of technologies, physical infrastructure, institutions, policies and practices located in, and associated with the UK which enable energy services to be delivered to UK consumers’ (UKERC, 2009, p. 16). This scope on systems engineering, complex systems approaches, and whole systems is important because ESI scholarship has frequently picked up concepts from these fields and used them to characterize the integrated energy system. For example, Phil Taylor, the co-director of UK’s CESI research programme (where this chapter draws it research from), has drawn upon a growing ‘consensus that “a whole systems approach” is necessary to transform the UK energy system and drive forward the government’s industrial strategy’ (quoted in Northern Gas Networks, 2017). In academic studies, energy systems integration processes are also understood as imbued with complexity. A significant degree of complexity (Mittal et al., 2015), complex systems dynamics (Barrios-O’Neill and Hook, 2016), and complex networks of actors (O’Dwyer et al., 2019) hence characterize the integrated energy system. One of the early references to ESI in a similar context appeared in a partnership in 2012 between the University College Dublin, University College Cork (Ireland) and the United States’ National Renewable Energy Laboratory. A discussion paper (Kroposki et al., 2012) from this period begins from observing how ‘[i]nteractions and interdependencies are increasing among the pathways and across the physical scales of the energy system as well as between the energy system and other systems such as data and information networks’ (ibid., p. 3). The theme of complexity of this new interactive system emerges in several parts of this report: both describing the energy system as ‘complex and highly coupled’ (ibid., p. 8) but also in noting that digital technologies could enable new energy market mechanisms ‘at a granularity and complexity beyond anything currently implemented’ (ibid., p. 7). This paper furthermore includes an initial and one of the several definitions of ESI:

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling  343 Energy systems integration (ESI) enables the effective analysis, design, and control of these interactions and interdependencies along technical, economic, regulatory, and social dimensions. By focusing on the optimization of energy systems across multiple pathways and scales, we can better understand and make use of potential co-benefits that increase reliability and performance, reduce cost, and minimize environmental impacts. (Kroposki et al., 2012, p. 3)

Here, ESI is connected with effective analysis methods, which motivates my interest in knowledge production. The first tracing of knowledge production concerning ESI building on the definitions set out by Kroposki et al. in 2012 is seen by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). A workshop organized by the JRC in 2014 (González et al., 2015) was designed to address how the European energy system could achieve its energy and climate goals up to 2050. In particular, the workshop identified the need for increasingly flexible energy systems in the future to meet these goals. The event and its report explicitly focused on modelling this future system. Accordingly, ESI aimed to ‘set up the technical and economic toolbox that industries and government will need to build a well-functioning integrated energy system, nationally and internationally’ (González et al., 2015, p. 16). The European report attributes the emergence of ESI largely to advances in information technologies including, the ‘advent of greater computational power, efficient codes, novel numerical approaches, parallel computing, and clever algorithmic constructs’ (ibid.) that will allow revisiting existing energy systems models and planning practices. Around this same period, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) released a report titled ‘Energy systems integration for the transition to non-fossil energy systems’ (Larsen and Petersen, 2015). Again, the Kroposki et al. 2012 report was influential; in addition, one of the key developers of ESI ideas, Mark O’Malley, was its reviewer (e.g. O’Malley et al., 2016). The DTU report designated three energy issues that had produced the need for ESI. These were: (1) the intermittency of renewable power generation, solar and wind in particular; (2) the geographical distance of these renewable sources from key energy demands; and (3) the untapped opportunities of planning and operating renewable energy sources more holistically, especially by sectoral integration of supply, demand, transport, space heating, water supply, and even health, agriculture, and education. Once again, models, methods, and analyses – the production of new knowledge – were foregrounded by the DTU report, with one whole chapter dedicated to ‘integrated energy systems modelling’. This flagged complex future energy systems and the need for developing models that could represent detailed sub-systems of the integrated energy system but also technology and market interactions, hence bridging between energy and economic modelling. As can be seen, various real-world energy systems issues explained the emergence of ESI and the need of new knowledge to understand it, including relevant market designs and market regulation. These various developments and needs came together in the global network of academics and practitioners, the International Institute for Energy Systems Integration (iiESI), founded in 2014 to address cross-sectoral integration of multiple energy systems, particularly its technical challenges. In 2016, this Institute published a jointly written paper by 11 international scholars and practitioners in order to outline what was named as the ‘value proposition’ of integrated energy systems. To accomplish this task, it defined the concept of ESI in the following way:

344  Research handbook on energy and society Energy Systems Integration (ESI) is the process of coordinating the operation and planning of energy systems across multiple pathways and/or geographical scales to deliver reliable, cost effective energy services with minimal impact on the environment. (O’Malley et al., 2016, p. 1)

In what followed, the paper explained what the value proposition of ESI could mean based on the definition above: The value of ESI is in coordinating how energy systems produce and deliver energy in all forms to reach reliable, economic, and or environmental goals at appropriate scales. Analysis and design of integrated energy systems can inform policymakers and industry on the best strategies to accomplish these goals. (O’Malley et al., 2016, p. 3)

As is evident, both these definitions centre on the value of coordination between various kinds of energy system, whether across different geographical scales or on a single scale, concerning energy systems on different technological ‘pathways’. They also differ in some key respects from the earlier designation by Kroposki et al. in 2012. One immediately notes that the ‘social dimensions’ mentioned earlier are nowhere to be found. Instead, ESI appears more seemingly linked only to policymakers and industry. This important omission will become relevant later when I visit research that tries to understand these ‘social’ or ‘human’ dimensions of ESI. Thus, this debate within ESI concept development and my interpretation of it reveals a situation in tension: where the connections to ‘the real world’ are frequently mentioned by experts, they are also not being prioritized in the final analysis. ESI comes from a specific academic and expert discourse which privileges addressing this complexity by specific methodological tools, with specific kinds of attention to the ‘social dimension’ of integrated energy. In so doing, these tools not merely describe but may also perform those social dimensions, as I discuss next.

ENACTING INTEGRATION WITH COMPUTER MODELLING While ESI is a relatively new concept – this research suggests the first explicit mentions of it are less than a decade old – the field has already been reviewed a number of times, often by energy researchers that work in overlapping areas such as energy systems and policy. Recent reviews of ESI (Abeysekera et al., 2016; Hanna et al., 2018) agree that the main approaches to accomplish ESI centre on methodological development. These methods cover modelling and simulation studies but also new forms of planning and control, analyses, and technologies (for example, linking energy systems with digital technologies in smart projects, see Silvast et al., 2018). The main approaches and technologies to accomplish ESI processes include: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Coupled energy network modelling and simulation Operation planning and control (e.g. optimization, demand response) Techno-economic and environmental performance analysis Design and expansion planning Reliability analysis of integrated energy systems Smart operations and information and communications technologies Integration between different energy vectors Using energy carriers, such as hydrogen, to link between energy ‘vectors’

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling  345 Following on from the arguments in the previous section and ESI experts in academic publications (Mittal et al., 2015; Liu and Mancarella, 2016; Mancarella et al., 2016), I suggest that computer models and simulations provide a particularly important methodology for shaping the field of integrated energy. I will now draw on an STS interest in models (Knuuttila et al. 2006; Silvast et al., 2020) to review a number of these studies and show how they have assessed integration processes and sought to bring them about. Energy transitions scholars and social scientists studying energy issues (e.g. McDowall, 2014; Holtz et al., 2015; Aykut, 2019) have recently shown considerable interest in models and modelling, which this chapter complements. Specific focus has been first, on the limitations of energy modelling for understanding energy futures (McDowall, 2014) and second, on the ‘performative’ effects of models, where models not only describe future energy systems but may also partially bring them about, at least for a time (Aykut, 2019). While critiques of limitations of modelling are a common theme across the energy social sciences (Sovacool et al., 2015), Holtz et al. (2015) have produced one of the more constructive appraisals of modelling energy transitions. They summarize model as a formal representation of an energy system and modelling as the process where components are selected to be included in the model. These heuristics of models and modelling can be used to understand the development needs that ESI experts have seen with regards to modelling integrated energy. Liu and Mancarella (2016) is particularly interesting in this respect, since it is not only a modelling study but sums up the stage of the field of modelling energy integration processes. The underlying issue as they perceive it is interconnectivity: electricity, heat, and gas distribution are now increasingly connected, for example by increasingly common new energy technologies such as heat pumps and gas boilers. However, the authors also see a lack of a model that would include all three energy networks within one model, and with sufficient detail to be relevant for operating energy systems. They present a multi-temporal simulation model that carries out a combined analysis of electricity–heat–gas networks. While the more detailed functioning of this model is not within the scope of this chapter, it is interesting in terms of models and modelling since it increases the number of the components that can be included in the modelled system and then solves flow equations in all of these three systems successfully. The model is tested with a campus case study in Manchester, hence vindicating their approach in the real world rather than as a mere modelling exercise. If sophisticated approaches to solving flow equations are one approach to integrating energy systems in models, another is using the energy market as kind of a gateway between systems. This can happen, for example, via single markets for energy, heat, and gas (van Stiphout et al., 2018). In this case, it is a fully-integrated market model that brings ‘multi-carrier technologies’ together including combined heat and power, heat pumps, gas boilers, and gas-fired power. The model enacts – essentially, ‘performs’ (Silvast, 2017a) and hence not only describes but also brings about – economic ideas about market clearing, social welfare (meaning a sum of consumer and producer surplus), and the optimality of market solutions. These economic assumptions about energy producers and consumers and the market mechanisms that they should use are actively promoted by the model and within the modelling process. Can this STS idea about models performing energy supplies and demands be approached in considerably more applied settings? It is useful to visit a system-of-systems simulator developed by Mittal et al. (2015) in United States’ NREL, one of the founders of the ESI research concept. Their system-of-systems simulator methodology is able to include different types of electrical equipment and their management systems, simulators, and models, and combines

346  Research handbook on energy and society them into a ‘virtual’ testbed where all these can be experimented with. This system-of-systems simulator is hence an overarching representation of the energy system, spanning markets to technologies, demand and appliances, and management practices. The authors explain this integrated energy system model (IESM) and its potential uses as: The IESM can be used to understand and test the impact of new retail market structures and technologies such as DERs [distributed energy resources], demand-response equipment, and energy management systems on the system’s ability to provide reliable electricity to all customers. (Mittal et al., 2015, p. 1)

This simulation integrates various other tools, including a power flow simulator, building models, appliance models such as home energy management systems, a market layer, and a hardware simulation that allows testing of applications such as air conditioners and dishwashers. Some technologies which are envisaged to accomplish these tasks are big data and real-time analytics, supercomputers, and other advanced simulation infrastructure. Nevertheless, even with the complexity of the simulation model, the model contains specific assumptions about integrated energy and hence also enacts these assumptions. For example, not only does this simulation assume that demand-response equipment is in place and in use, but also that this equipment will be met with specific kinds of end users that are responsive to real-time or peak energy pricing. This assumption has been difficult to verify in social science studies which see demand response as embedded in interrelationships between local contexts and material environments (e.g. Christensen et al., 2020; and for related discussion on divergence in smart grid trials see Lovell, Chapter 24). In other words, the model contains assumptions that divert from what is actually in place in the real world. This situation merits the detailed analysis of ESI from an STS perspective, given that such assumptions might not be explicitly discussed without interrogating the models critically. By claiming this, I do not argue that the social sciences and STS take an exceptional position in criticizing modelling, model assumptions, and limitations. In fact, modellers themselves – meaning scholars developing models – are well-versed in critiques (e.g. McDowall, 2014). Critiques have been also raised by ESI modellers and the prospects of modelling integrated systems. Mancarella et al. (2016) provide an especially interesting critique on knowledge gaps in integrated energy systems modelling. First, they explored how the conceptual idea of ESI is based on a potential mismatch between empirical observation and modelling: the more complex the integrated energy system becomes, clearly the more difficult it will be to represent it by a simplified model. They recognize a balance is to be struck between simple models that have insights, and complex models that have more detail and accuracy. The second issue is that models are dependent on data (for example, in validating them, or in finding appropriate parameters and variables), in the case of ESI data concern a multiplicity of integrated energy systems. The empirical evidence, therefore, will be increasingly difficult to gather on appropriate detail in integrated systems. This is especially problematic since academic modellers are not necessarily committed to gathering data, when that does not constitute their methodological innovations in the model. As the authors explain: Many models … are so vast that collection and validation of data is a huge challenge; although this task has little value in terms of methodological innovation and hence is often overlooked by academics, results that are meaningful to policy, investors and system operators absolutely depend on it. (Mancarella et al., 2016, p. 10)

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling  347 Hence, contrasting to the integrative systems theories that started this analysis, this quote presents a step in a very different direction: of policymakers, investors, and operators of energy systems to whom relevance does not merely mean optimality in the model. A set of new ESI studies emerged around this time to address this issue.

THE TECHNO-ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF ENERGY INTEGRATION PROCESSES Emerging techno-economic evaluations have explored real-world relevance further and tried to understand ESI processes not only as simulations or modelling, but as embedded in economic and policy conditions. Between 2016 and 2019, new ESI reviews started to appear. These were written by ‘new’ users of the ESI concept outside of the original initiators from Ireland, United States, Denmark, and the EU’s Joint Research Centre. Some ESI reviews were linked to related research projects, such as the UK’s National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) which I was involved in, but others emerged as seemingly independent comments on the ESI concept and its limitations and possibilities. These commentaries appeared rapidly considering the concept had only recently been defined, but there was a seeming absence of a widely accepted methodological tool to model the integrated energy system. Hubnet, an overarching network of energy research networks in the UK produced one of the commentaries from this group of new users of the ESI concept. In this commentary, Abeysekera et al. (2016) offer an overview of the benefits, the analysis methods, the research gaps, and the opportunities in a field that they term as integrated energy systems. Their perspective focused on four main elements: benefits, research activities in the UK, analysis (including but not limited to models and simulations), and gaps and challenges (which is a visibly shorter section). The core benefits of ESI are similar to the initial reports that were described earlier. The main exception is an explicit link that is made between energy transition and energy integration. They also highlight that a significant amount of ESI research activities are already taking place in the UK. In a different kind of argument, however, the authors note the ‘significant challenges’ of realizing the potentials of ESI. These are not directly linked with lacking modelling capacity, but with challenging interdisciplinary and real-world integration processes, including ‘the fragmented institutional and market structures of different energy sectors’, ‘the increased complexity of the overall energy system’, and the ‘multidisciplinary nature of research and development in integrated energy systems’ (ibid., p. 30). Their discussion clearly links ESI to how it might be applied in the real world and by multidisciplinary teams comprising different academic disciplines and involving stakeholders from the energy industries. This was not to be the final briefing on ESI. Nor was it the final time such issues were being raised in comment papers. Independent of the CESI project that was active at the same time, Richard Hanna and colleagues (2018) from Imperial College in the UK used a literature review method for a similar study that intended to ‘unlock’ the potentials of ESI. In addition to flagging the need of more research and development, the paper interestingly links to the same three main challenges as Abeysekera et al. (2016): complexity, designing institutions and markets, and need for more interdisciplinarity. Their perspective sits even more firmly in policy, noting the role of decision-makers that will need ‘objective information’ from simula-

348  Research handbook on energy and society tion and modelling studies. This important addition expands ESI toward directions where they should offer results that are relevant for the imagined policy decision-makers in the real world (see Silvast et al., 2020). A third review paper, appearing again very close to the others, was this time written by two CESI members situated in the field of energy economics (Jamasb and Llorca, 2019). Noting that integrated energy systems ‘require not only physical solutions but they also need economic, regulatory, and policy frameworks to ensure efficient performance over time’ (ibid., p. 1), the authors aim to specifically understand the economic features of integrated energy systems. The report covers a wide variety of topics, including concept and systems architectures of ESI, the economics of ESI, utilities and business models in ESI, and the role of digital technologies. Whilst heterogeneous, these recognized problematics suggest that ESI processes do not operate in an economic vacuum but need to be aligned with real-world utilities and business models to have effects in ‘the real world’. But what does this ‘real world’ include as a representation in its own right? It is striking that the reviews only seldom offer more detail on consumers, users, or any social dimensions of ESI. There is at most an occasional pointing to consumer value, consumer protection, and consumers as the final users of integrated energy systems. Hanna et al. (2018) are an exception in this regard as they mention smart devices, such as smart meters, are likely to grow the involvement of end users in the integrated system. They stop short of pointing to the many challenges involved in knowing who these ‘users’ might be and how their behaviour might be changed (cf. Silvast et al., 2018). Nevertheless, they cite a statement originally made by O’Malley and colleagues (2016), one of the earlier expositions of ESI discussed above, namely, that ESI processes are meant to empower the consumer: Empower refers to ESI actions that include the consumer, whether through their investment decisions, their active participation, or their decisions to shift energy modes. Investments in energy efficiency are increasingly recognized as a cost-effective way to reduce energy demand and can lead to system-wide benefits that include upstream capital and operational savings. (O’Malley et al., 2016, p. 5)

But as social science research knows much about, citizens are more than consumers that invest in energy, participate actively, and switch energy providers – even if these are also an important aspect of the ‘social’ dimensions of energy. Recently, this research problem has been met with an emerging discussion on its own which I turn to in the following final empirical section.

EMBEDDING THE ‘SOCIAL’ IN INTEGRATED ENERGY SYSTEMS At this point, the analysis of knowledge production of ESI becomes more challenging. This is because the social science studies on ESI are still relatively rare and are also somewhat fragmented across publication channels and forums. I hence rely on a selection of examples which have potentially interesting implications. In 2017, five years after the first ESI designations and a year following the formative ESI paper by O’Malley et al. (2016), there was an exceptional intervention to embed the ‘social’ in integrated energy systems. At the International Conference on Environmental Psychology, a conference centred on theories of change in sustainability transitions and social innovation, a symposium appeared named as Energy Systems Integration: An Innovative Human Factors Approach. In its description (Zawadzki et al., 2017a), the organizers start from the definition

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling  349 of ESI from Kroposki et al. (2012) but then argue that scholars involved in ‘human factor’ research will play a key role in ESI’s success. They propose several reasons why this ‘human factor’ will be highly important: A sustainable energy system must account for the multiple roles individuals will actively play in their local energy grid (i.e. consumer and producer). It requires incentives that target factors which increase long-term end-user sustainable energy behaviors [sic] (e.g., adoption and use of energy efficient technologies and changing user behavior [sic] to reduce demand or adapt demand to supply). Additionally, successful ESI requires an understanding of which factors boost social acceptance and desirability of ESI and ESI-related policies. (Zawadzki et al., 2017a, p. 139)

The event contained five presentations, though only two of them explicitly mention the ESI concept. Firstly, Zawadzki et al. (2017b) build on interviews including with Dutch technical experts, policy experts, environmental activists and end users, and discuss the language that individuals use to conceptualize the energy system and ESI. They promised to identify a set of ‘dependent variables’ important for realizing ESI processes. Secondly, Lemmen et al. (2017) place ESI in the context of persuading energy users to make sustainable energy choices and the role of socially desirable behaviour. The empirical part of this study is not connected to ESI or energy, as the authors report on a field study that examined how people engaged in animal-caring behaviour. The study nevertheless links these findings to theories of self-persuasion and self-perception, which are linked in its turn to promoting sustainable energy behaviour. As already mentioned, these studies are selected and limited in their scope and extent. Whilst they cannot be generalized into how the ‘social’ dimensions of ESI has been researched, I would still point some of their common dynamics as knowledge production. Within these bounds, ESI appears mainly as a backdrop against which scholars have placed their more overarching considerations on theory, experimental methods, and the human dimensions of sustainable transition (Steg et al., 2015). This clearly offers several contributions in realizing the ESI processes that often do not take these dimensions into account, or merely presume the energy user to be a rational economic agent guided by price signals (see Silvast, 2017b). But this research approach also follows a certain disciplinary division of labour: the ESI models and even the concepts itself are delegated to other disciplines, whilst the social sciences are positioned as offering tools to study the roles that individuals will play in the sustainable energy system, which will also be an integrated system. In my own and my colleagues’ research, we have tried to overcome such disciplinary separations by combining tools from STS, anthropological scholarship, and philosophy of science (Silvast et al., 2020). Doing so aims to situate an interest in a classic STS topic, namely, the construction of scientific knowledge and scientific practices (see also e.g. Silvast and Virtanen, 2019). We developed a new conceptual approach on epistemological ethics and studied ESI models through their epistemic values, such as accuracy, simplicity, and adequate representation, and non-epistemic values, such as policy relevance, methodological limitations, and learning. We ask how these values are built into various kinds of energy models. We have combined a philosophical and an empirical approach to models to achieve this aim: whilst this research starts from conceptual definitions of simulations and models in philosophy of science, it also studied models from the bottom up in how they are designed and used in everyday work. The research thus draws from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews amongst energy modellers in university research groups in the UK, including those modelling

350  Research handbook on energy and society integrated energy in the CESI project. This research agenda, which this chapter sits within, demonstrates what models and modellers know about the energy system and how they come to know it in particular ways and contexts. Among the key findings in this research has been the distinct epistemic traditions of different energy models. Our ethnography showed the choices that modellers make on the epistemic qualities of their models, how modellers articulate the limits of their models, and especially how the examined modellers saw policy relevance as the key legitimacy of their models. Clearly, this vast array of problems from policy relevance to computer modelling cannot be solved by one discipline alone. Here, a project such as the UK’s National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) can serve as a starting point for thinking about such collaborations. Integrating engineering and physical sciences to carry out modelling, CESI has also employed a number of social scientists spanning economists, anthropologists, geographers and policy researchers. A social science inquiry was also designed into the structure of the centre. With the knowledge and insights that social sciences and humanities have already gathered on energy integration processes, it is difficult to imagine how research programmes on ESI will reach their full potential without the further disciplinary integration of them.

CONCLUSION This chapter has showcased how the social sciences and humanities should pay greater attention to examining assumptions about more integrated energy systems for the future. With an underpinning STS interests in knowledge production, I demonstrated how the influential new Energy Systems Integration (ESI) concept emerged from the affirmation of complexity and the emergence of tools – especially computer models – that could demonstrate researchers this complexity of energy systems. I suggested that the economic, technological, and policy-related limits of ESI are partly but increasingly addressed in the technical literature. The chapter also emphasized that there is a gap in knowledge concerning how end users, consumers, publics, citizens, and other related actors will engage with integrated energy systems as part of their everyday lives. However, it should not be the only task of social sciences and humanities to study social acceptance, consumer behaviour, or energy policy of ESI, even as these remain as vital and sometimes almost entirely overlooked aspects of it. There is much more need for research that provides a bridge between the models and modelling of ESI developers and social science approaches. To demonstrate this aim, the chapter has applied an STS perspective on the ESI processes with a specific interest in how experts come to know ESI: including computer models but also various other means such as concepts from complexity theory, systematic reviews, and involving insights from environmental psychology and anthropology to understand integrated energy. With its detailed attention to the production practices of science and technology, STS helps make clear how complexity, modelling, systems thinking, and disciplinary divides actively shape the ESI field. Modellers and modelling studies are clearly aware of the limitations of modelling, yet STS unpacks limitations from a different complementary perspective. Therefore, an STS analysis, which exposes the normally hidden social, political, economic, and other assumptions of models, generates new understanding on integrated energy and there is need for further such work. After having made model assumptions explicit by STS tools,

Energy futures: understanding integrated energy systems modelling  351 different disciplines and experts might have a better chance of beginning a dialogue about whether such assumptions correspond with the ‘real-world’ systems, markets, and users out there. This interdisciplinary collaboration should pave the way for more appropriate modelling tools to examine integrated energy systems of the future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the editor Mags Tingey and two referees for their excellent and constructive comments to an earlier version of this manuscript. I also wish to acknowledge the funding received from the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration, flex fund project ‘Interdisciplinary research for energy systems integration: understanding and promoting good practice’ and the NTNU Energy Transition Initiative.

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26. How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present Noam Bergman and Kathryn B. Janda

INTRODUCTION: THE ROLE OF STORIES Stories shape how we see the world. As Cronon (1992, p. 1347) put it, ‘In the beginning was the story. Or rather: many stories, of many places, in many voices, pointing toward many ends.’ From history and legend of how things came to be the way they are today, to visions of what the future can, should, or will look like, stories and myths help us make sense of the world. They play an important cultural role, having helped create shared beliefs, purposes and norms throughout human history (Moezzi et al., 2017), perhaps even allowing clans of hunter-gatherers to work together and take over the world to become the dominant species (Harari, 2014). Beyond personal views of the world, shared visions of the future play an important role in setting policy agendas and driving technological development in the present. It is, therefore, crucial that in facing the great challenges today, in terms of climate change and broader questions of energy systems and environmental collapse, we consider what stories we hold to, and what we believe the future will hold. As we shall see, some are calling for new stories and myths to face climate change, as the business-as-usual perspective does not seem to support the changes we need. In this chapter, we draw on a variety of literatures, from innovation studies to environmental history and ecological economics, to explore the importance of how our shared stories frame the future, and what role they can play in addressing current challenges. We start by outlining some of the often fuzzy and overlapping terms associated with stories and their siblings (Section 26.1). Next, we give some examples of competing narratives of the past, present and future (Section 26.2). In Section 26.3, we introduce a 2 × 2 typology of future visions developed by ecological economist Robert Constanza (1999) to help test responses to different possible optimistic or pessimistic futures. Finally, we consider the need for and impact of multiple stories in Section 26.4, or as Janda and Topouzi (2015) suggest a ‘system of stories’ as a way of incorporating diverse solutions in our navigation toward the future. Section 26.5 concludes.

26.1

SOME USEFUL CONCEPTS

A few of the terms we find useful in exploring this topic are: stories, narratives, visions, expectations and frames. These terms can be interpreted differently, so we focus on how we use them here. Stories are considered to be one of the earliest forms of human communication. They typically have a beginning, middle and end; involve a protagonist; and when coupled with the field of folkloristics, focus on ‘the everyday, the commonplace, the informal, and otherwise ignored’ (Moezzi et al., 2017, p. 3). Stories may be about the past, the present, or the 354

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present  355 future. In the English language, ‘stories’ is the most common of the terms used in this chapter. As the broadest term, we use it interchangeably with ‘narratives’. Narratives are more formal than stories. They are a constructed story, portrayed as non-fiction, which shows development from problem emergence to resolution. They can be generated by institutions to reflect general discourse about an issue. Their written formality makes them more accessible to analysis than stories, which may appear in a broader variety of forms (including images and utterances) (Moezzi et al., 2017). Visions and expectations can be thought of as broadly imagined futures; they are shared stories of how the future might unfold. Visions have been defined as ‘elaborations of a desirable and (more or less) plausible future’ (McDowall and Eames 2006, p. 1238). Imagined futures inevitably include assumptions about technology, economics, society and more, so visions can be considered inherently normative (Bergman et al., 2017). Expectations are more specific than visions, and might express which technological developments might be present in, or be necessary for, a vision of the future to come about. Expectations can lend legitimacy, increasing the uptake of novel technologies (Schot and Geels, 2008; Geels and Verhees, 2011). Visions and expectations are therefore an inherent part of the technological innovation process, and not a side effect. Frames can be thought of, from a cognitive science approach, as conceptual models or unconscious structures we use to make sense of reality. They are principles of selection that affect what we do and don’t notice (König, 2021). A more constructionist approach suggests that common frames are universally understood codes, without which people such as journalists cannot effectively tell us stories. Common myths, archetypes and symbolic meanings thus evoke stories the audience is already familiar with (Van Gorp, 2007, 2010). Importantly for this chapter, frames are concepts we use now, and they can affect how we build visions of the future. For example, Janda and Topouzi (2015) argue that current energy efficiency research generally tells a hero story of technology saving the day, rather than a learning story about how technologies interact with social systems, or a caring story about whether and how we accept responsibility for, institutionalize, govern and maintain physical infrastructure. Energy efficiency advocates also avoid telling the horror story of failures, such as an Australian insulation programme suspended after workers’ deaths and house fires (Tiffen, 2010).

26.2

COMPETING NARRATIVES

Stories (whether they are made of words or data) inevitably privilege one way of looking at the world at the expense of others. This occurs in the way stories assume the world works, in the choice of actors and influences, and so on. In other words, stories frame the way we perceive reality and how we interpret the meaning of actual events. In this section, we look at how various stories affect the way we view the past, present and future. 26.2.1 The Past: Environmental History and the Industrial Revolution Environmental history highlights how we separate story (that which we include) from ‘non-story’ (that which we exclude). Presenting one vision of reality by obscuring large portions of that reality is a powerful rhetorical weapon: ‘Narrative succeeds to the extent that

356  Research handbook on energy and society it hides the discontinuities, ellipses and contradictory experiences that would undermine the intended meaning of its story’ (Cronon, 1992, pp. 1349–50). Drawing on environmental history, Barca (2011) critiques the mainstream narrative of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution is at the core of a narrative of progress and modernity, shaping perceptions of (economic) development. It has been symbolically represented as the victory of humanity over nature, liberation from the barriers of pre-industrial society, and even compared to the myth of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. An example of the last is the title of David Landes’ influential book on economic history, The Unbound Prometheus (1969). This narrative often ignores limits of resources. Barca suggests that the new energy system portrays capitalism as the hero, the Prometheus of the industrial revolution. Barca calls this the mainstream ‘modern economic growth’ narrative and argues that it ‘systematically silences environmental and social costs and the global inequalities incorporated into current energy regimes’ (Barca, 2011, p. 1309). Environmental historians highlight a different narrative, including concerns over environmental pollution, public health and depletion of resources. To Cronon (1992), (environmental) history can be seen as an endless struggle between competing narratives and values. However, and crucial in the climate change context, the stories do have constraints: they must make ecological sense, as the natural world transcends narrative power. This is similar to König’s (2006) ‘empirical credibility’, the notion that frames must match real world events to become culturally resonant. However, this match is often mediated by mainstream discourses, and in the era of ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’, empirical credibility might become less of a requirement in the realm of politics. Merchant (2004) focuses on the ‘recovery’ narrative, which envisages the creation of a future garden of Eden. This mainstream narrative of Western culture helps us make sense of our relationship with nature. This recovery story follows the ‘mastering’ (sic) of nature narrative, modern suburbs and parks as a veneer covering the destruction of nature, and all too often ignoring the poor who live with unhidden pollution. Merchant highlights the tension between the recovery story and the ‘decline of Eden’ story, the latter highlighting environmental crisis through overconsumption and overdevelopment. The decline narratives include environmental and feminist recovery narratives, which are needed to complement the hero story of technological determinism in order to establish the new social norms of ethical conduct that are necessary to halt the decline. Some of these narratives draw on a framing of the distant past as a place where people had a sustainable relationship with nature. 26.2.2 The Present: The Green Growth Question and Ecological Economics Having considered the past, let us turn to the present. An ongoing policy-relevant example of competing narratives is in the framing of the relationship between growth and the environment, including the role of states and markets. Gómez-Baggethun and Naredo (2015) track the evolution of two narratives competing in recent decades, and how they have been heavily influenced by international sustainability policy, including energy policy. In the first narrative, ecological economics highlights empirical credibility, showing the constraints on our stories: perpetual economic (and population) growth on a finite planet is impossible. An influential example supporting this point of view is The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972). Meanwhile, the early 1970s decline in oil production in the United States (US) supported the ‘Hubbert peak’ theory. This was based on M. King Hubbert’s 1956

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present  357 prediction that the production of US conventional crude oil would peak between 1965 and 1970 and then go into terminal decline. This idea led to the broader concept of ‘peak oil’ in other regions. The 1973 oil crisis strengthened the view that resources were limited. In contrast, the neoliberal narrative asserted that deregulated and liberalized energy markets would improve economic efficiency. This narrative gained strength in the 1980s, influencing European Union (EU) policy as the energy industry put profit above energy security, affordability and environmental sustainability (Renn and Marshall, 2016). The case for growth was made strongly in the Brundtland (1987) Report Our Common Future. This narrative further asserted that growth was the solution to environmental and social problems, as it was poverty that placed pressure on environmental resources. This claim helped make the case for global economic growth (Gómez-Baggethun and Naredo, 2015). The climate change debate, specifically the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, highlighted corporate profits in some countries, as part of questioning the acceptability of fossil fuels (Renn and Marshall, 2016). This debate continued into the new millennium. More recently, the narratives of opposition to endless growth have regained some traction. This includes the concept of planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009), which highlights physical threats to ecosystems and climate, and the socioeconomic limits to growth idea, which was taken up in Prosperity Without Growth (Jackson, 2009). The ‘doughnut economics’ framework (Raworth, 2017) arguably pulls the two together. Nonetheless, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2011) green economy report explicitly uses the language of decoupling economic growth from environmental impacts and, specifically, greenhouse gas emissions. The UN Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 (the Rio+20 Summit) omitted all references to planetary boundaries from their declaration, reaffirming the case for economic growth. Energy liberalization has been challenged repeatedly in the early twenty-first century, and public policy intervention in the global energy system has increased. Nonetheless, the narrative of economic growth and free trade is dominant in international environmental policy, although it has failed to mitigate climate change or reverse resource depletion and damage to the ecological life support systems (Gómez-Baggethun and Naredo, 2015). This failure, along with growing recent awareness of climate change impacts, suggests that the green growth narrative might be failing its empirical credibility check. Despite this, the green growth narrative is still strong. Witness for example, the 2012 creation of the ‘Green Growth Knowledge Platform’ (GGKP, 2021) steered by, among others, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UNEP and the World Bank. 26.2.3 The Future: Personal Transport Case Study Our narratives of the past and present have implications for how we envisage the future. This includes how current polices anticipate future developments. We demonstrate this with a case study of personal transport futures in the United Kingdom (UK) (Bergman, 2017; Bergman et al., 2017). This case study considers visions of future transport involving electric vehicles found in policy relevant documents from government, consultancies, and other actors in the transport sector. The research found strong support for a future consistent with the modern economic growth narrative. Technology was portrayed as the solution to sustainability issues, and people were reduced to consumers whose behaviour was simplified to the choice of

358  Research handbook on energy and society vehicle they purchased. (In contrast, Lucas et al., Chapter 14, discuss personal car ownership and use, recognizing a variety of user behaviours and needs.) One of the conclusions from this future transport case study was that a broader range of visions from a broader selection of actors might give us more policy options and leave us better prepared for the future. Further, this work identified frames used in different visions, and considered how the narratives were woven together to build powerful stories of the future. In this, different frames were used to serve specific agendas (Bergman, 2017). A central narrative supported by a variety of visioning documents suggests a future in which privately owned cars continue to dominate UK personal transport. In this future, low-carbon technology (probably electric motors) reduces emissions, and individual consumers, as ‘rational actors’, increasingly purchase these low-carbon vehicles over time. There is a lot to consider in this transport story. First, it is a narrative of success. Projections of the future almost always detail the ‘good news’ of how emission reduction targets can and will be met. Most projections avoid discussion of failure. Meeting the targets is presented as a challenge which can be overcome with the help of technology. This is an example of the hero story, with technology itself as the hero (Janda and Topouzi, 2015). Second, this narrative relies on and simultaneously reinforces several frames that underpin the modern economic growth narrative. Bergman (2017) identifies several frames used in the narrative; these act as implicit conceptual models that are presumed not to require justification. For example, there is a ‘markets’ framing, assuming that markets will deliver the best solution among available (technological) options. There is also a ‘technology as progress’ frame, which portrays technological innovation as synonymous with beneficial progress, and is assumed to be purely positive. Another important frame in this narrative is ‘continued automobility’. This sees the future similar to the present in terms of (privately owned) car-dominated transport, with car culture seen as vital to our way of life and the economy. Finally, ‘sustainability’ in this narrative is often portrayed narrowly as the need to reduce emissions, ignoring broader environmental and social issues. This example ties together much of what we’ve discussed so far. The vision of the future here is what Janda and Topouzi (2015) would call a hero story in line with modern economic growth. It is a high-tech variant of the present, with technology and markets solving our problems. The narratives that take us there highlight a transition to low-carbon vehicles with little disruption, which offer a one-for-one replacement for current vehicles. These narratives rely on the technological, economic and other frames discussed above. In turn these narratives raise expectations about developing such technologies, which can be seen in current policies to support electric vehicles. These narratives obscure parts of reality, such as sustainability beyond emissions. They also hide the disruption and discontinuities in the complex transition required. Crucially, they marginalize other narratives, such as deeper transitions in the transport sector, which could include a move away from personal vehicles, or even a reduction in how much we travel. 26.2.4 Forever Now: Post-Politics and the Environment Political science gives us another tool to look at how modernism, or the ‘modern economic growth’ narrative, closes down alternatives: post-politics. This approach hypothesizes that a shift to a post-political and post-democratic condition emerged after the cold war, in a shift from political to technocratic discourse, that has strong ties to neoliberalism. In a post-political

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present  359 world, governance is reduced to administration and management of society, executed through problem-focused action and consensus formation among ‘stakeholders’. There is a focus on efficiency, economic rationality and markets, with private sector participation seen as essential. Post-politics sees consensus as central and conflict as temporary, economic and not political. This is in contrast to the political, in which the order of things can be questioned, and there is an inherently antagonist dimension (Mouffe, 2011). Considering environmental sustainability, Swyngedouw (2009, p. 610) argues: ‘In this postdemocratic postpolitical era, adversarial politics (of the left/right variety or of radically divergent struggles over imagining and naming different socio-environmental futures, for example) are considered hopelessly out of date’. An example of post-political discourse is found in the energy efficiency narrative. On the one hand, the question of (over)consumption and its effects on the environment has been raised and studied for many years (e.g., Princen, 1999), with the sufficiency framing considering reduced consumption in the rich world (e.g., Alcott, 2008). On the other hand, a strong techno-economic energy efficiency narrative has emerged, focusing on technical improvements and rational actors to reduce energy demand and ensure sustainability. However, energy efficiency has long been critiqued for not necessarily reducing energy consumption (e.g., Moezzi, 1998). The energy efficiency narrative presumes future practices and energy services similar to current lifestyles, ‘stabilizing’ current standards of comfort, lighting and cleanliness. This hides the fact that demands and needs are neither constant nor fully predictable as they evolve (Shove, 2018). This framing makes present ways of life non-negotiable, as seen in the UK government’s commitment to drastically reduce emissions without compromising current ways of life. This leaves energy efficiency, expressed primarily in technical solutions, as the only way forward (Shove, 2018). Bergman (2019) highlights how energy efficiency and energy demand reduction are often conflated, linking this to the post-political focus on techno-economic solutions. Demand reduction coming from changes to behaviour, lifestyles, practices and norms are therefore marginalized in favour of energy efficiency. Both this and the electrical vehicle futures discussed above link post-politics to the idea that visions of the future are often high-tech versions of the present (as will be discussed further below); it is forever now.

26.3

VISIONS AND CONTESTED FUTURES

Just as our stories about the past are not objective, neither are imagined futures. Visions of the future can be collaborative or political, and at times are powerful tools used by influential actors to shape the future in their interests. For example, innovation studies show the importance of visions in technological development. Visions of the future can mobilize action in the present through generating concrete expectations that help transform stories of the future into reality (van Lente and Rip, 1998). These visions and expectations can in turn motivate scientific and engineering activity, and secure support and funding from a range of actors (Borup et al., 2006). More broadly, visions help create cultural legitimacy for technological innovations (Geels and Verhees, 2011), and can be used by niche actors attempting to enhance the legitimacy of their innovations (Schot and Geels, 2008).

360  Research handbook on energy and society Table 26.1

Four visions of the future based on two worldviews and the corresponding reality

  Worldview

Source:

Real state of the world optimists are right

sceptics are right

technological optimist

Star Trek

Mad Max

technological sceptic

Big Government

Ecotopia

Adapted from Costanza (1999).

One of the means of promoting a vision is presenting it as the only possible future, the story which obscures others. For example, former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher was known for responding to critics of the market economy, ‘there is no alternative’, meaning the debate was over. Similarly, technological progress has been portrayed as an unstoppable train as a means of self-justification, although in fact, there is a lot of agency in keeping it going (van Lente and Rip, 1998). 26.3.1 Mapping Visions of the Future Actors with vested interests in current techno-economic systems may seek to present the future as continuous with the present and recent past (forever now), avoiding major disruptions or discontinuities. Ecological economist Robert Costanza (1999, 2000) highlights the problematic tendency of thinking about the future as a simple extrapolation of past trends by exploring how visions can change the world. Further, Costanza suggests that visions of the future should be judged by the clarity of their goals, rather than the clarity of their implementation paths. This perspective starts from the great challenge of identifying a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable future. Constanza works on the premise that a small number of visions can help start a dialogue if they expose the conflicts and inconsistencies in our hopes and fears. Costanza proceeds to offer four visions, as examples of possible future scenarios, based on two conflicting ideas. First, the degree of faith in technological progress, named ‘technological optimist’ and ‘technological sceptic’; and second, whether the assumptions underlying these are true in the real world, i.e., ‘optimists are right’ and ‘sceptics are right’. The technological optimist worldview assumes resources are not limited, as technical progress can deal with challenges and competitive markets promote progress. The technological sceptic worldview suggests resources are a limiting factor, with progress depending more on social and community development than technology. In the latter view cooperation promotes progress and markets serve larger goals. This simple division is a good fit for some of the preceding examples of narratives of the past and the divided opinions over green growth. Applying Costanza’s exercise results in the four visions in Table 26.1. The ‘Star Trek’ vision is a world where clean, unlimited energy (and resources) solves economic and environmental ills, with leisure time increasing and the growing population leading to extra-terrestrial settlements of some sort. In the ‘Mad Max’ vision (named after the post-apocalyptic film series), there is no affordable alternative to fossil fuels, while climate change and environmental collapse take their toll. Markets and governments are weakened, infrastructure is in decay, and corporations run the world from guarded enclaves. The risk of pursuing technologically optimistic policies is that we could get something more like Mad Max than Star Trek if the assumption of unlimited resources proves to be wrong.

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present  361 ‘Ecotopia’ focuses on a global dialogue, with inter-governmental cooperation central to achieving a low-consumption sustainable vision of the future. Ecological tax reform is part of a fair and efficient distribution of resources to ensure human well-being and ecological sustainability. Ecotopia stresses structural and institutional change, and a move away from consumerism, over technological progress. Finally, ‘Big Government’ envisages a world where government policy emphasizes family planning to stabilize population and businesses are sanctioned if they don’t pursue ‘public interest’. Policy makes income distribution more equitable, and combined with limited population, the worst environmental problems are avoided. The risk of pursuing technologically sceptic policies is that we could get ‘Big Government’, where communitarianism stifles business and entrepreneurialism, slowing growth relative to free market policies. Three of these four visions are sustainable in the sense that they continue present society without major disruptions or discontinuities. Mad Max is the exception (Costanza, 1999, 2000). Costanza’s (2000) survey of how desirable the different visions were found Mad Max to be the only overwhelmingly undesirable future. Ecotopia received strongly positive responses, Star Trek received mostly positive responses and Big Government a mix, although slightly positive on average. Using game theory analysis, and assuming irreducible uncertainty about the ‘real’ state of the world, Costanza concludes that sceptical policies are safer as they offer a much better worst-case scenario (Big Government is not nearly as bad as Mad Max). If we consider the growing evidence that unlimited energy and resources are not possible, the likelihood of a worst-case scenario manifesting in reality becomes stronger. Costanza’s work demonstrates that visions are often built on ideas of success, and encourages us to consider the deleterious effects of failure, in particular what might happen if we put all our hope in technology and none in our societal institutions. This perspective encourages us to see multiple futures and recognize how misplaced faith in our own cleverness may lead us towards an avoidable apocalypse. Further, putting all these visions into one matrix illustrates how there are multiple stories of the future, and no one knows the ‘right’ answer. Janda and Topouzi (2015) similarly highlight the need for multiple coexisting stories. They argue that the singular focus on hero stories (think ‘best practices’) teaches us to learn from successes rather than failures. Narratives need not be a war; they can create an ecosystem. These ideas of plurality complement our case study critiquing visions of future personal transport in the UK, where a central narrative dominated, and very few visions questioned the ‘inevitable’ success of economic growth and technology. The Mad Max vision is a good match for Janda and Topouzi’s (2015, p. 520) horror story, ‘the tale that no one wants to tell’. The horror stories might make us disengage from action, cleaving to the hero story, rather than engage in caring and learning stories. For example, while fear-inducing climate change communications ‘have much potential for attracting people’s attention to climate change, fear is generally an ineffective tool for motivating genuine personal engagement’ (O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole, 2009, p. 355). This poses a serious challenge both for climate scientists in getting their message across, and for environmental movements, who could alienate people rather than engage them. Visions of the future can on the one hand portray different worldviews, and on the other hand serve as political tools supporting one worldview over others. This illustrates how visions can be seen as part of a struggle to shape the future; it is a struggle between different narratives, which reflect different worldviews or different agendas. In Costanza’s terms, we suggest powerful economic actors who have vested interest in the current systems would tend to fight

362  Research handbook on energy and society for the Star Trek vision of the future, which is a good proxy for the green growth/modern economic growth narratives.

26.4

DISCUSSION: CHANGING THE STORIES

We have discussed how stories, taking the form of narratives, visions and frames shape the way we see the world. In recent years, awareness of the climate change emergency has highlighted the need to broaden out our narratives and stories. We consider two perspectives on the multiplicity of stories, narratives and visions. First, stories can be seen as an ecosystem: they are multiple, and the ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ narratives are constantly ebbing and flowing. This multiplicity is both a benefit and a detriment in our attempts to secure an environmentally sustainable future. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a series of motifs that together may need different kinds of stories to be told, compared with ones that follow discussions of modernity and growth. Their different focuses support a series of different visions and narratives, rather than one overarching imagined future. In fact, there are some tensions between the goals, and here too, it has been suggested that there are two ‘sides’ that are at odds with each other. One calls for achieving harmony with nature, the other for continued global economic growth (Hickel, 2019). However, viewing the SDGs as different stories in an ecosystem might be more a productive approach, as complex issues of social and climate justice and different definitions of development are considered. Second, visions and narratives can be seen as a tool which powerful actors use in a struggle to shape and control the future. Powerful narratives can privilege one way of seeing the world over others, marginalizing others, and limiting visions of the future. We have discussed how, currently, narratives in line with what we have termed the ‘modern economic growth’ narrative are dominant. We argue that these narratives sometimes portray our current economic model, built on technology and ‘progress’, as the only or inevitable future; Costanza’s Star Trek future. For example, one persistent myth of modern economic growth is individualism. The importance and difficulty of changing this narrative is expressed strongly by Lukacs (2017): ‘At the very moment when climate change demands an unprecedented collective public response, neoliberal ideology stands in the way ... Neoliberalism has not merely ensured this agenda is politically unrealistic: it has also tried to make it culturally unthinkable’. In this second perspective, modern economic growth led to ‘green growth’ narratives as the solution to climate change, pushing aside other possible narratives and future visions. Opposing it requires deep changes, including new visions. These can draw on everything from traditional myths to current scientific evidence and reports on the urgency of addressing climate change as part of a larger sustainability question. However, empowering new and alternative stories to open up more options for the future requires that we question stories we have heard for so long that they are unthinkingly regarded as true, while powerful actors have an interest in keeping the current narratives dominant. This ties to the question of how climate change communication might best be achieved.

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present  363 26.4.1 The Divestment from Fossil Fuels Movement The fossil fuel divestment movement is a social movement calling for the removal of investments from the fossil fuel industry, as part of the social struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. Its very name frames the movement as a justified moral struggle, invoking the well-known campaign to divest from South Africa in protest of the system of apartheid, and hints at possible success. Alongside the moral angle, the divestment message uses an economic framing to warn us of a ‘carbon bubble’ that might burst leaving fossil fuel investments as ‘stranded assets’. In Costanza’s terms, this can be seen as a push to shift from the ‘optimist’ to the ‘sceptic’ story. The divestment movement has been accused of naivety, and dismissed for its lack of impact on fossil fuel funding (e.g. Tollefson, 2015). However, the goal of the divestment movement arguably never was financial collapse of the fossil fuel sector. Rather, it was about normative change. It has had some success in changing the story, shifting public discourse around finance and a low-carbon economy in the UK and elsewhere (Ayling and Gunningham, 2017; Bergman, 2018), by stigmatizing and questioning the legitimacy of the fossil fuel industry (Ansar et al., 2013). The story pursued intentionally describes the fossil fuel industry as villain. Co-founder of the divestment movement Bill McKibben suggested moral outrage might be the key to change. As McKibben (2012) argues, ‘A rapid, transformative change would require building a movement, and movements require enemies’. He proceeds to identify the fossil fuel industry as ‘Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization’. Perhaps in the divestment story, all of us who divest are heroes. There are lessons here about the choices available to social movements and other actors that have less access to power. Divestment has had more success in its indirect impacts (changing public discourse) than its direct impacts (starving fossil fuel companies of investment). Related previous forms of protest in the UK appear to have had less of an effect on the mainstream. The relative success might be due to the distributed model of divestment action, which allowed a variety of actors to participate locally, summing up to a global impact. In addition, its economic framing translates easily to legitimate concerns of mainstream actors, tying in to, and perhaps reinforcing, trends in green finance. 26.4.2 New and Missing Stories The need for a larger collection of stories which can open up possibilities for the future is expressed in the idea of a system of stories (Janda and Topouzi, 2015), where different stories serve different purposes. The missing stories here are ‘learning’ stories and ‘caring’ stories. This includes ‘caring for’ rather than ‘caring about’: instead of technology saving us, we need to take more ethical responsibility for the resources that we use (not just economic responsibility). One example of a resurging caring story is the rethinking of the notion of fiduciary duty. One of the concepts used to oppose the divestment movement was fiduciary duty of fund managers, narrowly interpreted as offering the best returns on investment. As long as fossil fuels offered the best (short-term) returns, it would be illegal to divest from them, even if that meant ignoring the threat of climate change. However, in the past few years this argument has weakened as there have been more voices arguing that fiduciary duty includes prudence and

364  Research handbook on energy and society avoidance of unnecessary risk. This is leading to potential changes in UK investment regulations (Bergman, 2018). Merchant (2004) concludes Reinventing Eden with a vision of ‘partnership’ with nature. This is an ethic which includes both ecological morality, and social good and fulfilment of human needs. This is in line with the planetary boundaries framing (Rockström et al., 2009) and the ‘doughnut economics’ approach (Raworth, 2017) outlined in Section 26.2. The explicit morality in Reinventing Eden, however, sets it apart as a caring story, rather than a more rational calculation of meeting human needs. Orthodox (neoclassical) economics uses narratives focused on rationality and individualism. It tends towards simplistic, quantifiable models of behaviour, whereas psychology, sociology and other social sciences have a rich collection of behavioural theories. Heterodox economic ideas, such as doughnut economics, could also complement orthodox economics, improving our ability to address planetary uncertainty.

26.5 CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have noted the tendency for some narratives to be privileged while other narratives are marginalized, and for framings to limit the way we think and influence which parts of reality we notice. This raises the question of how we might achieve the changes in our stories necessary if we are to make the great transition and mitigate climate change. Can new (or renewed) stories of caring and learning sit prominently alongside techno-economic hero stories, which are not going away anytime soon? Can we reform the hero stories to shift away from technological fixes towards social innovation? This might be a version of the reform or revolution question. At the revolutionary end we find the Dark Mountain Project, a network of writers, artists and thinkers who are ‘walking away from the stories that our societies like to tell themselves, the stories that prevent us seeing clearly the extent of the ecological, social and cultural unravelling that is now underway’ (Dark Mountain, 2021). While this is an extreme response, it highlights another form of missing or underrepresented stories: stories of great failure, which can be used to teach us about different possible futures. Even if some aspects of the Star Trek future might be realistic, and certainly if we head towards an Ecotopia, some disruption and discontinuity are inevitable as we transition to a more sustainable world. Moreover, some elements of Mad Max might already be unavoidable, and stories which only look at success could leave us unprepared. Janda and Topouzi (2015) suggest that the learning story should play this role, as a complement to (rather than a replacement for) the hero story. This suggests that, at least for environmental impacts, the empirical credibility of our stories should play a role in their application to policy. Political ecology, for example, has a history of challenging hegemonic (Western) narratives, and pursuing diversity in both narrative and reality of drivers of environmental change, and more recently using this analysis to confront ‘post-truth’ (Neimark et al., 2019). Finally, we suggest that we live in a multiplicity of stories about the world around us, and that climate policy might benefit from acknowledging and broadening out this story ‘ecosystem’. Modern economic growth narratives, and specifically the green growth stories, are insufficient for this purpose. We leave open the question as to whether it will suffice to complement

How stories of the future impact energy and climate policy in the present  365 and alter modern economic growth narratives with other perspectives, or whether this duality of green growth versus other stories must be seen as a struggle. There is a need for a plurality of stories, just as there is a need for diversity in economic and ecological systems. The tensions between different stories are valuable in themselves as they can promote dialogue and make clear that there isn’t one solution to all sustainability related issues.

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366  Research handbook on energy and society König, T. (2021), Frame Analysis: A Primer, accessed August 2021 at https://​www​.restore​.ac​.uk/​lboro/​ resources/​links/​frames​_primer​.php. Landes, D. S. (1969), The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lukacs, M. (2017), ‘Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals’, The Guardian, 17 July, accessed 30 January 2020 at https://​ www​ .theguardian​ .com/​ environment/​ true​ -north/​2017/​jul/​17/​neoliberalism​-has​-conned​-us​-into​-fighting​-climate​-change​-as​-individuals. McDowall, W. and M. Eames (2006), ‘Forecasts, scenarios, visions, backcasts and roadmaps to the hydrogen economy: A review of the hydrogen futures literature’, Energy Policy, 34 (11), 1236–50. McKibben, B. (2012), ‘Global warming’s terrifying new math’, Rolling Stone, 19 July, accessed at http://​ www​.rollingstone​.com/​politics/​news/​global​-warmings​-terrifying​-new​-math​-20120719. Meadows, D. H., D. L. Meadows, J. Randers and W. Behrens (1972), The Limits to Growth, vol. 205, New York. Merchant, C. (2004), Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture, London: Routledge. Moezzi, M. (1998), ‘The predicament of efficiency’, in Proceedings of the 1998 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Washington, DC, August, 4, 4.273–4.283. Moezzi, M., K. B. Janda and S. Rotmann (2017), ‘Using stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy and climate change research’, Energy Research and Social Science, 31, 1–10. Mouffe, C. (2011), On the Political, London: Routledge. Neimark B., J. Childs, A. J. Nightingale, C. J. Cavanagh, S. Sullivan, T. A. Benjaminsen, S. Batterbury, S. Koot and W. Harcourt (2019), ‘Speaking power to “post-truth”: Critical political ecology and the new authoritarianism’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109 (2), 613–23. O’Neill, S. and S. Nicholson-Cole (2009), ‘“Fear won’t do it”: Promoting positive engagement with climate change through visual and iconic representations’, Science Communication, 30 (3), 355–79. Princen, T. (1999), ‘Consumption and environment: Some conceptual issues’, Ecological Economics, 31 (3), 347–63. Raworth, K. (2017), Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Vermont, USA: Chelsea Green Publishing. Renn, O. and J. P. Marshall (2016), ‘Coal, nuclear and renewable energy policies in Germany: From the 1950s to the “Energiewende”’, Energy Policy, 99, 224–32. Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. S. Chapin, E. Lambin, T. M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. J. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C. A. de Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P. K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R. W. Corell, V. J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen and J. Foley (2009), ‘Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity’, Ecology and Society, 14 (2). Schot, J. and F. W. Geels (2008), ‘Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys: theory, findings, research agenda, and policy’, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 20 (5), 537–54. Shove, E. (2018), ‘What is wrong with energy efficiency?’, Building Research and Information, 46 (7), 779–89. Swyngedouw, E. (2009), ‘The antinomies of the postpolitical city: In search of a democratic politics of environmental production’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33, 601–20. Tiffen, R. (2010), ‘A mess? A shambles? A disaster?’, Inside Story, 26 March, accessed 1 October 2020 at https://​insidestory​.org​.au/​a​-mess​-a​-shambles​-a​-disaster. Tollefson, J. (2015), ‘Reality check for fossil-fuel divestment’, Nature, 521 (7550), 16–17. UNEP (2011), Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth, United Nations Environment Programme. Van Gorp, B. (2007), ‘The constructionist approach to framing: Bringing culture back in’, Journal of Communication, 57 (1), 60–78. Van Gorp, B. (2010), ‘Strategies to take subjectivity out of framing analysis’, in P. D’Angelo and J. A. Kuypers (eds), Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, London: Routledge, pp. 84–109. van Lente, H. and A. Rip (1998), ‘Expectations in technological developments: An example of prospective structures to be filled in by agency’, in C. Disco and B. van der Meulen (eds), Getting New Technologies Together, De Gruyter Studies in Organization, pp. 203–30.

27. Conclusions and new directions for energy and society research Janette Webb and Faye Wade

CONTEXT There is growing global awareness of the damaging impacts of energy from fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) on the Earth’s climate system and life chances: ‘the present is not a time of ignorance or stagnation’ (Bakke, Chapter 8), but one of intense debate. Scientific evidence shows that ending the unabated use of fossil fuels is essential to avoid catastrophic drought and flooding, uninhabitable regions, conflict over food and water, and mass extinction of species. Amidst increasing disquiet over lack of leadership and investment by governments and industry, people are mobilising to demand rapid change. Take, for example, the School Strikes for Climate. Greta Thunberg originated the movement when, in August 2018, she started leaving her classes on Fridays to sit outside the Swedish Parliament with a sign reading ‘school strike for climate’. Young people across the globe followed her example, and Friday 15th March 2019 saw large-scale marches take place in 1,700 cities across more than 100 countries (Warren, 2019). This expression of anger at adults’ inaction, despite public promises to mitigate the climate crisis, has catalysed the support of international energy and climate scientists among others. It triggered the creation of Scientists for Future International,1 and letters of support from numerous climate scientists, one of which noted ‘[the students] have every right to be angry about the future that we shall bequeath to them, if proportionate and urgent action is not taken’ (Green et al., 2019).

INSIGHTS FROM SOCIAL SCIENCES Contributors to the Handbook have examined our increasingly reflexive knowledge about the social structuring of energy production, provision and use, and the socio-technical capabilities we have to support proportionate and urgent action. In the round, we have discussed energy governance, power and politics in numerous societal contexts and at different scales, from states to mega-cities and rural areas to personal and social identities. Structures of energy production and use are necessarily situated in particular social, political and cultural contexts, and these change over the course of history. Energy ‘transitions’ come in unfinished past and present forms, indicating that, until now, systemic changes have entailed adding more energy sources to the mix, and increasing the scale of supply, rather than replacing one source with another (Pearson, Chapter 2; Bakke, Chapter 8). Case studies include mobility in China (Tyfield, Chapter 15); comparative European policy and practice on building standards and upgrades (Wade et al., Chapter 17; Fawcett and Topouzi, Chapter 18); energy nationalisms and claims to sovereignty (McCrone, Chapter 3; Cowell, Chapter 16); methodologies sensitive to local circumstances for assessing and ameliorating energy poverty in Mexico (Ricalde et 367

368  Research handbook on energy and society al., Chapter 12) and colliding interests at stake in large-scale energy developments in rural and island communities (Pinker, Chapter 20). Contributors have argued that a future clean energy system is achievable, with commensurate changes in political economy, social identities and arrangements for energy supply and use. A degree of global cooperation is needed for dismantling the physical infrastructures, markets, power relations and finances of fossil fuels. This poses critical research questions about global-to-local scale governance institutions and agencies suited to shifting decisively to a renewables-based system through political commitment and dedicated, long-term policy and investment. A clean energy system could be structured around renewable energy technologies and networks across scales; principles for equitable access to energy; wider participation in energy supply and transactions; low-energy buildings and active travel, including shared transport services and a shift to rail. Renewable electricity can be generated at multiple scales using onshore and offshore wind, solar photovoltaics and marine technologies. Most of these technologies are established and some are being implemented at scale (see Cowell, Chapter 16, for a discussion of wind and solar installations across the UK); others are at earlier stages of development with potential to add to the mix of solutions (Hirsch, Chapter 21, for example, discusses marine energy in Scotland). While significant progress is being made in renewable electricity, the Handbook has highlighted four particular areas of focus for transforming energy systems. The first concerns the internal combustion engine (ICE) and global expansion of roads, commercial transport and car ownership. The ICE transformed travel and mobility, and embedded oil-dependency in business, trade, work and domestic spheres (see Pearson, Chapter 2). There is little change as yet in fuel use in transport, and there is contention about alternatives. A shift to electric vehicles, using batteries, is envisaged as one route (see Tyfield, Chapter 15, for analysis of strategy in China), while hydrogen may be a future, but as yet largely untested, fuel source for freight. There is, however, debate about the sustainability of mass private car systems, including the environmental impacts of the production of batteries and materials. There are also significant social and welfare benefits from resource efficiencies of public and shared transport (see Lucas et al., Chapter 14), as well as walking and cycling in urban centres and neighbourhoods. The second area for transformation, notably in economically developed societies, is the high-carbon energy commonly used for heating and cooling buildings and water. It is widely acknowledged that well-insulated and ventilated buildings, where comfortable internal temperatures can be maintained without major use of energy, are an essential step to sustainable heating and cooling, and would benefit public health and welfare. Thus far, public policy, and its implementation and enforcement, have been critical to progress, but much more systematic work is needed (see Fawcett and Topouzi, Chapter 18). Heat systems in Scandinavian countries also suggest ways forward using residual, or waste, heat sources to supply heat network and heat pump systems (see Hanna and Gross, Chapter 6). Whether retrofit or new-build, effective action is reliant on skilled and capable workforces, with opportunities for best practice in fair work, particularly when buoyed by coherent, long-term policy to shape markets (see Wade et al., Chapter 17; Fawcett and Topouzi, Chapter 18). The third area of focus is access to energy: current access is marked by divisions of income, gender and ethnicity, within and between countries. Those on low incomes have more limited access (Tomei and To, Chapter 10), while those on high incomes may consume a disproportionate share, as Lucas et al. (Chapter 14) show in relation to private car use. Clean energy

Conclusions and new directions for energy and society research  369 systems could be governed by principles of equal access, and more democratic control as part of a common commitment to sustainable societies, akin to the Sustainable Development Goals.2 This includes fair work principles which would challenge current gender and ethnic divisions in energy sector jobs; for example, women are concentrated in lower paid occupations (Baruah and Biskupski-Mujanovic, Chapter 13), and women’s participation in renewable energy initiatives is limited (Standal and Feenstra, Chapter 11). Wind, solar, water and marine sources of energy are, by their nature, widely distributed, with potential to support more distributed participation in energy supply at differential scales of generation. Significant social-technical research questions concern the routes to enabling such participation through more distributed and networked systems. Fourth, a significant strand of social science, highlighted in this Handbook, focuses on neglected questions of energy use, and societal attachment to the services derived from fossil fuels, rather than the fuels themselves. Shin and Chappells (Chapter 4) and Morley (Chapter 5) situate the identity of ‘energy consumer’ in historical context and deconstruct the common notion in affluent societies of a passive consumer with fixed ‘needs’. Historically, the shift from coal and wood towards oil and gas was associated with new forms of user engagement with energy, and their analyses show that there is nothing inevitable about energy demand. ‘Demand’ is a core concept from economic theory of the efficient market; it is commonly used as a statement of fact, but other social sciences are questioning the underlying assumptions, and investigating how ‘demand for energy’ is constituted and re-constituted, through particular market relationships and systems of provision. The distributed qualities of renewable energy sources are again opening up potential for changing systems of provision and producer–user identities. In energy-intensive societies, for example, uninterrupted supply of electricity, regardless of the scale of use at any time, has become the norm. Wind- and solar-powered electricity systems are less responsive to minute-by-minute ‘demand’, opening up to question the assumed fixity in concepts of demand and supply, and catalysing debate about the need for flexibility and pro-active response to available supply. ‘Smart’ grids, using digital technologies to provide accurate, accessible information about supply and use, are intended to support such flexibility, by increasing efficiencies, responsiveness and reliability. Lovell (Chapter 24) argues that such digital innovations do not inevitably reproduce existing hierarchies of supply and demand, but can support innovations in business and democratic participation, including equitable access to energy (see Tomei and To, Chapter 10; Standal and Feenstra, Chapter 11). Digital systems could enable energy users to become producers, not only buying energy, but also generating and supplying it to others, whether through local market trading or agreements to donate to a common pool as part of wider, inter-connected networks (see Pinker, Chapter 20; Schneiders et al., Chapter 23). There is, however, a risk that emerging models of the energy ‘prosumer’ in developed economies remain in the mould of ‘rational economic man’ (Shin and Chappells, Chapter 4; Schneiders et al., Chapter 23). Social research can address that risk by deconstructing dominant understandings of users and producers, and identifying routes to innovative policies giving equal weight to supply and use, and their interactions. New policies could deploy concepts such as energy sufficiency, and support a shift to services, rather than buying units of electricity, oil or gas, or cars, gas boilers and other energy- and materials-intensive appliances.

370  Research handbook on energy and society

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE The Handbook lays foundations for further work on all of these themes and suggests many new directions. These encompass social movements; industrial change and innovation; circular economies; sustainable fair work; and energy narratives which articulate past, present and future options. The Handbook represents social science approaches to research, methods and interests in different parts of the world, with 50 contributing authors, over half of whom are women, from 12 countries. Although the contributors are mostly from affluent regions, the research has spanned most of the globe, drawing on data and analysis from Australia, China, India, Iran and Mexico, to European countries. Contributors share a commitment to investigating practice, including the distributions of costs and benefits in existing systems. The work has pointed to the value of comparing energy systems in different social, political and cultural contexts, including learning from knowledge of sustainable practices in subsistence societies, where custom and habit retain significance, relative to markets. In which directions might further research go? First, there is the issue of innovative research methods, prompted by the perspectives covered in the Handbook. These include participative and collaborative methods to enable diverse voices to collaborate in bringing about change. Such research methods also help to integrate multiple forms of data, through working across disciplinary boundaries. Authors have explored methods for the co-production of knowledge, including wider participation of historically marginalised groups, as well as civil society, in deciding energy futures (Ricalde et al., Chapter 12; Pidgeon et al., Chapter 22). An energy justice model, for example, is advocated as a means to understanding people’s capabilities, divergent perspectives, values and knowledge, as well as producing insights into who benefits or loses in energy transitions (Tomei and To, Chapter 10). Co-production research methods can be a catalyst to knowledge creation not just between researchers and event participants, but also among participants themselves. This enhances broader understanding of the culturally embedded qualities of energy production and use, encouraging more reflexivity about the ‘ecosystem’ of stories recounted and listened to (Bergman and Janda, Chapter 26). A second direction lies in the design of innovative research on ‘whole socio-technical systems’, using multiple methods to unpack and articulate the complex inter-connections of energy production and use. Royston and Selby (Chapter 19), for example, explain how ‘non-energy’ policies have significant, though largely unrecognised, impacts on energy. Hence, energy policies need to take account of welfare, economy, work and education policies, all of which are instrumental in governing energy supply and consumption. Here is an agenda for research which investigates the cross-sectoral and cross-economy structuring of energy supply and use, in order to understand reasons why emissions may increase, despite clean energy policy. Social science research on innovative policy options is already highlighting the politics of energy demand, which has historically been in the background, rather than the foreground, of policy. Research on energy service-focused policies could identify forms of policy to enable energy sufficiency in a clean energy system with co-benefits to society (Morley, Chapter 5). In relation to travel and mobility, for example, patterns of demand will change when daily activities can be managed locally, through supportive planning and development policy for local economic infrastructures, work, education, health and leisure (Lucas et al., Chapter 14).

Conclusions and new directions for energy and society research  371 A third direction for research relates to questions about forms of knowledge which can generate distinctive insights into current systems, and identify and explain co-benefits of clean energy. Examples include research on dominant and subordinate forms of knowledge about energy, and the resulting future options considered in, for example, testing marine energy; ameliorating fuel poverty; developing ‘legitimate’ policy (Kerr, Chapter 9); engaging with citizens about local place-based energy knowledge (Pidgeon et al., Chapter 22); and developing energy scenarios through complex systems engineering models (Silvast, Chapter 25). Social science analysis casts light on the social, political and economic assumptions embedded in technical-economic scenario modelling, providing new understanding as to why certain options may appear more feasible than others, and what kinds of futures are relatively central or marginal. The research also indicates that socio-political contest is integral to sustainable energy development. This suggests the need for a shift in perspective away from assumptions that rational-economic knowledge alone governs political and business decision-making. Instead, the starting point might be a model of situated rationality, which takes account of the contexts – political, economic and social – for decision-making. This would include developing methods for dispassionate social research to contribute to more deliberative learning, including constructive challenge and dialogue between researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. More inter-disciplinary research between social, engineering and environmental sciences would help to sustain and inform such dialogue, and to articulate standards of best practice and open access to data. This could also provide societal insights into complex systems engineering and cost-optimising scenario models, and their consequentiality. There are implications for teaching here, including the need for more interdisciplinary courses in further and higher education programmes, which connect social and technical knowledge for the clean energy innovations needed. A fourth area for new research concerns the politics of policy decisions and policy instruments, and institutions of governance. This has emerged in the Handbook as an area where relatively little direct research exists, partly because of the difficulties of access to political and business elites. In addition, much social research aims to inform policy-making through provision of best available rational-economic evidence, without engaging with questions about politics and contrasting political values. Impartial research is certainly critical to policy, and has informed governance of societal change in industrialised economies. Research evidence has, for example, been key to improving performance of energy infrastructures, appliances and networks, and their safety and reliability. But what counts as evidence is also shaped by its societal context, and is always subject to interpretation and adaptation by its audiences and interest groups (Shapin, 1995). Its production and uses are not pre-given, but variously entangled with political and social processes of coalition building, stand-offs, dissent and compromise. A valuable strand of social research therefore concerns studying how such processes shape the selection of policy rationales and legitimate policy instruments, and the resulting stability or instability in implementing policy measures (Kerr, Chapter 9; Cowell, Chapter 16). We know that current policies are insufficient to enable transformation and change at the pace or scale needed. Social science is needed to inform public debate and responsible policy-making, in line with growing awareness of the urgency of change. This form of social science is not about persuading people to accept the status quo or effecting individual behaviour change, but concerns major public questions about the fitness of our economic, cultural and political institutions to manage the transformation of energy. We need to use the abun-

372  Research handbook on energy and society dance of complex, highly differentiated, social and technical knowledge to equip societies for an increasingly uncertain future in the context of climate disruption.

IN CONCLUSION In the introduction to the Handbook (Chapter 1), we set out the ambition to contribute to establishing the field of social studies of energy. We have examined the embedding of carbon- and energy-intensive infrastructures in how we live and who we are, and examined scenarios, policies and strategies for energy transitions. The resulting analyses have suggested the parameters of a future energy system, where fossil fuels are marginal rather than central. Contributors have argued that important foundations are in place; socio-technical solutions are available or in development, with options such as solar systems, considered ‘niche’ only a decade ago, now rapidly changing scenarios for the future. Energy and society research can also make an important contribution to main themes in social science. These include study of societal change and disruption; social stratification; social identities and the contemporary meanings of concepts such as ‘sovereignty’, ‘nation’, ‘independence’, ‘economic growth’, ‘markets’ and ‘democracy’, insofar as these are mobilised in energy systems. Overall we have argued that major challenges remain in creating and sustaining constructive, systemic change at the speed and scale necessary to limit climate-related crises, while avoiding new forms of environmental destruction. Integration of renewable energy sources, technical conversion into ‘useful energy’ and displacement of fossil fuels are dependent on global governance to reshape markets and infrastructures. Such governance is currently geared to complex systems of resource exploration, extraction and supply, reinforced by supply chains, investors, regulators and civil society (see for example Pearson, Chapter 2; McCrone, Chapter 3; Reverdy et al., Chapter 7 and Tyfield, Chapter 15). Global economies, structured around fossil fuel exploitation, continue to rely on models of wealth creation through unlimited consumption growth in goods and services. Decoupling measures of prosperity from increasing consumption of fossil fuels and associated natural resources is crucial. There is evidence that this was occurring in some areas, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) annual CO2 emissions data showing stable emissions in 2014 and 2015, despite the global economy growing by 3 per cent (IEA, 2016). However, the link between economic growth and rising GHG emissions remains largely intact.3 Indeed, the IEA (2021) Global Energy Review shows emissions rebounding at higher rates than before the Covid-19 pandemic. Replacing these inter-locking systems needs global collaboration to institutionalise sustainable economic activity, without damaging forms of ‘growth’. The Economics of Bio-Diversity: The Dasgupta Review (Dasgupta, 2021), commissioned by UK Government Treasury, is a valuable resource for research and public debate, particularly in the context of global calls for ‘green recovery’ from the covid-19 pandemic. Writing the Handbook coincided with the pandemic, and its huge societal impacts from restricted mobility and personal interaction, to closure of businesses, loss of livelihoods and avoidable deaths. Societal responses have, however, demonstrated that rapid, planned and effective change is feasible, when political, public and business leaders act promptly and consistently, on the basis of evidence, and in the public interest. For example, countries that halted international travel and introduced strict test, track and trace measures were able to contain the spread of the virus (see for example Graham-Harrison and Davidson, 2021). In addition,

Conclusions and new directions for energy and society research  373 digital technologies supported the potential for millions of people in economically developed countries to work from home, with reduced energy use and emissions from commuting and business travel, including large numbers of international flights (International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), 2021). Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry, working with governments, mobilised to develop vaccinations for global use in record time, in part through collaborations contrary to normal competitive practices (Melinek and Morris, 2020). Political promises of ‘green economic recovery’, however, need to be followed through with an even more coordinated, rapid and systematically implemented transformation to a clean energy system, learning from best practice during the pandemic. Investment and carbon taxes need to be used to reshape markets, making public procurement, loans and grants contingent on business progress to a net zero emissions target, with new jobs and infrastructure supporting environmental goals. Significant skilled employment would accompany such a shift and can be realised through concerted political and industrial leadership. Moreover, governments and industry need to be held to account by their citizens. The Handbook provides timely social science insights into our current energy structures and institutions, and their injustices and climate damage. It identifies means to develop a clean energy system, serving the public good, through sufficiency and oriented, as Ricalde and her colleagues put it in this Handbook, to a ‘position of human flourishing, rather than merely surviving’.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are indebted to the authors who contributed to this Handbook, including prompt and constructive peer review of draft chapters. We are grateful for funding from UK Research and Innovation through the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, grant reference number EP/R 035288/1.

NOTES 1. See https://​scientists4future​.org/​. 2. See https://​sdgs​.un​.org/​goals. 3. See https://​research​.noaa​.gov/​article/​ArtMID/​587/​ArticleID/​2742/​Despite​-pandemic​-shutdowns​ -carbon​-dioxide​-and​-methane​-surged​-in​-2020.

REFERENCES Dasgupta, P. (2021), Final Report – The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review, accessed on 30 March 2021 at https://​www​.gov​.uk/​government/​publications/​final​-report​-the​-economics​-of​ -biodiversity​-the​-dasgupta​-review. Green, A. (plus more than 200 signatories) (2019), School climate strike: children’s brave stand has our support, The Guardian, accessed on 21 December 2020 at https://​www​.theguardian​.com/​environment/​ 2019/​feb/​13/​school​-climate​-strike​-childrens​-brave​-stand​-has​-our​-support. Graham-Harrison, E. and H. Davidson (2021), How Taiwan triumphed over Covid as the UK faltered, The Guardian, accessed on 21 December 2020 at https://​www​.theguardian​.com/​world/​2021/​mar/​24/​ how​-taiwan​-triumphed​-over​-covid​-as​-uk​-faltered.

374  Research handbook on energy and society International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) (2021), Effects of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Civil Aviation: Economic Impact Analysis, accessed on 21 April 2021 at https://​www​.icao​.int/​ sustainability/​Documents/​COVID​-19/​ICAO​_Coronavirus​_Econ​_Impact​.pdf. International Energy Agency (IEA) (2016), Decoupling of Global Emissions and Economic Growth Confirmed, accessed on 21 April 2021 at https://​www​.iea​.org/​news/​decoupling​-of​-global​-emissions​ -and​-economic​-growth​-confirmed. International Energy Agency (IEA) (2021), Global Energy Review, accessed on 21 April 2021 at https://​ www​.iea​.org/​reports/​global​-energy​-review​-2021. Melinek, B. and S. Morris (2021), Coronavirus: How the pharma industry is changing to produce a vaccine on time, The Conversation, accessed on 21 April 2021 at https://​theconversation​.com/​ coronavirus​-how​-the​-pharma​-industry​-is​-changing​-to​-produce​-a​-vaccine​-on​-time​-146935. Shapin, S. (1995), ‘Here and everywhere – sociology of scientific knowledge’, Annual Review of Sociology, 21, 289–321. Warren, M. (2019), Thousands of scientists are backing the kids striking for climate change, Nature, accessed on 21 April 2021 at https://​www​.nature​.com/​articles/​d41586​-019​-00861​-z​?sf209398880​=​1.

Index

Aberavon Beach 301, 305, 307 Abeysekera, M. 347 ACES models see automated, connected, electric and shared (ACES) models ‘agencements’ 36 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030) 126, 131 Ahlberg, S. 26 AIOC see Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) air pollution 19 Akrich, M. 52 Allen, R. C. 16 Anable, J. 189 Anandarajah, G. 61 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) 36–7 anthropology 349, 350 apprenticeship training 172 see also internships 172–3 Arbatli, E. 34 area-based energy planning 232–8 austerity policies 262 Australia 330 smart grids 328–9 automated, connected, electric and shared (ACES) models 207 automobile 23, 26–7 automobility system 189 Azimoh, C. L. 331 Barak, O. 16 Barca, S. 356 Barret, J. 195 Barry’s concept of ‘technological zones’ 217 Barvas Moor windfarm 276, 283 Bazilian, M. 130 Beaulieu, C. 102 Belt Road Initiative (BRI) 201, 205, 211 Bergman, N. 358, 359 BETTA see British Electricity Trading and Transmission Arrangements (BETTA) BGC see British Gas Council (BGC) Bierwirth, A. 251 Biggeri, M. 159 biofuels 132–3 biomass in Denmark 73–4 in India 143 Blue, S. 262, 268 Blyth, W. 116

BNOC see British National Oil Corporation (BNOC) Borenstein, S. 94 Bourdieu, P. 144 Bouzarovski, S. 71 Bowker, G. 36, 38, 290 Boyer, D. 131, 272 Brand, C. 190 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) states 34 BRI see Belt Road Initiative (BRI) Britain’s electricity market 5, 95 capacity auctions 88, 91–2, 95 capacity mechanism 87–8 Electricity Act (1989) 84, 85 Electricity Act (2004) 87 Electricity Pool 85 EU approval 91–2 liberalisation 84–5 loss of load expectation 87, 88 ‘missing money’ problem 87–8 National Power 85 OFGEM’s Electricity Capacity Assessment 87, 88 PowerGen 85 security of supply issue 93 British Electricity Trading and Transmission Arrangements (BETTA) 85 British Gas Council (BGC) 39 British National Oil Corporation (BNOC) 39, 40 Brundtland, G. H. 357 Bruny Island, smart grids case study 332–4 buildings 245–6 banning natural gas 253–4 energy sufficiency in 251–3 energy use in 246–8, 255 governance 249, 255 guidelines for policy design 254–5 innovative retrofitting 250–51 policy for 248–50, 255 Bulkeley, H. 217, 330 Bushnell, J. 94 business models to retrofit buildings 250–51 Butler, C. 308 Callon, M. 36 Campbell, G. 40 Canada 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 179, 180 coal in 47

375

376  Research handbook on energy and society post-secondary institutions in 171 capabilities approach 158–9 Nussbaum, M. 158–9 Sen, A. 158, 187–8 Capabilities-driven Energy Satisfactors Index (CESI) 158, 164 energy variables 159–61 incidence rate 161 methodology of 158–9, 163 capacity auctions 88, 91–2, 95 capacity mechanism 5, 83, 93–5 Britain 87–8 EU approval 91–3 France 89–91 capital, conceptualisation of 144, 148–50 car dependency 189–90, 195 mileage distribution 190–91 mobility 191, 192, 195–6 ownership differences in 196 enforced 189 income levels 187 travel and energy consumption reduction 192–5 hyper-mobile consume 190, 195–6 use disparities 187 in high-income groups 189–90 variations 188–9 carbon allowances 195 emissions 97, 106, 114, 301 reduction targets 266 carbon capture and storage (CCS) 310 carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) 2 Carlsson-Hyslop, A. 52 Carse, A. 283 Castán Broto, V. 330 Cedano, K. G. 156–8 Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) 84 Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) 347, 350 CESI see Capabilities-driven Energy Satisfactors Index (CESI); Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) CfD see Contract for Difference (CfD) China circular economy issue 205 culture 208 digital innovation 206, 207, 208, 212 disruptive innovators 207–9 ecological civilisation 201–2, 209, 210, 212 electric mobility 204–6

electric vehicles (EVs) 205, 206 e-mobility innovation advantages 207–9 disadvantages 209–11 energy transitions 222 ethics 209 government 207–8 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 201 innovation 203 disruptors 206–7 innovation-as-politics 207 optimists 204 pessimists 204–6 internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs) phase-out policy 116 low-carbon innovation 207, 210 middle classes 208 one-child policy 262 overview 203–7 power relations 205 renewable energy 204 socio-technical change 207 transition in 202–3, 212 urban mobility transition 207 use of coal 204–5 CHP see combined heat and power (CHP) Christie, S. 187 circular economy 205 citizen-consumers 53 citizen participation 300–301 Clean Air Act (1956), UK 19 Clean Air Act (1957), UK 51 climate change 113, 184, 357, 362 Cloke, J. 331 Clow differential 49 coal 4 Britain’s transition 15–16 in Canada 47 global consumption 20, 21 ‘Cofiwch Tryweryn’ see ‘Remembering Tryweryn’ collaborative organizations 295 combined heat and power (CHP) 72, 73, 75 Combined Heat and Power Act (KWKModG) 75 Comisión Nacional para el Uso Eficiente de la Energía (CONUEE) 155–6 community energy 279 community mapping task 305 community ownership 273, 274, 275, 281 community self-consumption (CSC) 325 complex power/knowledge systems (CPKS) 202–3, 212 computer modelling 344–7 CONE see cost of new entry (CONE) consumer choices 51–3

Index  377 consumption 260, 262, 263, 264, 265 contextual justice 131, 133, 134 Continental Shelf Act (1964) 38, 39 continued automobility 358 Contract for Difference (CfD) 222, 276–7 CONUEE see Comisión Nacional para el Uso Eficiente de la Energía (CONUEE) co-op programmes 172 co-production 164, 370 co-provisioning 5, 47, 49, 54 Coronavirus pandemic 3 Coronil, F. 33 Costanza, R., four visions of 360–63 cost of new entry (CONE) 88 Cowan, R. S. 52 Cox, E. 261, 265 CPKS see complex power/knowledge systems (CPKS) Cravioto, J. 156 Crofters (Scotland) Act 1993 Section 19A of the 276, 278–9 Section 50B of the 276, 279, 280 crofting 273, 274, 276, 278, 279, 281, 283 communities 274, 275, 278, 279, 280 land 279, 280, 281 law/legislation 279, 280, 281 system 274, 281, 282 Crofting Commission of Scotland 278–80, 282 Cronon, W. 356 CSC see community self-consumption (CSC) cultural services 59 Danish Energy Agency (DEA) 72 Danish Heat Law (1979) 73 Darby, S. 60, 251 decarbonisation 69, 71, 105–8, 120–21 DECC see Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) decentralisation 324 energy 225, 273, 281, 282, 283 demand reduction 57, 60–63, 65, 359 demand-side management (DSM) 48–9 demand-side response (DSR) 90, 92 De Melo, C. A. 266 Denmark biomass in 73–4 district heating (DH) in 71, 73, 74, 78, 79 heat pump (HP) and combined heat and power (CHP)-district heating (DH) deployment 71–4, 78, 79 lock-in to biomass DH 73–4, 79 oil taxation 72 path dependence in heating system transformation in 71–4

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) 92 Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) 87–8, 91, 92 design–performance gap 247 development blocks 14 Devine, W. D. 58 devolution 225–6 as energy decentralisation 225 energy governance and 222–3 of powers 229, 239 and renewable energy development 219–22 DH see district heating (DH) digital innovation 369 China 206, 207, 208, 212 digital motilities 209–10 digital totalitarianism 210 digitization 210 disruptive innovation 206–7 distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) 317 Distribution Network Operator (DNO) 318, 324 distributive justice 131 district heating (DH) 69 in Denmark 71, 73, 74, 78, 79 in Germany 75 in UK 77–8 DLTs see distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) DSM see demand-side management (DSM) Dutch disease 20, 35 Ecker, F. 321 ECO see Energy Company Obligation (ECO) ecological civilisation, China 201–2, 209, 210 ecological economics narratives 356–7 ecological tax reform 361 economies of scale 224 EDF see Électricité de France (EDF) education policies 262 EEWärmeG see Renewable Energies Heat Act Eishken windfarm 276–7 Électricité de France (EDF) 86, 89–90, 278 electricity 17 access to 127 cooking 134 generation 18 in India 142–3 liberalisation 5, 84–6 load factor 48 prepayment meter 50 renewable energy integration 103–5 Electricity Act (1989), Britain 84, 85 Electricity Act (2004), Britain 87 electricity consumption 147–8 Electricity Market Reform (EMR) 87 Electricity Pool 85

378  Research handbook on energy and society Electricity Supply Act (1976) 73 electric two-wheeler (E2W) 210 electric utilities 48 electric vehicles (EVs) 116, 119, 196 China 205, 206 electrification 18, 145–7, 150 process 49 rate 127 swarm 104 electrifying cars 196 Ellis, G. 219 EMEC see European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) empirical credibility 356 employment of women see women: in energy sector’s career Energiewende 76 energy 1, 32, 33, 37, 168, 170, 245–8, 255 access 6 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030) 126, 131 case studies 132–5 to clean cooking 127 in displacement context 133–4 electricity access 127 equity 128–30 gender equity and 134–5 inequities 130–31 justice 131–4 in low- and middle-income countries 126 measurement of 127, 128 Multi-Tier Framework 128, 129 SDG7 and 126–8, 131, 133 transdisciplinary approach 137 citizenship 53 and climate policy distributed impacts of 113, 117 economic objectives 115–16 on heat decarbonisation 120–21 implications for 120–21 internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs) phase-out dates 115, 116 multi-faceted rationale 113–17, 119–20 multiple benefit framing 112 retrofit policy 112, 114–17 smart metering 117 social objectives 114–15 communities 318 consumers 5 conceptualisation of 45–9 consumer choices, practices and habits 51–3 co-provisioning 47, 49, 54

differentiation of 50–51 energy citizens 53 everyday practices 52 in modern energy industry 47–8 and non-consumers 49–51 prepayment meter 50, 51 resource man 53 sector-based categorisation 48 service coldspots and hotspots 50, 54 systems of provision 45 in traditional fuel system 46–7, 55 in twenty-first century 49 consumption car travel and 192–5 implications for 196 decentralisation 273, 281, 282, 283 demand 58, 59, 261–6, 268, 359, 369, 370 efficiency 229–32, 235–42, 249, 359 equity 6, 128–31 ‘energy fables’ 41 generation 278 governance 7–9, 215–17 complexity and partiality of 218–19 as a driver of devolution 222–3 materiality as a shaper of 223 justice 6, 131–2, 190, 370 biofuel production in Ethiopia 133 case studies 132–5 contextual 131 in displacement context 134 distributive 131 gender and energy transition 144 procedural 131 recognition 131 role of social sciences 136–7 liberalization 357 policies 259–61, 370 buildings 248–50, 255 gender-sensitive 142, 148–50 and politics 7–9 services 14, 56–63, 154, 156, 158, 159, 161, 164 conceptualisation of 58–60 cost of 58 demand for 59, 61, 62 demand reduction 57, 60–63, 65 end services 59 heat-as-a-service 58, 63–5 meta-service 62 multi-utility service companies (MUSCos) 64 rebound effect 58–9 selling 63–5 Shove’s concept of 59–60, 62, 65 thermal comfort 62–4

Index  379 types of 60–63 transitions 4, 6, 14–15, 221, 222, 224, 226, 275, 282, 283, 291, 295, 332, 367 see also gender: and energy transition coal 15–16 fossil fuel 20–23 functional diversity and 98–103 growth of oil and natural gas 18–20 internal combustion engine, electrification and oil 16–18 Latin American transition 23 pathways of 149–50 socio-technical 14 Transition 1.0 103–5 Transition 2.0 105–8 users 46–7, 49, 53 Energy 2000 - A Plan of Action for Sustainable Development 73 Energy Company Obligation (ECO) 114, 235 Energy Island 308, 309, 310, 311 energy-only market model 83, 85, 93, 94 EnergyPath Networks tool 237 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive of EU 249 energy poverty (EP) 62, 135, 142 Mexico 154–6 scholarship 161 Energy Saving Ordinance (EnEV) 75 energy sector women’s career in see women: energy sector’s career Energy Service Companies (ESCos) 64 energy sufficiency 57, 60, 251–2 energy systems 368–9 energy systems integration (ESI) 340 benefits of 347 complexity and the concept of 342–4 with computer modelling 344–7 economics of 348 knowledge production of 341, 343, 348–50 social dimensions of 348–50 techno-economic evaluations 347–8 enforced car ownership 189 enforced mobility 188–90 England energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation 241–2 heat and energy efficiency 237–8 local authorities in 232, 241 environmental history narratives 355–6 environmental improvement 310 environmental innovation 204 environmental policies 262 environmental risk 310 EP see energy poverty (EP)

epistemological ethics 349 equity 6 energy 129 gender 134–5 inequities 130–31 vs. equality 128–30 ESCos see Energy Service Companies (ESCos) ESI see energy systems integration (ESI) Ethiopia, biofuel production in 133 ethnography 290, 349–50 study in Bundelkhand 142, 145–8, 151 EU Energy Efficiency Directive 77–8 EU Renewable Energy Directive 79 European Commission 83, 86, 91–3 European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) 292, 293, 294 EVs see electric vehicles (EVs) E2W see electric two-wheeler (E2W) excessive car travel 191–2, 196 ‘executively devolved’ policy 218 expectations 355, 358 see also visions Fahy, F. 268 familial apprenticeship networks 173 Fawcett, T. 60, 251 Fell, M. J. 61, 321 First Industrial Revolution 15 Flink, J. J. 26 FloWave 292, 294 Folchi, M. 23 Fone, D. L. 187 fossil capitalism 106 fossil fuel divestment movement 363 fossil fuels 363, 367, 372 benefits of 1 energy transition 20–23 global consumption 21 political lobbying 20 replacement of 97 Foster, H. 102 Foulds, C. 164 Fouquet, R. 58, 59 frames 355, 358 France, nuclear power in 35 Frank, T. 52 French Competition Authority (AdlC) 90 French electricity sector 5 capacity mechanism 89–91, 94 demand-side response 90 Électricité de France 86, 89–90 European Commission inquiry on 92–3 liberalisation of 86 Réseau de Transport de l’Electricité 89–90, 93, 94

380  Research handbook on energy and society security of supply issue 89 French Energy Regulation Commission (CRE) 90 fuel poverty policy 114 futures 354 visions of the 355, 359–62 Galson Trust 275, 282 Galvin, R. 260 Gang of Four 275–6, 278, 281, 282 García Ochoa, R. 156 gender 145–6 differences in car travel 187 diversity 178–9 and energy transition 6–7, 141–2 capital and energy justice framework 144, 148–50 in India 142–4 policy interventions 142, 148–50 Village Electrification Project 145–8 women’s position in 143, 144 equality 178–9 equity 134–5 gap 172, 173 imbalance 172, 178 wage/pay gap 174, 179–80 gender-neutral incentives 173 gender-specific barriers 176 general purpose technology (GPT) 14 Germany Combined Heat and Power Act 75 district heating (DH) in 75 Energiewende 76 Energy Saving Ordinance 75 heat pump (HP) and combined heat and power (CHP)-district heating (DH) deployment 74–5, 78 IWP 74 lock-in to natural gas heating 76 Ordinance on General Conditions for the Supply of District Heating 75 path dependence in heating system transformation in 74–6 Renewable Energies Heat Act 75 tax-credit scheme 74 GHG emissions see greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions GLA see Greater London Authority (GLA) global energy transition 20–22 global primary energy production 98–9 global warming 1 Gómez-Baggethun, E. 356 Gordon, R. J. 17 governance 231, 232, 235 for buildings 249, 255 by experiment and living labs 330–31

innovation 231, 235, 237, 241, 242 institutions 229, 239, 240, 241 GPT see general purpose technology (GPT) Graham, S. 45, 50 Graizbord, E. B. 156 Greater London Authority (GLA) 235 Greene, M. 268 green growth narratives 357, 362 Green Homes Grant 114 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 1, 2, 201 motor vehicles and 26 Gregg, J. S. 73 grid-based energy system 51 grid effect 104 grounded theoretical methods 290, 291, 292, 296, 302 Haas, R. 61 Hackbarth, A. 321 Hahnel, U. J. J. 321 Hall, S. M. 129 Hanna, R. 347, 348 Hannon, M. 289 Harrison, C. 50, 51 HE see higher education (HE) healthcare policies 262, 265–6 energy saving in 267 heat-as-a-service 58, 63–5 heat decarbonisation 120–21, 229–32, 235–42 Heath, E. 40 Heat Networks Bill 235 heat pumps (HPs) 69 in Denmark 71, 72, 74, 78 in Germany 74–5, 78 heat pump (HD) R&D 74 subsidies 72 in UK 77–8 heat system change under path dependence 5, 69, 78–9 in Denmark 71–4 in Germany 74–6 sources of 70 in UK 76–8 HEFCE see Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Heiskanen, E. 59, 71 hero (story) 355, 358, 361 Hetherington, K. 283 higher education (HE) 263–5 Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) 263 Hiselius, L. W. 195 Honig, B. 300 Howe, C. 131 HPs see heat pumps

Index  381 Hubbert, M. King 356 humanitarian energy 134 hydrocarbons in Russia 34, 35 hydroelectricity 102 hypermarketization of energy sector 319 hyper-mobility 190, 195–6 IDCORE see Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) IEC see International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IESM see integrated energy system model (IESM) iiESI see International Institute for Energy Systems Integration (iiESI) imagined geographies 32 income tax 195, 196 India biomass in 143 Electricity Act (2003) 142 electricity in 142–3 Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) 294–5 industrial revolution narratives 356 informal apprenticeship networks 173 infrastructures/infrastructuring 272–3, 282–3, 293, 296 knowledge 287, 290–96 renewable energy 280, 281, 282, 283 innovation disruptive 206–7 in governance institutions 230 optimism 204 pessimism 204–6 in renewable marine energy 288–92, 294, 296 in retrofitting existing buildings 250–51 rural energy 329–36 technological 3, 195, 358 innovation-as-politics 202, 203, 207 institutional innovation 239, 240, 241 institutional theory 230–31 integrated energy system model (IESM) 346 Integrated Single Electricity Market (I-SEM) 223 integration 265 interdisciplinarity 10, 11 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2, 97, 105, 108, 141 internal combustion engine (ICE) 14, 17, 97, 368 internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs) phase-out dates 115, 116, 120 International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 293–4 International Institute for Energy Systems Integration (iiESI) 343

International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ) 294–5 internships 172–3 interoperability 104 intra-sectoral and intersectoral transferability 171 investments in marine energy 289 IPCC see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Ireland 114, 115, 119 Irwin, A. 300, 307 I-SEM see Integrated Single Electricity Market (I-SEM) islands 332 ITREZ see International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ) ‘It’s Scotland’s oil’ 40, 41 IWP (German HP association) 74 Janda, K. B. 355, 358, 361, 364 Jensen, C. B. 272 Jevon’s Paradox 58 Jones, C. F. 27 Jonsson, D. K. 61 Kalt, G. 61 Kama, K. 218 Kander, A. 16 Kaufmann, V. 187 Keating, M. 224 Kemp, A. 38–41 Kern. F. 222 kerosene 18 Kerr, N. 112, 114, 115 Kesicki, F. 61 King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP) 334–5 King Island, smart grids case study 333–6 KIREIP see King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP) Kirklees Warm Zone 235 Kloppenburg, S. 321 knowledge 340–41, 343, 348, 349, 350, 371 knowledge infrastructures 287, 296 conceptualizing 290–91 in marine energy research 291–5 Koch, N. 33, 35 Kohr, L. 106 König, T., empirical credibility 356 Kroposki, B. 343, 344, 349 Kullman, K. 330 LAEP see Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) land reform 272, 275 land use 273, 275, 281 Larkin, B. 272

382  Research handbook on energy and society Latin American energy transition 23 Latour, B. 33, 38, 42 Lawson, N. 40 leadership positions of women 178–80 Lemmen, N. H. 349 Lewis community ownership 275 crofting see crofting energy decentralisation 281, 282, 283 energy self-sufficiency 277 energy transition 282, 283 land reform 275, 282 Lewis Wind Power (LWP) 275, 279 LHEES see Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) liberalisation of electricity sector 5, 84–6, 95 in higher education 263 Liddell, C. 114 liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) 134 Littlechild, S. 84–5 Liu, X. 345 ‘living lab’ 330, 332 load factor 48 Löbbe, S. 321 Local Area Energy Planning (LAEP) 230, 232 local authorities 231, 235–41 local empowerment 238–9 Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEES) 230, 232, 236, 237, 238–9, 241, 242 loss of load expectation (LOLE) 87, 88 loss of load probability (LOLP) 85 Lovins, A. 58, 59, 215 low-carbon 373 innovation 207, 210 vehicles 358 Lucas, K. 186 Lukacs, M. 362 LWP see Lewis Wind Power (LWP) McCrone, G. 41 McDermott, M. 128 McFarlane, C. 330 Mackenzie, A. F. D. 275 Macnaghten, P. 300–301 Macron, E. 90 mainstreaming 265–6 Malm, A. 104 Mancarella, P. 345, 346 mapping public things 305–7 Margam Park 305, 307, 313 marginalisation of women 146–8 marine renewable energy 287 innovation 288–90

knowledge infrastructures in 291–5 in Scotland 288–90 testing and demonstration centres 292–3 market failures 83, 88, 89 Market Incentive Programme (MAP) 76 marketization 261, 263–5 Martínez, M. 157 Marvin, S. 45, 50 material politics 281 Mattioli, G. 189 McKibben, B. 363 MCS see Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) Meckling, J. 116 Mengelkamp, E. 321 MEPI see Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) Merchant, C. 356, 364 Mexico nascent energy poverty (EP) 154–6 recent methodological advances 156–7 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 154 Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) 77 microgrids 104 implementation 146–7 in Village Electrification Project 146–7 Mirowski, P. 84 Mittal, S. 345 mobility 186, 187 car 191, 192, 195–6 enforced 188–90 justice 188–90 urban 201, 205, 207, 209, 210, 212 modal shift 194 models/modelling 345–6 modern economic growth narrative 358, 362 Mokyr, J. 17 Morita, A. 272 Morley, J. 52 Morrissey, J. 302 Mosaddiq, M. 37 MTF see Multi-Tier Framework (MTF) Muinzer, T. 219, 223 Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) 156–7, 161, 163 calculating intensity and incidence 156 energy variables 160 thermal comfort 156–7 weighting system 157, 158 multi-faceted rationale components of 119–20 for policy 112, 114–17 multi-level governance 216–17, 221, 225–6 Multi-Tier Framework (MTF) 128, 129 multi-utility service companies (MUSCos) 64

Index  383 Murphy, J. 332 Murray, G. 210 MUSCos see multi-utility service companies (MUSCos) Nahm, J. 116 nanogrids 104 Naredo, J. M. 356 narratives 355–9, 362 future transport case study 357–8 past environmental history and industrial revolution 355–6 post-politics and environment 358–9 present ecological economics and green economy 356–7 National Grid UK 49, 85 nationalism 31 see also resource nationalism National Power 85 National Travel Survey (NTS) 187, 190, 191, 196, 197 natural gas 17, 76–7, 253 global consumption 21 growth of 18–20 natural resources 32 manufacture of 36–7 and national identity 35–6 resource curse 33–5 Naumann, M. 332 NETA see New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) Netherlands, ban of natural gas 253 networked authoritarianism 210 net-zero carbon targets 2, 184, 229, 230, 231, 240, 253, 254–5, 373 New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) 85 New Zealand 114, 115, 119 Nicholls, L. 63 Nik-Khah, E. 84 1997 Kyoto Protocol 357 NIWHS see Northern Irish Warm Homes Scheme (NIWHS) non-consumers 49–51 non-energy policies 261–4, 266, 267, 268, 370 non-traditional occupations (NTOs) 168, 170, 176 Northern Irish Warm Homes Scheme (NIWHS) 114–15 North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) Energy Agency 75 North Sea oil British’s interventions in 37–42 Continental Shelf Act (1964) 38, 39 ‘It’s Scotland’s oil’ 40, 41 making of 41

political-economic narrative of 41–2 resource nationalism 38–40 Norway, gender equality 145 NOx emissions 115, 120 NTOs see non-traditional occupations (NTOs) NTS see National Travel Survey (NTS) nuclear power in France 35 Nussbaumer’s poverty index 156–8, 160, 161, 163 Nussbaum’s capabilities approach 158–9 Nye, D. E. 52 electrification 18 obesogenic environments 268 Observatorio de Pobreza Energética de México (OPEM) 155 OECD countries 170, 172, 173, 174, 179, 180 Office for Supplies Offshore (OSO) 40 OFGEM’s Electricity Capacity Assessment 87, 88 oil and automobility 26–7 crisis of 1973 71, 72 crisis of 1979 72 extraction 18 global consumption 20–21 growth of 18–20 health and environmental issues 19 political lobbying 19–20 price shocks 19, 26 and resource nationalism 36–7 Second Industrial Revolution and 17–18 socio-technical properties of 36 taxation 72 transition to 23 wars 33 see also North Sea oil O’Malley, M. 344, 348 one-child policy of China 262 onshore wind energy, UK 220–21 OPEM see Observatorio de Pobreza Energética de México (OPEM) OptiWohn project 253 OSO see Office for Supplies Offshore (OSO) overconsumption 190–92, 359 Pantzar, M. 59 paradox of plenty 33–5 Paris Agreement (2016) 2, 215 participatory research 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164 participatory technology assessment 300–301, 313 Passive House (Passivhaus) 245–6, 249, 258 path dependence in heating system transformation 5, 69, 78–9

384  Research handbook on energy and society adaptive expectations 72, 74–5, 77 defined 70 in Denmark 71–4 in Germany 74–6 learning economies 72, 74–5, 77 network externalities 73, 75, 77–8 sources of 70 in UK 76–8 peer-to-peer energy returns 321 peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading 317–19 concern 319–20 costs and risks 324 policy and regulation 324 social science research 321–2 challenge for 322–3 social value of 324 Perrault, T. 33, 35 personal car use benefits 192 personal travel 186 overconsumption of 190–92 reduction of 194 personas tasks 302, 307–10, 312 phase-out date for internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs) 115, 116 photovoltaics (PV) 317–20, 325 physical, technical and economic models (PTEM) models 247 Pielke, R. 130 place attachment 305 Plaid Cymru 31 Poignant, S. 89 Point and Sandwick Trust 278, 281, 282 policies 69, 259, 260 for buildings 248–50, 255 distributed impacts 113 economic 113 effect on energy demand 261 energy 259–61, 370 buildings 248–50, 255 gender-sensitive 142, 148–50 and politics 7–9 evaluation 69 fuel poverty 114 healthcare 262, 265–7 multi-faceted rationale 112 multiple/co-benefit framing 112, 121 non-energy 261–4, 266, 267, 268, 370 public funding of 120 retrofit 112, 114–17 social 113 transport 115–18, 120 Polk, J. B. 290 pollution 305 reduction 310 Pooling and Settlement Agreement 85

Popke, J. 50 Port Talbot (PT), case study 301–2 autonomy and power 308 energy security and stability 309–10 improvement and quality/protection of environment 310–11 localization of a decarbonized energy economy 311 mapping public things 305–7 scenarios and persona tasks 307–8 social justice and fairness 308–9 post-politics and environment narratives 358–9 post-secondary education institutions 171–2 PowerGen 85 powers 219, 221 P2P energy trading see peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading Practical Action 135 prepayment meter 50, 51 Preston, J. M. 190 procedural justice 131, 133, 144 prosumers 53, 317, 321 PSBR see public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) PTEM models see physical, technical and economic models (PTEM) models public sector borrowing requirement (PSBR) 39–41 public things 300–301, 312 mapping 305–7 public values 299, 313 qualitative methods 290 quality-adjusted life years (QALY) 115, 122 rebound effect 58–9, 112 recognition justice 131, 133, 144 ‘recovery’ narrative 356 recruitment of women in energy sector 170–74 reducing car-related travel 192–5 Reister, D. B. 58 ‘Remembering Tryweryn’ 31, 32, 42 Renewable Energies Heat Act (EEWärmeG) 75 renewable energy 141–3, 204, 273, 275 China 204 infrastructures 280, 281, 282, 283 innovation 288–92, 294, 296 marine 288–90 UK 219–25 Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) 77 Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) 77 Renewable Obligation system 221 renewables 22, 98 and electricity system 103–5 Rennie, D. 211

Index  385 representation of women on boards 178–9 Réseau de Transport de l’Electricité (RTE) 89–90, 93 resource curse see paradox of plenty resource nationalism 5, 31–2, 43 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and 36–7 defined 33 natural resources and national identity 35–6 nature and nation 32–3 North Sea oil and gas 37–42 paradox of plenty 33–5 ‘petro-nations’ 34 in U.S. 35 retention of women in energy sector 174–7 retrofit 236, 248, 250–51, 254, 255, 256 approaches to 250 innovative revenue models 251 new financing schemes 251 one-stop shop 250 Product Service Systems or Energy Service Companies (ESCO) 251 policy 112 employment impact of 115–16 public health impact of 114–15, 118 RHI see Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) RHPP see Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) Ribes, D. 290 Ricalde, K. 158 Robison, R. 164 Robles-Bonilla, T. 156–8 Rosenow, J. 114, 260 Rosqvist, L. S. 195 RTE see Réseau de Transport de l’Electricité (RTE) Rubio, M. d. M. 23 Rudolph, D. 332 rural car ownership 189 rural energy innovation 329–32 Bruny Island 332–4, 336 King Island 333–6 rural Orkney Islands 332 Russia hydrocarbons in 34, 35 national identity 35 oil extraction 18 and Poland, gas relationship 34 Rutland, P. 35 Santillán, O. S. 157 Sareen, S. 155 Saudi Arabia, oil production in 19 scale 217–18, 226 scenarios 299, 301–13 Schlumberger 38

science and technology policy 291, 295 science and technology studies (STS) 52, 83, 290, 291, 330, 331, 345–6, 348–9 Scotland energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation 241 Government 78, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 231, 240, 273, 276, 287–9 area-based energy planning 235–6 energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation policies 233–4 investments in marine energy 289 and local empowerment 238–9 local governance 230 onshore wind policy 220–21 local authorities in 232, 236, 238–9, 241 marine energy research 291–5 standards for instrumentation and testing 293–4 testing and demonstration centres 292–3 university–industry collaboratives 294–5 marine renewable energy innovation 288–90 Scotland Act 2016 223, 224 Scottish Development Agency (SDA) 40 Scottish nationalism 31 North Sea oil and 38–42 Scottish National Party (SNP) 31, 40 SDA see Scottish Development Agency (SDA) SDGs see Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Second Industrial Revolution 16–18, 22, 27 security of supply 89, 93 Sen, A. 144 capabilities approach 158, 187–8 service-oriented business model 57, 58, 60, 64–6 sexual harassment 175 Shafiee, Katayoun 36, 37, 41 sharing economy 317 Shove, E. 57, 264, 267 energy services, concept of 59–60, 62, 65 Sido, B. 89 Singh, A. 321 situational analysis approach 292 Skye interconnector 278 slot meter see prepayment meter Smale, R. 321 smart grids 328–9, 369 case studies Bruny Island 332–4, 336 King Island 333–6, 336 system 49 smart metering 117 Smart Systems and Heat programme 237, 240

386  Research handbook on energy and society Smith, A. 332 Smith, J. 40 social justice 7, 10, 11 social practice theory 65 social research on energy 2–4 social sciences 3, 11 insights from 367–9 research, education and knowledge 136–7, 321–4, 370–72 social studies of energy 372 societal challenge 2 societal transformations 368 sociology 57, 62 socio-technical 203, 207, 246–8, 251, 255, 312 systems 52, 203, 291, 370 transitions 4, 14–15, 280, 330 coal 15–16 fossil fuel 20–23 growth of oil and natural gas 18–20 internal combustion engine (ICE), electrification and oil 16–18 Latin American transition 23 solar energy 97–9, 142, 145–6, 148, 150, 206, 317 solar power 104, 107 Sorrell, S. 60 Sovacool, B. K. 144 sovereignty 224 SSAs see strategic search areas (SSAs) Stafford, B. A. 255 Star, S. 290 state aid control procedure 84, 91, 95 Stephens, M. 31 stories 354–5 changing the 362–4 new and missing 363–4 recovery 356 see also narratives Stornoway Trust 275, 277, 279, 281 Stornoway windfarm 275–7, 281, 282, 283 opposition to 278–80 strategic search areas (SSAs) 220 Strengers, Y. 53, 63 STS see science and technology studies (STS) supergrids 48 sustainability 358 transitions 291 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 126–8, 131, 362 Mexico 154 sustainable energy behaviour 349 sustainable visions 361 swarm electrification 104 Swyngedouw, E. 359 symbolic capital 144

system of stories 363 system-of-systems simulator 345–6 systems of provision 45 Takahashi, S. J. 266 Tanzania’s mining policy 34 Tasmania 329 smart grids case study 332–6 Tata Steel 301, 305 taxation measures 195, 196 Taylor, P. 342 techno-economic 136, 207 energy efficiency narrative 359 evaluations 347–8 hero stories 364 systems 246, 247, 248, 360 technological innovation 3, 195, 358 technological zones 217, 222, 223 technology assessment, participatory 300–301 technology economics 224–5 thermal comfort 156–7, 163 Third Energy Package 83 Thomas, S. 251 Thomson, H. 158 Thunberg, G. 367 Tolsta windfarm 276 Topouzi, M. 355, 358, 361, 364 trade apprenticeships 172–3 liberalization policies 262 transactive energy 321, 325 Transactive Energy Colombia 319 Transition 1.0 103–5 Transition 2.0 105–8 Transmission System Operators (TSOs) 318, 324 transport 184 inequalities and fairness 186–8 justice 187 planning/policy 190, 194–6 transport sector 184 travel distance reduction 194–5 travel distributions 186, 187, 195 Turkle, S. 305 Turnbull, P. 175, 176 UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) 342 UK Home Energy Conservation Act (HECA) 1995 232 UK Treasury 39, 40, 119 The Unbound Prometheus (1969, Landes) 356 underrepresentation of women 178 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2 United Kingdom (UK) Anglo-Iranian Oil Company issue 36–7

Index  387 car sales 184 Clean Air Acts (1956) 19 Clean Growth Strategy 230 Climate Change Committee 120 coal transition 15 devolution 229 and renewable energy development 219–22 district heating (DH) in 77–8 Energy Act (2013) 87 energy constitution 219 energy governance 216–23 Government 91, 92, 219, 221, 222, 224, 235, 239–42 area-based energy planning 237–8 Cost of Energy Review 260 energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation policies 233–4 energy policy and investment 288 Green Homes Grant 114 heat and energy efficiency across England 237–8 local governance 230 natural gas 253 Smart Systems and Heat programme 237, 240 subsidy mechanism 276 heat decarbonisation 120 Heat Networks Delivery Unit (HNDU) (England and Wales) 77 heat pumps and district heating deployment 77–8 infrastructure materialities 223–4 internal combustion engine vehicles (ICVs) phase-out date 115 lock-in to natural gas heating 76–7 marketization in higher education (HE) 263–5 Microgeneration Certification Scheme 77 National Grid 49, 85 nationalisation of electricity industry 50 North Sea and resource nationalism 37–42 NOx emissions 120 Opportunity Area Planning Framework 78 public sector borrowing requirement 39–41 renewable energy 219–25 Renewable Heat Incentive 77 Renewable Heat Premium Payment 77 retrofit policy 114 RHI (Northern Ireland) 222 technology economics 224–5 transport emissions 184 White Paper of July 1974 40 see also Britain’s electricity market United States (US)

automobility in 23, 26–7 energy consumption 100–102 oil production 18, 19 post-secondary institutions in 171 resource nationalism in 35 urban mobility 201, 205, 207, 209, 210, 212 Value of Lost Load (VOLL) 85 venturesome consumption 208 Village Electrification Project 151 electricity consumption 147–8 ethnographic study in Bundelkhand 142, 145–8, 151 gender focus in 145–6 micro-grid implementation 146–7 norms of purdah 146, 147 women’s marginalisation 146–8 virtual power plants (VPP) 104 visions 355, 358, 362 of Costanza, R. 360–61, 363 of the future 359–62 sustainable 361 VOLL see Value of Lost Load (VOLL) VPP see virtual power plants (VPP) Wadud, Z. 264 wage inequity 174 Wales Act 2017 222, 224 Walker, G. 57 Watts, L. 332 Welsh Government 218, 220–23, 225 nationalism 31 Western Isles Council 277, 282 Wilhite, H. 59 Wiliarty, S. E. 35 Wilson, E. J. 255 Wilson, J. D. 34 windfarm 275–83 Winner, L. 3 Winnicott, D. 300 WISE see Women’s Employment in Urban Public Sector (WISE) women 369 in energy sector’s career 168, 180 apprentices 173, 175 barrier 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 challenges facing 175–6 inequities 175 inflexible work schedules 177 lack of awareness about opportunities 171 lack of information 170–71 need for more versatile training 171 opportunities 175–7

388  Research handbook on energy and society parental leave 176 policies for protection or empowerment 175 promotion, advancement and leadership 178–80 recruitment 170–74 representation on boards 178–9 retention 174–7 underrepresentation 178 wage inequity 174, 176 workforce exit 176 work-related travel 177 marginalisation 146–8

Women’s Employment in Urban Public Sector (WISE) 175, 177 Wood Group 275 Wrigley, E. A. 15 Xi Jinping 202, 204 Yenneti, K. 161 Zawadzki, S. J. 349 zero-carbon energy system 2, 19 homes policy 235 Zhao Tong 211