The Social Life of Energy

Dear reader, Imagine a future in which we’ve moved decisively to sustainable energy sources and not only that – imagine that that transformation was managed and owned to a large extent by citizens, banded together in cooperatives, foundations and not-for-profit companies. How would that transition have happened? To answer (parts of) that question, I talked to geographers Emma Folmer (University of Groningen) and Benedikt – or Ben, for Social Life of Energy readers – Schmid (University of Freiburg). They used their research into community-based and community-oriented initiatives to jointly tackle the question: is systemic change possible, through the many thousands of citizens’ seemingly “small” and “local” blooming flowers? This question thus marks a shift in this series on social entrepreneurship in sustainable energy: from a discussion mostly of properly commercial companies to straight-up community initiatives – or what Emma calls “collective entrepreneurship”. Here are the main points you’ll find in this edition: * Social enterprises are little engines of innovation * Governments can foster this innovation in small and (cost-) effective ways * An engineering-type perspective on scale and efficiency has fundamental laws * Collective entrepreneurship can be a constitutive part of a vital democracy Curious? Read on for the executive summary (and read more in the transcript), or tune in to the full interview by clicking on the play button on the top of this email or by firing up The Social Life of Energy in your favourite podcasting app! Off-the-grid homes and on-the-grid vehicles What needs to happen for systemic change? Well, two things at least: replication (or “roll-out” – but we’ll get to that) and institutional change that can accommodate new ways of doing things. Let’s start with the latter. What does that look like in the case of community enterprise – and what does its absence look like? Among the 24 initiatives in and around Stuttgart that Ben talked to for his PhD research, there was a group of people who wanted to build off-the-grid (tiny-esque) homes. Off-the-grid means self-sufficient and that includes (potable and waste) water. However, homes in Germany are required to link to up the sewage system, and if somehow you want to organize your own drinking water, you need to get certifications that your water is actually safe. Getting the approval to delink, and obtaining the certification for potable water proved tricky. First of all, the group needed to work with several authorities with overlapping jurisdictions. And while they actually did have supporters in local government, others couldn’t care less about the project. Meanwhile, despite their support, administrators had to work with an ambiguous legal framework and they were hesitant to make executive decisions in that gray space. OK, so from this super brief case study, let’s take stock for a sec. You have a couple of people trying to do new things that don’t fit any established categories – you know, innovation. In part, “not fitting” means there is literally no category for it: say, “off-the-grid” living. But it also means there is no process for it: the existing authorities and their jurisdictions were erected in and for another world. Attempts to re-make that world require new (regulatory) cooperation to survive. For an example of how that might go, let’s turn to Emma’s main example. It revolves around a cooperative community in the Netherlands that had installed rooftop solar panels on a parking lot. That process had gone fairly smoothly so they set their sights on something higher: to turn the parking lot into a EV charging station. That went much less smoothly. Same story: different state authorities, which were initially hesitant to give the green light, because of the same kind of regulatory uncertainty. But then a break: the national government launched a subsidy program for precisely these sort of EV charging car parks, which...

Hello everyone, continuing my report on ‘webinars about what collaboration looks like in social innovation’. Today, I’m sharing insights from a keynote at the Social Innovation in the Energy Transition conference. The presentation was delivered by a scholar who I presume needs no introduction: Patrick Devine-Wright. (If you need an introduction, start here.) You can also listen to today’s edition. I start off with the previous edition on Jamie Cross’ presentation, so if you missed that one, you’re in luck! If you didn’t, fast forward to a little over halfway. Devine-Wright of course is known for DESTROYING the notion of NIMBYism by pointing out how resistance was often due to a lack of adequate participation in decision-making processes. But the notion was also a reason to start thinking about people’s attachment to a place – and how that might be a positive force in participation, rather than ground for rejection (‘my place doesn’t deserve your wind turbines’). His research on participation has kind of naturally evolved towards the idea of social innovation as an example of the good kind of participation, and yes, “place” helps to understand why these approaches can work! So, let’s take a closer look. To start off, what does ‘social innovation’ mean for Devine-Wright? Well, for him it is basically a gloss for “co-creation”. Co-creation means taking people seriously, not only by actually listening to them, but by sharing power over the course of shared effort. In an earlier presentation this year for the SHIFT project, Devine-Wright specified some basic rules about what that means. It means that people’s input * has to be organized early, * it has to be substantial, * it has to be actually implemented, and * even defended if the results come up to resistance from, say, local administrators. So what can attention to place and people’s attachments to place add to these stipulations? “A world of places” That phrase by sociologist Tim Cresswell means that for us human beings, places matter and places differ: ‘we look out from them’. That maybe sounds a bit fluffy, but in a very down-to-earth sense, it means that places have histories: people have experienced things there (ranging from the first forays into romance, to daily strolls with the dog, to (perhaps ill-conceived) roll-outs of rehabilitation projects). These experiences inform how people respond to new ideas and propositions, and they shape their willingness and ability to come up with their own ideas and propositions. If you therefore want to set something in motion, you won’t be able to get around these idiosyncrasies of places, so best to understand them, work with them, and build on them. Alright, so now that you have the basic gist of social innovation and place, let’s see how we can put these two together in practice! Zero Carbon Rugeley An inspiring example comes from Rugeley, a town of nearly 25,000 just north of Birmingham. A town that has innovation in its genes, because it was the very place where the first telephone call via Telstar satellite was made! (Thank you, Wikipedia.) The project “Zero Carbon Rugeley” builds on this tradition and is turning the space of a decommissioned coal plant into a smart (and green) local energy district through a state-of-the-art process, involving: * A multi-stakeholder partnership of private (energy) companies, a university, a theatre company (for animation), a solar cooperative, and more. * An approach with co-creation at its heart: uniquely, a third of the budget was dedicated to “user-centric design”. Nor was that money to be spent by some lonely participation professionals either, but it cut across the whole project. This is a necessary prerequisite for participation to go beyond tokenism. “Instead of ‘educating’ users and trying to sell them on some technology, we start with the people, their needs and then see what we could change accordingly”. (interviewee ZCR) * An approach that takes local...

Below you’ll find the transcript of the podcast about the “Fit to Serve” social business model research. The conversation is in Dutch, so the transcript is as well, but if you’re really interested in subject matter, you might trying run this URL through translate.google.com or copy paste up to 5,000 characters at a time into https://www.deepl.com/translator. Of course, you can also get into contact with my interviewees, Ruth Mourik (contact info, LinkedIn) and Renske Bouwknegt (contact info, LinkedIn), directly. Sociaal ondernemen in de energiesector “De bedrijven die in staat zijn om daadwerkelijk een waarde te leveren aan mensen die niet per se zelf met energie te maken hoeft te hebben, maar waarbij de technologie een middel is om dat te bereiken, dus die echt op een dienst gedreven manier nadenken. Heel kort voorbeeld: in plaats van het aanbieden van een boormachine zorgen ze ervoor dat er het schilderij op de muur komt te hangen, waar de mensen willen dat het hangt. Dat is het verschil tussen product of dienst gedreven werken. En dat díe partijen die in staat zijn om dat schilderij op te hangen, dat dat degenen waren die veel succesvoller waren in het creëren van de markt, en ook de schaal van die markt dan? Partijen die de boormachine maar willen verkopen.” Aan het woord is Ruth Mourik. Ruth is de oprichter van DuneWorks, het bedrijf waar ik werk. Zeg, wat doen we eigenlijk bij DuneWorks, Ruth? Wij zijn op allerlei manieren bezig om de vraagstukken waar de energietransitie op vastloopt. Of van vraagstukken zijn, waarvan we denken dat die onvoldoende aandacht krijgen, die aanvliegen ,in een combinatie van onderzoeksprojecten, maar ook meer directe praktijk trajecten. Dus doen leren door te doen. Maar zeker ook onderzoeken en dan doen. Dat doen we in combinatie met heel veel verschillende partijen, van de Europese Commissie tot overheden in Nederland, universiteiten, hogescholen en bedrijven zoals Ideate! Dat zij Ideate noemt is geen toeval, want samen met Ruth ben ik ook met Renske Bouwknegt van Ideate in gesprek gegaan over ondernemerschap in duurzame energie. Dit is deel van serie van ondertussen 6 nieuwsbrieven over dit onderwerp. Abonneer je als je ook de volgende edities in deze serie niet wilt missen. Zoals ik uitleg in de vorige editie van de Social Life of Energy: op de lange termijn gaat duurzame energie het wel winnen van fossiele bronnen. De markten daarvoor komen op dit moment stukje bij beetje tot stand. Maar wat voor markten willen we eigenlijk? Welke waarden moeten we in het nieuwe systeem inbouwen? Dit zijn vragen die op heel concrete wijze uiterst prangend zijn voor ondernemers in dit veld: * Wat is een goed energieproduct, of een goede energiedienst? * Wanneer is goed 'goed genoeg'? * Aan welke maatstaven kan ik mij meten? Er wordt van allerlei kanten aan mijn mouw getrokken: zijn er richtlijnen om mijn eigen koers uit te zetten? * Wat kan ik verwachten? Een niche voor mijn bedrijf en mijn klanten, of kan ik helpen om systemische veranderingen in de hele energiesector teweeg te brengen? Diensten aanbieden = relaties ontwikkelen Voor ondernemers die dit soort vragen stellen, bieden Renske en Ruth het model van het relatie-gedreven ondernemerschap, waarbij niet een product verkocht wordt, maar een dienst wordt aangeboden. Als je het terugbrengt en kijk naar het business model, dan zie je eigenlijk dat een dienst een relatie veronderstelt. Anders gezegd een dienst bestaat niet als die niet gebruikt wordt. En de bedrijven die succesvol zijn, die zijn ook heel goed gebleken in het continu en duurzaam vormgeven en onderhouden van die relatie. Dat was Renske. Renske is dus partner in Ideate, een bedrijf dat… “verandering ontwerpt”. Ja, Ideate is een is een sociaal ontwerpbureau en dat houdt zoveel in dat die die complexe vraagstukken, zoals die energietransitie, dat wij daar als ontwerpers mee aan de slag gaan. Dat betekent dat wij vanuit onderzoek, begrip van het vraagstuk, altijd op zoek gaan...

Before starting off the newsletter proper, I’d like share some meta-reflections on the IPCC report: Arthur Petersen (Prof. Science & Technology, UCL) is pleased: Scientists are no longer afraid to tell it like it is: humans are causing the recent warming of the planet. They are more self-confident. But what also has changed is that people are more willing to listen to them. (in Dutch newspaper NRC) But they’re not telling quite like it is. Emily Atkin (journalist, Heated newsletter): if you only read the summary for policymakers, you’ll find out that human “activities” and “influence” are “unequivocally” causing climate disasters—but which activities and influences are the greatest will remain a mystery. It’s all just “Humans,” “emissions,” “activities,” and “influence.” You’ll learn the world is ending, and you will not know who to blame. This is not so surprising, writes Robinson Meyer (journalist, the Atlantic), because the IPCC was called into being to deliver consensus science that global warming is indeed happening (to cut off political leaders looking for the easy, denialist exit of global cooperation). That task has its own virtue: I find the IPCC reports quite beautiful, almost moving. The IPCC is a novel organization in world history: a group of volunteer scientists tasked with figuring out precisely what their field believes at the moment, a modern version of Diderot’s Encyclopedia. You can also read about the ‘neutrality’ of the IPCC in this earlier SLE edition (about biofuels) and about the kind of forecasting work of it does here. But now, let’s go back to examining how we can get business to heed the IPCC call! Dear folks, welcome back to SLE's ongoing series on sustainable entrepreneurship. As a reminder, two questions drive the series: * firstly, how are new energy markets established? How are products made and services designed, regulations complied with and new regulations lobbied for, customers found and prepped, and products and services sold? * Secondly, can sustainable entrepreneurship, as a type of ethical entrepreneurship, create products and services that are actually doing good for their users and stakeholders? That is to say, in this world of deepening inequalities: do they help emancipate citizens, lift up the downtrodden? The gist The distinction between the first and second question is the distinction between the green economy and the social economy. The green economy consists of those business models that do not add to pollution and ideally even straight-up reduce it. The social economy, by contrast, refers to business practices that do not aggravate and ideally reduce inequities. Both face some market-making challenges: green entrepreneurs (last edition’s "ecopreneurs") need to convince money to follow new revenue streams, and very similarly social entrepreneurs (sociopreneurs?) need to convince money to flow away from the usual investment objects. But the one does not necessarily make the other. Tesla – in some sense – is a green business. It is not – in any sense – a social business. But what if you want to be both? Great idea, couldn’t be more timely! For inspiration, we’ll do a case-study of one such socioecopreneur™: or, a person making a business case for cleaner energy and greater equity all at once. The case is Charlie Lord, who wants to combine decarbonization with a better life for people in vulnerable communities, by improving housing and creating new, local jobs to do it. The case study, as well as the distinction between the social and green economy, and many more insights come from this week's reading: Julia Affolderbach & Rob Krueger’s “Just” ecopreneurs: re-conceptualising green transitions and entrepreneurship. Published in Local Environment, in 2016. The story Charlie Lord is an environmental lawyer who finished his studies at the moment that indigenous, Black and Brown communities were causing scenes in the environmental movement of the time, condemning...

Happy Monday, folks, Some inspiration for a creative week. What does it mean to ‘innovate’? Many look for the decisive mark of the singular genius or the cutting-edge company. Perhaps the best-known recent example is Elon Musk and Tesla. Not too long ago it was Steve Jobs and Apple. However, you might be familiar with Mariana Mazzucato’s retelling of Jobs’ (iPhone) story. In her reconstruction, she shows how all the constituent technologies of the iPhone – the HTTP protocol, GPS, LCD displays – were technologies developed with state support and often within public bodies. All fundamental innovation had happened previous to the iPhone. While her analysis dispels the “I built that” theory of innovation, that still leaves (Jobs’ and Musks’) actual creativity unexplored, which is the art of assembling new technologies, ideas and (business) practices into a product or service that changes our world in a meaningful way. We’ll talk about this creative work in today’s edition in my ongoing series on renewable energy markets. Two main questions drive the series: how are new markets made and what good can products and services do? Today, I’ll dwell mostly on that first question. As a case study, I’ll take a look at Sunrun, the US solar-as-a-service company. I’ll base my examination on a conversation that co-founder (and current CEO) Lynn Jurich had with energy journalist David Roberts for his Substack newsletter Volts, which I recommend to you all, if you’re not already subscribed. Here’s what to expect: first, a quick overview of how Sunrun can be considered innovative. Then, an analysis of what it actually entails to make Sunrun – and its business model – successful. My analysis is directly inspired by this week’s reading: Beveridge, Ross, and Simon Guy. 2005. "The rise of the eco-preneur and the messy world of environmental innovation". Local Environment. 10 (6): 665-676. Strap in, for the ride is now in motion. Phase 1: Solar as a service When Sunrun started out in 2007, they wanted to increase adoption of rooftop PV by reducing the upfront costs and the hassle of the paperwork. It did so by paying for the installation of the solar panels itself, becoming the energy provider for the home, offering lower energy bills than the current contract, and recouping the costs by selling the solar harvest. Sunrun was (among?) the first to offer this ‘Lease’ + ‘Power Purchase Agreement’ combo in consumer PV. Phase II: Household energy management as grid service Now batteries have entered the picture. Their steeply falling costs means it is now possible to perform the same trick as with rooftop PV. With batteries, Sunrun can recoup the costs with grid balancing and peak shaving. Batteries can respond near-instantly and importantly, they are installed locally, which means that can also help balance the distribution grid. In theory then, home (and EV) batteries build up to a “virtual power plant”, a plant that should be able to (ultimately) replace fossil fuelled “peaker plants” in the growing market for ‘flexible energy capacity’. Street smarts: werk! Right from the get-go, Jurich tells Roberts that she wants to make clear that she doesn’t just know the theory of sustainable energy business models, but that she has the “street smarts” to put them in to practice. That’s a great way of describing the actual work of collecting and arranging all the different – social, legal, technical – ingredients of the business model. Why would that require ‘street smarts’? There are obstacles in the way, like red tape and opposition or at least disinclination from utilities. It can also be difficult to reach homeowners, who might not know about this possibility, might be sceptical about its long-term value, fear drawbacks (like for comfort), and don’t upgrade their home very often to begin with, which means there’s a small window to catch them. Alright, so what work are we talking about then? Storytelling Streets smarts is all about...

“As a nimby, you start researching and thinking critically. They are pushing through their principles, without sufficiently taking into account the well-being of citizens and the natural environment.” – Amsterdam activist against turbines (Volkskrant newspaper). “The men are suspected to send threatening letters to wind farm employees, creating a black paper with libellous texts and threatening to dump asbestos (which indeed occurred near wind turbine locations in 2018 and 2019.)” – Trouw newspaper report about a court case against two farmers. Dear folks, Welcome to the final instalment of my improvised triptych about what makes successful aeolian power generation possible. I dare say, the tableau is turning into a gripping picture of details and devils! Last issue it was all about giving energy communities the rights and financial wherewithal to become full members of Grid Nation. Today, it’s about how ‘communities’ participate in the siting of new wind turbines. Judging by the two Dutch examples above, we apparently still haven’t figured out how to do this, despite having some 30 years of experience to build on. Why is that? What you’ll learn about it today: * In theory it’s simple: you need to notify people on time, supply adequate information, make sure that people can meaningfully contribute, and assign an independent party to manage the process. * Why? Because only due process can guarantee acceptable outcomes. * Legitimacy is therefore always a locally tailored product. You can’t manufacture it only through bureaucratic standards of “fairness”. * You therefore also need a versatile toolkit of participatory and deliberative decision-making that can adapt to local circumstances. The promise of procedural justice In 2007, Catherine Gross devised a “framework for procedural justice”, which went on to be cited nearly a 1000 times, according to Google Scholar (1000 times is a lot for the poor huddled citation-starved masses of social scientists). She starts with a simple observation: wind energy conflicts are complicated because they’re not of a clash of (clear-cut) interests, but the interplay of criss-crossing community relations. She then visits a recently completed wind farm in New South Wales to talk to people about how they felt the decision-making process went. Overall, people didn’t think the NSW project did great. Many people hadn’t felt heard, they had gotten the impression there was scheming going behind closed doors, and they worried about what it was doing to the community – that is, creating winners and losers. In other words, they worried about both the process and its outcomes. Gross suggests that the worry over what it does to the community makes the fairness of the process all the more important, “because it is more likely to lead to a fair outcome, particularly when there is no clear standard as to exactly what a fair outcome is” (p. 2734, my emphasis). That last bit is important, we’ll get back to it towards the end. Based on their review and suggestions, Gross came up with a straightforward set of guidelines about how to do things better. * Timely notification and inclusion of all concerned * Meaningful ability to participate and contribute to decision-making * Being heard on equal footing with other participants * Getting adequate information from impartial sources * Led by an independent facilitator * Receiving response to input That… seems doable, doesn’t it? Let’s see how this compares to some real-life consultation processes. The practice of distributive justice Right around the same time Gross was jotting down these helpful notes, Denmark was seeing a decline in interest in, and growth in controversy over, wind development projects, after a decade or so of spectacular initial success. Commentators (such as Bauwens et al 2016, Mey and Diesendorf 2018, Roberts 2020) suggest that the change in fate followed a shift from community-driven to corporate-driven development. If so,...

Last week I teased my interview with Muzna and Neil about tackling corruption in the Lebanese electricity sector. They wrote the report about it (together with Ali Ahmad and Marc Ayoub). Last week you got the gist, but now, you can hear - or read - the whole interview! Find out more about what achieving reliable electricity meant for the people involved, about the intricacies of the political settlement and about how poor governance and poor uptake of renewable energy capacity hang together. (You can also listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.) Transcript Today I’m taking you to Lebanon, to a story about how to do good in messy, murky circumstances. Here to tell the story are Muzna al-Masri and Neil McCulloch. They recently co-authored a report about a town in the Bekaa Valley, in the east of the country, a couple of stone throws away from Syria. The town is called Zahle, and it has 24-hour electricity, which is unfortunately unique in Lebanon. Responsible for the service is EDZ – short for Electricité de Zahle. They got a concession to operate in the town from the national utility, which is EDL, the Electricité de Liban. So, acronyms out of the way, if you’re curious about how they did it and what we might learn from it, welcome to the Social Life of Energy. Neil So the backgrounds of the research project is a research program by SOAS, the University of London, on anti-corruption evidence. And what they were interested to, to do was to try and understand why anti-corruption programs around the world have been so unsuccessful. Neil And their idea was that they've often failed because they have this sort of cookie cutter approach to anti-corruption, they have a common idea of the things you have to do to tackle corruption. And what they've pointed out and they've now accumulated a lot of evidence for this is that you really have to understand the nature of the underlying political settlement in order for to be able to tackle corruption in an effective way. Because countries are different. And the ways in which politics are work are different. And so they've done a whole set of studies, in particular in the electricity sector, looking at various types of reforms in Bangladesh, in Nigeria, and also our own study in Lebanon, to see how progress is possible within a different context. So our study looks at corruption in the electricity sector in Lebanon, which is infamous, as we all know, but explicitly how it was possible in the city was actually in its surroundings, to provide a reasonably good quality functional electricity service in an environment in a broader environment, which was very dysfunctional. How was that feasible in that in that political context? Marten Okay. Great, thanks. And Muzna can you speak a little bit more about what's going on in Lebanon, for those who don't know? Muzna Basically, in Lebanon electricity problem has been ongoing for many decades. There are constant electricity cuts in the city of Beirut, at a minimum would not have electricity three hours a day outside of Beirut, it's 12 to 14 hours a day. The corruption in the sector is huge. It is responsible for a large part of the national debt. And as a result there are a lot of private generators that are covering that kind of need in energy and but also causing a lot of air pollution and forcing most residents to pay huge electricity bills, both national one and kind of for private generators. But there is one bright example, which is the EDZ the electricity of Zahle, which has managed to generate electricity 24 hour electricity, with excellent collection rates, with excellent quality of service. That is a huge contrast with the National situation. And at the same time has captured a lot of people's imagination. So how can EDZ do it? And if we can do it in one setting, can’t we all do that? We've actually been hearing this kind of question, can I do that in this refugee camp? Can we do that...

Dear people, Recently I explored the idea that there might be moments particularly productive of change. A break in routines, because of a life transition (a new job, new house, new kid) or because of a societal crisis (say, a pandemic or, uhm, apocalyptic wildfires). The result of that exploration was, in a nutshell: yes, certain moments can make change possible, but not as much as you might think. The limited reach of these transitional moments comes down in large part to the fact that a lot of the execution of what we might want to do (differently) actually depends on the wider ‘infrastructure’ of our lives: our homes, our local transportation system, the energy grid, but also our social relations: the people we live with or the requirements of our job. If that’s the case, why not flip the question of potential change on its head? The research I discussed earlier focused on individual life transitions. What if we looked at collective life transitions? Could a community wreak greater change? Have we really plumbed the depth of what change people are capable of? To address this question, Beatriz Pineda Revilla designed a number of interventions in three different ‘communities’ in Amsterdam, as part of her (recently defended) doctoral research: in a sustainability Facebook group, with two neighbourhood organizations, and among a group of “self-builders” of sustainable houses. She didn’t break their routines – a routine matter of research ethics – but she did try to create other ‘windows of opportunity’, as she calls it. What she wanted to do instead then, was to create fissures in discursive conventions. The key idea here is that, firstly, we might not even have the language to think about change in the first place, and secondly, that such language needs to be communally grown. Researchers taking an interventionist approach. Visuals here from the CODALoop project that Beatriz’s research was a part of. Let’s take a closer look (I would have said if I were on YouTube). Note: today’s newsletter reflects my interview with Beatriz (two weeks ago, before I went on a much-postponed break from my home, which explains my longer than usual absence from your inbox). We taped the conversation, so you can also listen to it by clicking on the play button above or get it wherever you listen to podcasts. You’ll get more of Beatriz and less of me, double the value! So, what if we did give people a language to think about sustainability and energy? Would that allow them to re-think their position? One of the ways Beatriz tested this hypothesis is through.. an energy quiz! The participants in this particular quiz consisted of the (regular) visitors to a community neighbourhood organization that worked to strengthen social bonds among vulnerable groups, whether it’s women who provided intensive care for a loved one, and had little time and space to build their own community, people with a mental disability, or migrant women from Turkey with poor Dutch skills. We worked with a comedian [in order to make] the topic of sustainability and energy consumption more approachable to an audience that would have never gone to a lecture on sustainability or on energy consumption. So, by organizing a setting that was entertaining, fun, and easy – a nice evening – it allowed us to bring to the surface topics that otherwise would not have been brought up. So, for example, ‘how long do you shower? Is eight minutes, the average in the Netherlands, normal for you?’ So, in the audience there were reactions like “Eight minutes? Wow, I spend at least 15!” or “Oh, no, eight minutes is quite okay. I take even less time”. You get new kinds of interactions. New kinds of interactions. Now, the way we talk about things betray norms to which we more or less consciously adhere. Do we consider eating meat normal or not, because we belong to a community of vegetarians? Do we think it normal to fly to Bali every summer or do we go to the Ardennes [in neighbouring...

I’m talking with Tineke van der Schoor about what makes change possible in the energy sector. One key factor: networks. Especially networks that can span different scales. Tineke recently defended her PhD thesis Strategies for Energy Reconfigurations: Obduracy, values and scripts, happy occasion for this talk. The podcast is in Dutch, so if you’re curious but Dutch is not going to do it for you, please check out the accompanying newsletter. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sociallifeofenergy.substack.com

Dear folks, In the fall of 2019 (which seems disturbingly close; what happened to 2020?), I wrote about the importance of understanding people in context. Energy practices and energy values are developed in our relation to the things and people around us. Today’s podcast returns to this topic with what actually happened in 2020: SARS-CoV-2. Below you’ll find a small bullet-point summary of the main points, but before that I’d like to give you a quick preamble, extrapolating some implications of the work by Butler, Ryghaug and colleagues that I cover here. Welcome back to SLE! Some of you may have noticed a slowed down pace of production. In order to give myself some breathing space and save myself some frustration, as of now I’d like to formalize that by starting a biweekly publication interval. At least over summer, after which I will re-evaluate. Thanks for tuning in! * Sustainable consumption is important. It’s a major component of the entire sustainable energy package. * However, for a host of reasons, we can’t expect citizens to consume our way out of climate catastrophe. Perhaps the most important reason: winning one heart at a time is by far the longest and most roundabout way to achieve systemic change. * Far more direct is… changing the system! New energy infrastructure; incentives for and constraints on industry. * Consequently, our strategy shouldn’t be to encourage and rely on people to make the best consumptive choices. ‘Sustainable consumption’ is not a meaningful policy to pursue. * That doesn’t mean that we do not need citizens in this whole effort. We need them to chime in on how, where and when systemic changes should be made. 👉 These changes will occur in their intimate spaces, and intervene in their work flows: they have a right to be heard about this. 👉 The effort will also be better informed. If you don’t listen to stakeholders, you’re flying blind (or at least you’re flying with a navigation system full of blind spots). * Does that mean we should give up on finding ways to encourage people to take shorter showers, if those showers will not win the war anyway? Not necessarily. The studies in the podcast show that these programmes are valuable because they produce friction. Friction can create space for reflection. * If you then capitalize on that space for reflection by offering opportunities to chime in, the friction becomes productive and its tensions can find resolution. Sustainable consumption can be part of a ‘climate public sphere’. More than actually moving the needle in reducing energy demand, this is its real value. Today’s podcast The studies suggest that new things are possible when people are taken out of their routines and taken-for-granted assumptions no longer quite hold. If this is so, then - at least in those countries where business-as-usual seemed good enough - the pandemic should be one major source of new self-reflection, right? I reviewed some of evidence for this (in Shirani et al 2017; Burnhingham & Venn 2020). Conclusions: * Well, likely: yes. But what exactly people are reflecting on and are able to change in their routines depends a lot on the social and physical context. * Still, given how massive this pandemic has been: everyone has experienced at least some friction over the last months. * This, then, is a not-to-miss opportunity to engage people in debate and allow them to chime in. One way to do that: (local and national) citizen climate panels. Hit play to learn more, or if you prefer to read, here’s the transcript. Response to anti-racist energy policy A little over a month ago, I wrote a post about energy policy in the spirit of Black Lives Matter. I subsequently sounded out a few subscribers who I knew were working on making sure marginalized voices were accounted for. I want to share a short piece I got back from Lillian Sol Cueva, PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague. If you want to learn more about what...

Hi, today I’m talking with Sylvia Breukers from Duneworks, a energy research and consultancy firm. We talk about how to allow for diversity and address inequality in sustainable energy (innovation) projects. We do this in Dutch, so if this means you’re left out, my sincere apologies, but maybe you’d like to check out the newsletter! It’s a condensed version of our chat here. https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/how-to-make-space-by-making-a-little Find a transcript of this podcast here: https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/full-interview-with-sylvia-breukers Where Sylvia works: http://www.duneworks.nl/ We mention a research project about community initiated “virtual power plant”, find out more about it here: https://www.nweurope.eu/projects/project-search/cvpp-community-based-virtual-power-plant/ Also, I gratefully make use of Inspector J’s (www.jshaw.co.uk) sample "Vinyl Record, On Off, B.wav". Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sociallifeofenergy.substack.com

Today I talk with Abhigyan Singh from Delft Technical University. For his PhD research, which he concluded last year, he developed an approach he calls design anthropology. It is a way of catching the glimpse of a potential future - by building a prototype of it. Check out what he means by it and what it can mean for the energy sector in transition. * I covered Abhigyan’s research earlier, in this post: https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/where-does-the-power-of-community * The podcast mentions Rapid Rural Appraisal; check the Wikipedia page on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_rural_appraisal * Check out Abhigyan’s page at TU-Delft here: https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ide/about-ide/people/singh-a/ Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sociallifeofenergy.substack.com

First of all, last week an email tragedy of Greek proportions took place. I wrote an unusually long post and decided it wasn’t actually fit for email reading and decided to make it a web-only. I then created a truncated version of that longer post meant to be sent out to you. However, I forgot to mark the first one as ‘web-only’ in my dashboard. Thus, my good intentions lead to your inbox hell. My apologies. Secondly, I have a bunch of things on my plate this week, so I’m only sending out this podcast, in which I reworked two earlier pieces about the sustainability and equitability of smart cities. If you hadn’t read them yet, or if you want a refresher with the sound of my refreshing voice, click on the link or download it in your podcast app of choice! (I experienced some technical difficulties, so the recording quality is a bit uneven, but after the first few minutes, it should be smooth sailing!) By the way, I’m working on a follow-up piece about the sustainability of smart cities for a new journal, I’ll keep you posted about that. Also, there is a backlog of ‘smart energy’ things I’d like to work on, which I will propose to you shortly. Finally, my unusually long post from last week was actually a compendium of things that cities can do to increase public participation in energy matters, regardless of whether they’re smart or not. Find the link below. For now, I wish thee well. Marten Links * Energy democracy (in cities and beyond): https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/what-is-our-toolkit-for-sustainable. * The two earlier pieces on smart sustainable cities: https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/smart-sustainable-cities-pathway https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/public-participation-in-really-existing * My brother’s ukelele YouTube channel 😀 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-20VdWHdZgBX0cGLRQqykg Sources cited in this podcast: Ahvenniemi, Hannele, Aapo Huovila, Isabel Pinto-Seppä, and Miimu Airaksinen. 2017. "What are the differences between sustainable and smart cities?" Cities. 60: 234-245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2016.09.009 Bulkeley, Harriet, Pauline M McGuirk, and Robyn Dowling. 2016. "Making a smart city for the smart grid? The urban material politics of actualising smart electricity networks". Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. 48 (9): 1709-1726. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16648152 Cowley, Robert, Simon Joss, and Youri Dayot. 2018. "The smart city and its publics: insights from across six UK cities". Urban Research & Practice. 11 (1): 53-77. https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2017.1293150 (Open Access) Hollands R.G. 2015. "Critical interventions into the corporate smart city". Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. 8 (1): 61-77. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsu011 (Open Access) Martin C.J., Evans J., and Karvonen A. 2018. "Smart and sustainable? Five tensions in the visions and practices of the smart-sustainable city in Europe and North America". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 133: 269-278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.01.005 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sociallifeofenergy.substack.com

Gender, poverty and inclusive energy transitions: Today’s episode is my interview with Mariëlle Feenstra. We spoke in our native tongue, apologies to basically everybody in the world except for a negligible statistical error (aka the inhabitants of the low lands). We talked about the ways in which gender, class and energy intersect and what it means for how we design our energy system of the future. If you want to know more, check out the companion newsletter edition: https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/intersectional-energy-policy-or-going For the full transcript in Dutch, check here: https://sociallifeofenergy.substack.com/p/full-interview-with-marielle-feenstra For reports that Marielle co-authored, and on which most of this interview is based: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/75cbc1e8-f4f2-11e7-be11-01aa75ed71a1/language-en (Gender perspective on access to energy in the EU) https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/nl/document.html?reference=IPOL_STU%282019%29608867 (Women, Gender Equality and the Energy Transition in the EU) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sociallifeofenergy.substack.com

Dear folks, some of you suggested this newsletter might do well in audio format too. I’m not saying that isn’t true, but at the very least, it’s work in progress 😁. Introducing the Social Life of Energy Podcast! Once I get the technicalities in order, you will be able to download these episodes wherever you get your podcast fix. For now, you can hit play somewhere from here! The first episode is me reading out loud an earlier issue on gender and renewable energy. I chose this one because tomorrow, I’m basically back with the follow-up. As announced last week, I’ll be interviewing Marielle Feenstra about her work on gender and energy poverty. I’ll keep reading out older issues, at least the ones that you seemed to like, judging by the open rates. Basically, I’ll experiment a little, to see what works. Till tomorrow, Marten Sources cited in the podcast Clancy, Joy, and Ulrike Roehr. 2003. "Gender and energy: is there a northern perspective?" Energy for Sustainable Development. 7: 44-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0973-0826(08)60364-6 Fraune, Cornelia. 2015. "Gender matters: Women, renewable energy, and citizen participation in Germany". Energy Research & Social Science. 7: 55-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.02.005 Ryan, Sarah E. 2014. "Rethinking gender and identity in energy studies". Energy Research & Social Science. 1: 96-105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.02.008 Standal, Karina, Marta Talevi, and Hege Westskog. 2020. "Engaging men and women in energy production in Norway and the United Kingdom: The significance of social practices and gender relations". Energy Research & Social Science. 60: 101338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.101338 (Open Access) Tjørring, Lise. 2016. "We forgot half of the population! The significance of gender in Danish energy renovation projects". Energy Research & Social Science. 22: 115-124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2016.08.008 If you do not have the appropriate credentials to cross the paywall to these articles, maybe you can check out https://sci-hub.tw (just copy paste in the doi number), or if you are uncomfortable with that, send me a message and I’ll lend you a copy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sociallifeofenergy.substack.com