1. business and industrial
2. energy
3. renewable energy

Redirecting research about energy and
people: from “if only” to “social potential”
Mithra Moezzi
Center for Urban Studies
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon
USA
[email protected]
Kathryn B. Janda
Lower Carbon Futures
Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3QY
United Kingdom
[email protected]
Keywords
social innovation, energy savings potential, user behaviour,
non-residential buildings, residential buildings, practices, organisations, institutions
of “social potential” as a counterpoint to the widely accepted
forms of technical and economic potential that underpin most
of today’s energy efficiency policies.
Abstract
Introduction
How societies use or conserve energy has been addressed
sporadically by social scientists for more than a century. Considering energy use from a social perspective rather than a
technical one offers an opportunity to rethink energy use and
how it might change. With some exceptions, however, much of
the people-centred work in the energy field focuses on changing the behaviour of individuals around a relatively fixed set
of “energy services” rather than considering the larger social
contexts, professional cultures, and institutional expectations
that shape activities, habits, and practices behind energy use.
This paper discusses a broader potential contribution of social
sciences in improving understanding of energy supply and demand and how policy might reshape these. It promotes opening the research agenda beyond the study of individual behaviour in homes, suggesting richer ground to help move beyond
the treatment of social factors as barriers to be overcome. The
paper provides an overview of the basic genres of research on
people and energy and focuses on three common “missed understandings” evident in the new push to change individuals:
(1) “If only they knew”: individual choice and its limits; (2) “If
only they could be made to care”: romantic notions of people’s
lives and future utopias; and (3) “If only they stayed home”:
direct residential consumption vs. the energy implications of
everyday life and work. Beyond individuals, communities, and
organizations, we suggest opportunities beyond these levels
that have yet to be well-recognized. We discuss the concept
Current debates on how policy and research can reduce energy
consumption in buildings took root four decades ago. These
debates have developed around particular frameworks, vocabularies, and tools, which enable us to talk to each other but
also constrain ways of thinking and acting (Lutzenhiser 2011;
Moezzi and Bartiaux 2007). Overall the complexity of energy
use has been rendered into a relatively neatly ordered portfolio
of things, problems, and processes, along with corresponding
models, policy options and program logics for affecting this
energy use. These models, policies, and programs are bound
with bureaucratic needs for accountability, narrowing what can
be seen and done (Brown 2009), in turn limited by the difficulty
of observing energy use in detail. The thorniest element in this
set of energy problems and solutions is its vision on the role
of people in creating and changing energy use. As noted by
Lutzenhiser (2011), past theoretical and policy models of energy use and savings combine “strong truth claims, very limited
predictive power, little or no social science content, and selfreferential justification.”
With climate change at a policy forefront, even bigger promises for future energy efficiency are being made. Governments
set ambitious “aspirational” goals for reducing energy use and
greenhouse gas emissions, followed by stories and plans and as
to how these changes will come about. The UK Climate Change
Act of 2008, for example, sets the target that the UK carbon
account in 2050 will be at least 80 % lower than the 1990 base-
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line, and in 2006, the UK government specified an “ambition”
that all new homes will be “zero carbon” by 2016. Similarly,
California’s goal is that all new homes will be “net zero energy”
by 2020 and that all new commercial construction will be “net
zero energy” by 2030. Marketing and other public education efforts speak in hyperbole about the benefits of energy efficiency
and energy conservation, “low hanging fruit,” and in the United
States at least, “fruit lying on the ground” (U.S. DOE 2009).
The due dates are still in the future, yet few who have been in
the energy efficiency business for long may expect that these
aspirational goals will be met (without substantial redefinition), or that energy efficiency fruit will finally become broadly
attractive. The models, narratives, and policies at hand seem
unprepared for the challenges that are being made of them, as
a companion paper in these proceedings describes (Janda and
Topouzi 2013). What to make of this idealised world, and a tendency to wishful theories? What do we think of as an “energy
problem”? Who frames this problem, and what does the frame
contain? What if we really considered energy use to be a social
practice rather than a technical or individual one?
Toward addressing these questions, this paper begins with
some of the limitations of past research on energy and society
and its application to policy. We discuss a set of master assumptions about hopes and plans for the role of people in changing
energy use: (1) “If only they knew”: the emphasis on individual choice and information; (2) “If only they could be made
to care”: romantic notions of people’s lives and future utopias;
and (3) “If only they stayed home”: the focus on people using
energy at home rather than in non-residential settings. We then
move to some suggestions for circumnavigating these shoals.
Building beyond the notions of technical potential and behavioural potential for energy savings, we argue for a concept of
social potential to provide scope for action beyond individuals buying things and choosing to take conservation actions
at home. In particular, we argue that untapped social potential
for change in home and work settings could be considered by
policy makers and researchers in much the same way as technical potential does. We suggest that a citizen science approach
might help reconfigure the “knowing” and “caring” elements of
behaviour and technology change, overall supporting a more
sympathetic, realistic, view of people, rather than a subjugating, heavily moralistic, or fantastical one. We also discuss how a
“middle-out” approach to transitions can help move away from
individualistic analysis and include work settings and professional practices within the exploration of social potential.
Research Genres
How societies are motivated to use or conserve energy has been
a topic addressed by social scientists for more than a century
(Rosa, Machlis, and Keating 1988). However, only a limited
subset of questions about the relationship between energy and
society are commonly addressed in the energy efficiency arena.
Many researchers have called for a more complete heuristic of
energy use (Lutzenhiser 1992; Wilhite et al. 2000), reviewing
the various disciplines and thought traditions that have been
used to address energy use, whether organized by disciplines
(e.g., Bartiaux 2009; Moezzi and Lutzenhiser 2010; Wilhite
et al. 2000), keyword searches and approaches for integration (e.g., Keirstead 2006), or journal databases to compare
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clusters of different literatures and methodological traditions
(Schweber and Leiringer 2012). Drawing from these reviews
we identify some dominant themes, vocabularies and memes in
building energy efficiency research to date, and then consider
vocabularies and memes that are still missing from the research
represented in policy.
Disciplines and Perspectives
Table 1 outlines major disciplines and research traditions that
have contributed to the industry’s understanding of the relationship between energy use and social goals, and the dominant
themes and vocabularies used in each. Engineering and economics approaches have dominated energy demand research
and policy. Along with psychology, these domains have been
oriented to directly influencing residential energy use. Engineering has been central, supporting policy goals to increase
the efficiency of devices and structures. Economic criteria have
served to justify and direct engineering change, under the basic
assumption that cost-effectiveness is socially desirable, and is
therefore a reliable indicator of social desires. Psychology has
often supported economics- and engineering-formulated direction, asking why people don’t adopt energy efficiency technologies or conservation measures and what might get them to
do so. Behavioural economics has offered fresh theories on why
people deviate from economic theories of decision-making as
well as on how to overcome some of these deviations. Despite
the richness of these fields, they have typically been mobilised
in fairly narrow ways in the energy efficiency field, and research
on non-technical aspects of energy use has been dominated by
positivist traditions (Schweber and Leiringer 2012).
Stepping away from device-oriented and individual-oriented
views, sociology, anthropology and social studies of science
each address broader scopes, but with less ability to speak of
prediction and how to create change. They treat social groups
as primary consumers, see technologies as socially constructed
and managed at a variety of scales, trace shared meanings and
practices in social life, and explore cross-sectoral patterns of
variation and change in energy use. Social scientists see energy
use less as a matter of individual choice than as a set of practices situated by social groups and technological configurations.
From this perspective, reducing energy use requires changes in
the entire fabric of society, not just changes to the technologies
involved with energy production and consumption.
Turning to how these disciplinary traditions have been used
in policy discussions and arguments, most work about people
and energy use has focused on changing the behaviour of individuals rather than considering social contexts, professional
cultures, institutional expectations, and technological landscapes that shape our activities, habits, and practices (Guy and
Shove 2000; Wilhite et al. 2000). Table 2 distils the main assumptions of the four major domains as applied to the policy
tasks of understanding and particularly changing energy use.
Models and Narratives
The energy efficiency industry has historically cast itself as offering solutions to an evolving set of problems – energy shortages, resource conservation, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, national security – and constructed a corresponding set
of agendas (Lutzenhiser 2011; Wilhite et al. 2000). In so doing,
the field has developed a set of models which circulate at many
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Table 1. Disciplines and Fields; Themes and Vocabularies.
Discipline/Research Tradition
Some Dominant Themes & Vocabularies
Engineering
Technical energy efficiency, physics, services, asset ratings, user
behaviour
Economics
Investments and cost-effectiveness; demand elasticity; utility
Psychology
Attitudes, values, commitments, beliefs, goals, behaviours, decisions
Social psychology
Norms, contexts, habits
Behavioural economics
Choice architecture, nudges
User-Centred Design/Human Factors
Users; device design; micro-interactions connecting to behavioural and
social sciences
Architecture
Building design, passive solar, passive house, intelligent building, user
interaction
Sociology
Practices, habitus, social groups, communities, shared social meanings
of consumption
Political science
Political party platforms, state and non-state actors
Anthropology
Cultures, power structures, interactions with physical world
Social studies of technology
Social interpretation of devices and structures; scripts; assemblages;
regimes; systems of provision
Table 2. Putting Perspectives to Work: Differences in Focus, Objective, and Policy Strategies by Core Domains.
Perspective
Basic Explanations of Energy
Use
Primary Research Objectives
Policy Strategies
Understand and increase device
and thermal efficiency
Promote technological innovation
and dissemination via regulation or
appeals to market, often combined
with an economics perspective
Consumer as utility-maximiser
subject to budget constraints
Understand and use price
signals to influence consumer
action
Change or communicate prices of
energy or energy-using goods
toward encouraging reduced energy
consumption or increased uptake of
technical efficiency
Psychology
Individual expression; mental
processes
Understand and influence
individual perceptions about and
actions related to energy use,
energy services, or their
environmental effects
Convince people of advantages (on
a variety of dimensions) of using
less energy or using more efficient
products
Sociology,
Anthropology,
Social Studies
of Technology
Socially-negotiated patterns of
consumption; focus on groups,
cultures and influences of larger
social systems
Understand variability and
patterns of consumption and the
social origins of those patterns
Examine people’s life
circumstances, look for sources of
constraint and outside influences
that shape consumption
Physics,
Engineering
Characteristics of buildings and
technology
Economics
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levels and in many forms – test protocols, building simulation models, program logic models, and schema for behaviour
change; see Lutzenhiser (2011) for discussion of this “bestiary.”
The danger is that models can be mistaken as ultimate truths
rather than as tools to help organise observation or to aid critical discussion. In particular, a “people problem” in energy use
is often constructed where people do not appear to fit model
assumptions, be they about buying cost-effective widgets, using assumed-proper levels of light or temperatures, or accepting prescribed sets of responsibilities in combatting climate
change. Efforts to change energy use have often emphasized
getting people to match model assumptions rather than squaring available evidence of model efficacy (Wilhite et al. 2000) or
even seeking this evidence. That is, people are assumed to be
at fault. For example, most debates about the “energy efficiency
gap,” which purports that society deeply under-invests in energy efficiency, tend to see this underinvestment as a failure of
people to understand what is in their best interest, rather than
a failure of energy efficiency to provide sufficient enticement.
“Barriers” debates suggest other contributing factors beyond
irrationality, but are usually deployed with understanding
that policy should help remove these barriers. Similarly, when
buildings perform much differently than designed, the problem
is commonly attributed to occupants not acting appropriately
rather than assessing where and why design assumptions went
wrong (Lenoir et al. 2011). The net result is that the energy efficiency industry’s view of a “better energy future” is one where
people, finally enticed by marketing or information, behave as
in the blueprints provided by current models. This story is internally coherent and logical. It could even be true … if people
knew, cared, and stayed at home. The evidence to date, however, suggests that this view is unlikely to manifest as is. Moreover,
its dominance in the energy efficiency field may be preventing
the development of other narratives and possibilities that might
be more intriguing to a wider audience.
Truth is not a precondition for a successful story. In the field
of social studies of technology, there is a famous story about
an architect who designed the height of a particular bridge in
New York City to keep busses (and bus riders) out of an area
intended to be exclusive to a wealthier class (Joerges 1999).
This parable, as Joerges (1999) calls it, has been cited in the literature hundreds of times as an example of how artefacts have
politics and reflect and create social groupings, and in turn that
academic narratives also have politics. The problem is that evidence for the truthfulness of the parable of the intentionallydiscriminatory bridge height is weak and ambiguous. Rather
the story is intriguing and sometimes convenient. There are
similar “Chinese whispers” (Joerges 1999) happening in the
various subfields of energy and policy debate. Some stories are
specific, such as about high performing buildings, unusually
successful policies, or promising experiments. For example,
an experiment on towel re-use in hotel rooms has been cited
scores of times as an illustration of how easy it is to get people
to comply with perceived social norms for pro-environmental
behaviour (e.g., Tracey 2005), but with little attention to the
transferability of the principle or empirical evidence for environmental benefits. Others whispers are factoids such as savings ranges detached from their original contexts, policy lists
(Fine and O’Neill 2009) such as those of market barriers, mental models (Rajkovich, Diamond, and Burke 2010), or popular
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assumptions such as “zombie facts” (Shipworth n.d.) about energy use that take on a life of their own (Koomey et al. 2002).
These memes, like physical artefacts, can productively misinterpret evidence (Joerges 1999) and constitute a type of folklore
that survives what one expects to be the relatively harsh world
of intellectuals (Fine and O’Neill 2009).
Randall (2009) points to two parallel master narratives offered to the public on climate change. One depicts a terrifying future, removed from the audience in time and space. The
other makes “bland and ineffective proposals” for changes that
can currently take place to supposedly solve or neutralize the
first problem. Among these proposals are elements very familiar to the energy efficiency industry: “take small steps” (e.g.,
buy CFLs), “market transformation”, “technology will save us”,
“decarbonisation,” and “the happiness tale” involving better humans, more community spirit, and fewer problems (Randall
2009). These narratives, Randall argues, have failed to recognize the public’s anxiety about current conditions and the near
future, and deny rather than accept change as reality. Whether
present public fears for the near future are about climate change
per se, or rather about other set of traumas or headline disasters, the idea that setting the clothes washer to “cold” or buying an LED provides immunity to these threats is not credible.
Randall suggests that rather than telling unbelievable stories
and piling more responsibility onto individuals toward barely
effectual prescribed actions, it would be better to acknowledge
realities, help people cope, and help build a more participatory
form of engagement. The concept of social potential for changing energy use, discussed below, aligns with this idea of a more
participatory form of engagement.
Framing and Tapping “Potential”
Above we described some of the ways in which disciplines,
models, and narratives shape how we think about where we’re
going and what is possible. Stories about possible energy futures are endemic in research agendas, policy goals and rationales, utility programs, technology development, forecasting,
and so on. There are a number of ways of framing what the
future untapped energy savings potential is. In this section, we
describe technical potential and behavioural potential.
Technical potential
For decades, the concept of technical potential of energy efficiency has been a fundamental tool for the energy efficiency
industry in planning and defending the industry’s role (Shove
1998). Technical potential denotes a best-case energy efficiency
scenario. It is based on engineering and economic calculations
which are performed “without concern for the probability of
successful implementation” (Rosenfeld et al. 1993, p. 50), and
assumes that the energy efficiency technologies under consideration are appropriate for all building configurations, infinitely
available at or below the cost considered. At this level, there are
no economic, social, psychological risks that would dissuade
consumers or organisations from adopting them. Economic
potential refers to the subset of technical potential that remains
after applying a cost-effectiveness cut-off for saved energy at
the current price of delivered energy. In this techno-economic
scenario, humans enter only implicitly, as economic agents, as
generators of energy service needs, and invisibly as part of the
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calibration to estimate achievable potential, as used in some
technical potential studies (Moezzi et al. 2009). Together, these
assumptions about technical and economic potential provide
the backbone of the Physical-Technical-Economic Model
(PTEM) of energy use, which dominates the energy efficiency
field (Lutzenhiser 1993; Lutzenhiser 2011).
Techno-economic potential is one particular construction
of how energy use is seen and the options available for influence and change. It leaves little room to account for human
variability and usually no way to question energy service needs
or systems of provisions, but rather judges less or more efficient options within a relatively narrow band of consideration.
Building science has made many advances, but it can also create conundrums in an attempt to correct or even remove the
variations that people introduce by using buildings. Recent
work on the “prebound effect” for example shows that the calculations used to rate housing in Germany, the Netherlands,
Belgium, and the UK consistently overestimate the amount of
energy that dwellings actually use (Sunikka-Blank and Galvin
2012), and work on low-energy design commercial buildings
show that assumptions about what people will do can be very
optimistic (e.g., Lenoir et al 2011). The idealisations embedded
in technical potential scenarios are familiar, but they are not
necessarily true, and the ability to compel people to act “properly” is limited.
Behavioural potential (and ABCism)
While social and behavioural scientists have worked in the energy efficiency industry since the beginning, in the past decade
there has been much more interest in people’s role in energy
use. Most of the new attention has focused on how to get individuals to change behaviour. Energy use feedback, in particular,
has been imagined as potentially creating a sea change in how
individuals think about energy use and subsequently how they
actually use it. Policies are then created to help actualise these
expectations for change. In the UK, for example, smart meters
are scheduled to be installed in all households by 2020, along
with in-home energy use feedback to instigate households to
reduce their carbon emissions (Hargreaves et al. 2013). Governmental and other energy efficiency agencies often promote
“easy” behavioural actions to reduce energy use (e.g., ADEME
2009; Efficiency Vermont 2009; EST 2009), and conferences
are devoted to “behaviour change” (e.g., the Behavior, Energy,
and Climate Change Conference held annually in the United
States).
Though less formally than for technical potential, the idea
that there is untapped behavioural energy savings potential
has helped inspire and justify policy and research attention
to changing individual behaviour. There are few systematic
investigations, however, that translate the concept of “potential” to human action. Dietz et al. (2009) examined the reasonably achievable potential for near-term reductions by altered
adoption and use of available technologies in homes and nonbusiness travel in the US. They estimated that the implementation of these interventions could save an estimated 20 % of
household direct emissions or 7.4 % of US national emissions,
with little or no reduction in household well-being (Dietz et al.
2009). A Canadian utility outlined the potential energy savings
of a number of residential sector and office building behavioural conservation measures, posing these savings alongside
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technical potential; in a companion analysis, this study also
considered lifestyle change potential with a more aggressive
bundle of transformations (BC Hydro 2007).
This behavioural potential work has highlighted the importance of people in shaping energy use, in contrast to technical
potential which sees people as average users and investors. But
it also raises important questions. First, the changes considered
are often marginal changes, analogous to marginal changes in
technical energy efficiency. They imagine that individuals will
learn to adopt more disciplined energy actions that better conform with assumptions about what level of energy services people need, what constitutes waste, and what constitutes proper
energy use behaviour. Second, the levels of savings calculated for this proper use are modest, even negligible, for many
households (Hazas et al. 2012). Even in aggregate, as the two
examples above suggest, conservation actions as currently conceived do not add up very impressively relative to policy goals
for energy savings. Third, there is not much serious thought as
to why, exactly, people would want to undertake these changes.
In theory, people should pursue technical potential to get more
for less; but behavioural potential, as usually conceived, is generally about getting less for less, or getting rather abstract benefits such as doing the right thing as conceived by somebody
else. These improved behaviours don’t promise to make one
healthier or more attractive. Finally, the focus on individuals
can obscure the need for higher-level, more effective actions
(Crompton 2008).
The attention to conservation actions provides a contrast to
the dominant Physical-Technical-Economic-Model (PTEM) of
energy use (Lutzenhiser 1993), but overall the vision of people’s
role in shaping energy use has been limited (Bartiaux 2009).
It has largely focused on changing individual behaviour using a calculus involving attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, barriers,
contexts, choices, and so on (Shove 2010). This conventional
“ABC” narrows the potential contribution of behavioural and
social sciences to understanding and helping energy use to a
supporting role in fulfilling mechanistic notions of how to go
about creating proper behaviour (Shove 2010).
Beyond PTEMs and ABCs: Destinations Underexplored
There are parallels between traditional efforts to increase
technical energy efficiency and the new efforts toward energy
behaviour change. The focus has shifted from altering technology to changing behaviours, where humans are still seen
instrumentally, in parallel to technology, to generate calculable
savings or program success. Programs are intended to create
more disciplined consumers that are more engaged in generating energy savings than previously; marginal increases in technical efficiency have parallels as marginal changes in energy
use behaviours. The technical information available or used,
on the other hand, remains relatively immune to behavioural
or social variability.
If Only …
Below we discuss three common assumptions about the nature
of the “energy and behavior” problem and its solutions: the
importance of information and individual choice; the hopes
for moral transformation; and the view that behaviour is in
the home. Though attractive and tailored to policy solutions,
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each of these mental models creates fallacies that reduce people
to simple actors and limits ability to see energy use as social
processes.
“If only they knew”: individual choice and its limits
Energy behaviour change programs typically provide individuals with information in the expectation that this information
will inspire change toward lower energy use. The assumption
is that there are compelling changes that could be made, that
people would make them if they had more facts about energy
use, and implicitly, that this is an effective way for policies and
programs to treat people. Many shortcomings of the information-deficit model have already been identified (Owens and
Driffill 2008), though hopes for changing individual energy
use through providing information remains strong. Individuals can indeed change behaviours. The trouble lies in distinguishing the possible from the probable. For information to
work via a direct path, a series of steps is assumed to hold
true: that the information will gain sufficient attention from
the right people, that recipients will interpret it as inviting personal action, that such action actually take place, that it and any
consequent effects save energy, and that the actions or savings
persist. Reviews of feedback program experience (Darby 2006;
Fischer 2008) indicate that, while adding feedback does sometimes seem to be associated with lower energy use, the results
are only for those who made the choice to participate in the
program (large-scale opt-out-only programs such as bill comparisons are an exception). But relatively few people may be
looking for the types of information currently provided. A US
report, for example, estimates that the average utility customer
spends only 6 minutes per year interacting with their utility
(Cooper et al. 2012). Second, energy use information provided
is presumed to be interpreted by the individuals receiving it as
indicating that something is wrong with their current practices,
and in turn, that there are compelling ways to modify actions
to reduce this energy use. But reducing energy use isn’t effortless. Third, to make a difference in energy use or greenhouse
gas emissions, the actions must be reasonably effective. But in
part because of the diversity and complexity of energy use, high
quality information on what is effective is difficult to provide.
“If only they could be made to care”: romantic notions of people’s lives and future utopias
Beyond monetary savings from lower energy bills, reducing energy use through behaviour change is often framed as a moral
obligation – doing one’s part and saving the earth, bears, etc.
To project this moral obligation, behaviour change policy visions adopt utopian notions of what people will be like once
they finally understand that their energy use has an impact on
the environment. Education about energy use has focused on
trying to ensure that people believe in climate change, promoting the idea that changes in how one acts and especially what
one buys are personal responsibilities to help “prevent” climate
change (Randall 2009). Despite its more immediate relevance
and practical import, there has been less attention to building
literacy on the contribution of energy use to climate change,
still less in helping people actually understand energy use
(Janda 2011).
While discussion of the moral elements of environmental action is beyond the scope of this paper, recent work on
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how energy use feedback is received in everyday life illustrates some practical and ethical complexities that are not
imagined when energy use data is seen as neutral information (Hargreaves et al. 2010; Hargreaves et al. 2013). As to the
practical aspects, even among households that are interested
enough in feedback to participate in a study, feedback may
not be interesting to many people for very long. A household
might learn for a while, but typically feedback may fade to the
background, and be used, if anything, to diagnose problems
rather than to change habits (Hargreaves et al. 2013). If this
still amounts to a persistent reduction in energy use, then
feedback has fulfilled some of its presumed role. Several researchers have suggested that, rather than supporting fluidity
in energy use, feedback can lead to a hardening of practices:
people accept where they’re at as good enough (Hargreaves et
al. 2013; Strengers 2008). Secondly, there are non-fiscal costs
that accrue to changing use, often overlooked in economics
(Alcott and Greenstone 2012) as well as morals-based models
of behaviour change. Feedback monitors, among other material objects, take their place in the “techno-ethics” of sustainable
living (Hobson 2006). Big data analytics are applied to judge
“good” and “bad” consumption. Yet the presumption that one’s
current energy use is “wrong” can be interpreted as a nag or an
unfair moral judgement (Hargreaves et al. 2013). Pressures to
change practices can create new burdens in everyday life, and
these may disproportionately affect certain groups (CarlssonKanyama and Linden 2007).
“If only they stayed home”: beyond residential consumption
The prototypical energy user evoked in speculating on behaviour change is a person in the home, often a single-family
owner-occupied one. The actions targeted are how that person
uses devices in the home, which overlooks indirect energy consumption, transportation, and lifestyles (Bin and Dowlatabadi,
2005), as well as an energy consumption outside the home.
When people go out the door, they are parts of organisations
and institutions. Some are even building professionals. The focus on direct residential consumption misses the energy associated with livelihoods and it fails to engage with the human and
social aspects of organizations.
Much as there is no average person, there is no average organization. Although businesses might be expected to look
after their own economic self-interest in a rational manner,
there are many ways of doing business. Although some organizations pay attention to corporate social responsibility,
others do not. This is particularly true in the case of small and
medium enterprises (SMEs). Janda (2012) outlines how little
attention has been paid to the human and social elements on
energy use in non-residential settings. A global survey of 700
listed property companies and fund managers revealed that
the majority of the companies surveyed are not yet actively
managing environmental issues in their property portfolio
(Kok et al., 2010).
Although understanding energy use in the home is complicated, understanding it outside the home is an even greater
challenge. There are a larger number of building types and
sizes, more participants doing vastly different things (both
within and across organizations), and many different types of
stakeholders. Take, for example the issue of tenanted space,
discussed by Axon et. al (2011). Approximately half of the to-
1. Foundations of future energy policy
tal UK stock of “core” commercial buildings (shops, offices
and industrial premises) is occupied by tenants (Dixon 2009).
Given that it is logistically much more difficult to reduce the
energy use in commercial buildings that are occupied by tenants than owner-occupied spaces, there is a clear need to identify effective and coherent ways to maximise energy reduction
in tenanted commercial space. To reduce energy use in commercial buildings it is necessary to increase technical energy
efficiency through the design and refurbishment process, and
concurrently, manage building energy services and expectations in a coordinated, complimentary way, while negotiating
a change in the traditionally adversarial relationship between
tenant and landlord. This requires an interdisciplinary understanding not only of engineering science, but also social science to understand the variety of factors that impact the way
that landlords lease and tenants occupy and use that space.
No wonder energy efficiency researchers envision society as a
group of people staying at home: it is a simplifying assumption
that keeps not just one can of worms closed, but entire cases
of cans of worms.
Consequences of “if only” thinking Models are useful and unavoidable. But the “if only” world is
sparse and simple, where energy use is intricately embedded in
everyday life, and behaviour change models have paid little serious attention to why people might want to change. It has also
been fairly resistant to contrary evidence, and the potentials it
offers are sustained in the belief that these models of better-behaved people are a compelling, achievable prospect. We suggest
that there are some complementary and possibly more effective
approaches that better recognize the social nature of energy use
and behaviour change.
Considering the many disciplines that have, and could further, talk about energy use, some important vocabulary is missing in most discussions about the role of people in changing
energy use: citizen; social group; power; interaction; critical
thinking; creativity; culture; equity; plausibility; effort; risk;
effectiveness; honesty; adaptation; societal resilience; vulnerability. In the English language, for example, the common
and relatively modern identification of people as “consumers”
rather than “citizens” can be identified. A word-usage comparison on millions of English books showed that between
1950 and 1968, ”citizen” and ”consumer” were used with nearly
equal frequency; by 1980, “consumer” was twice as common
as ”citizen.”1 Janda (2007) argues that the increasing identification of Americans as self-interested economic actors rather
than public citizens has implications for the implementation of
solar PV in both public and private ventures. The exhortation
to “buy more solar” rather than “use less energy” can result in
increased energy use and expense, rather than reductions.
Below we explore the notion of social potential as a conceptual model than might help energy policy and programs escape
their heavy emphasis on self-interested “consumers” to seeing
better seeing people as members of social groups.
1. Google Ngram Viewer, accessed 22 February 2013. The gap between the frequencies narrowed subsequently, but ”consumer” was still 62 % more frequent
than ”citizen” in 2008, the last year for which data are available. Google Ngram
Viewer indexes phrases in over 5 million books published since 1980.
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Towards Social Potential
Both technical potential and behavioural potential are useful
conceptual tools. They help direct attention to possible approaches to various energy problems and invite debate on the
assumptions used to construct them. As models, they also limit
the types of change that can be seen. Technical potential, for
example, is formulated to address the efficiency of devices and
components; it is rarely used to capture potential for changing
systems of provision or to question needs and how they have
been constructed. The presumed reason for wanting to achieve
this technical potential is simply efficiency or cost-effective energy savings, as implied in the “fruit” metaphor noted above.
Similarly, behavioural potential is oriented to the actions of individuals. It sees what humans do as important, yet limits the
view to fairly narrow ranges of discrete conservation behaviour,
and does not address (or intend to address) the “why” of these
actions much beyond that they fulfil a top-down policy need,
which is cast, at the level of individual energy consumers, as a
way of doing “the right thing.” Policy attention in the behaviour
realm has shown a “persistent emphasis in policy discourse on
awareness-raising and education” (Owens and Driffill 2008,
p. 4413).
Social processes are gradually receiving more attention in
technical realms, but there is far less attention paid to social
process than behaviour, and far less attention paid to behaviour
than to technology. For example, in the recent Global Energy
Assessment, there is a section on “Social, Professional, and Behavioural Opportunities and Challenges.” However, this section represents only four pages out of the 125 devoted to energy
end use in buildings (Urge-Vorsatz et al. 2011). As we argue the
next section, energy using practices are largely social matters
not individual ones, so we need a view of people that better
captures this social nature.
To help overcome some of these limitations, below we sketch
the concept of “social potential” (Janda 2012) and provide several illustrations. Table 3 summarizes some of the basic characteristics of technical potential, behavioural potential and the
proposed concept of social potential. These elements are discussed further below. Like technical and behavioural potential,
social potential can serve as a vector for constructive imagination that helps transcend some of the limitations of technical
and behavioural potential, by admitting a broader scope of actions that can be considered within. In particular, it could help
transform the view of people from the “consumers” of technical and behavioural potential to citizens and members of social
groups instead. In so doing it can also enrich thinking about
the “why” of change. Like technical potential, social potential is
conceived as a tool to think with. But also like other “potential”
concepts, it might also leave an imprint on policies, and begin
to reshape ideas of how and why changes might take place.
Both technical and social potential define an envelope of
opportunity in an ideal world that only loosely approximates
the real one. In both, the content and direction of the envelope
of opportunity orient the analytical and practical activities of
policymakers, analysts, and others dedicated to moving toward
that goal. Whereas technical potential starts with technical opportunities and largely either ignores or holds social conditions
constant, social potential invites flexibility and advancement in
the social realm while holding current technical opportunities
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1. Foundations of future energy policy
Table 3. Basic characteristics of technical, behavioural, and social potential for energy use reduction.
Perspective Technical Potential Behavioural Potential Social Potential Elements stabilized Fixes need for technology and energy service Fixes need for technology and generalises appropriate use Centres on social groups; may include changes in technology, behaviour, or systems of provision as appropriate for given context (rather than averaged across population) Imagines Transformation to a technically efficient world Transformation to a world of careful interactions between individuals and devices Transformation to a world of people as citizens participating in the project of lower energy use; could include attention to forms of energy supply, adaptation Elements varied Looks to change acquisitions to more efficient versions; may also envision development of more efficient technology Looks to influence individual’s use of energy services within the scope of limited band Looks to social groups and social relations as systems that can affect energy use; can address to change what energy services are called for and how they are delivered, within a limited band of variation in technology development Example: lower thermostat when leaving the house; unplug electronics or set to automatically power down Levers Money Money, morality Socially-­‐negotiated relationships; civic duties and participation; may include money, ethics, etc. Constraints Economic level: cost-­‐effective for program, adopter, or both Often based on engineering assumptions of what services are needed (e.g. temperatures required, or decisions between off and standby) Difficult to pre-­‐define; asks for creativity; avoids imagining moral and behavioural transformations to conform to model assumptions Example: higher-­‐efficiency furnaces/boilers Achievable level: calibration to account for experience that increased efficiency may not be adopted for a variety of reasons Examples: citizen science; professional reconfigurations; local versus house-­‐wide heating; adaptive comfort Presumed motivations Investment gains Waste reduction, cost savings, ”proper use” Could combine waste reduction, cost savings, with other benefits (e.g., pleasure, comfort, control) Analytical Tools Often sophisticated models of the physical world (e.g., building simulation) coupled with economic models and criteria Crude models of the physical world coupled with crude models of assumed behaviour Could use comparison, and attention to differences and changes in energy use, to help speculate on possible changes and to devise potential interventions Principal Policy & Program Instruments Economic incentives, codes & standards, marketing Education/information such as energy use feedback and home energy audits; social marketing Diffuse; voluntary approaches to self-­‐
regulation; attention to definition and practice of what energy is for Strengths Aligned with economic and industrial growth, innovation, and technological solutions Sees people as potentially important considerations beyond the average-­‐using economic man seen in technical potential Aligned to capture diverse interplay between individuals, social groups (organizations, professions, etc.) And technological systems, in different contexts. Potentially can be integrated with other sustainability efforts No accounting for non-­‐fiscal costs such as effort, loss of amenity Difficult to identify constraints; might typically lack the simple quantitative arguments that are easily made with technical and behavioural potential Countable and amenable to evaluation tools. Savings always available Easier to target (i.e., purchases) Weaknesses & Critiques Relative savings at device/building level may not align with absolute reductions in energy use or greenhouse gas emissions (citations) Technology often does not work as designed Rebound/take-­‐back Potential savings may be quite small Difficult to measure behaviour & assess change Questionable persistence Onus on individual 212 ECEEE 2013 SUMMER STUDY – RETHINK, RENEW, RESTART
Increases complexity of solution sets, therefore exposes/undermines simplicity of technical potential. 1. Foundations of future energy policy
relatively constant. The term social potential offers an admittedly idealistic notion of a world where social organisation is
optimised for energy performance. A socially-optimised world
is not necessarily more probable or better than a technologically-optimised one, but it would be different. It could be different in a way that could be intriguing and socially interesting:
tapping into the creativity of people and social desires rather
modelled projections of what people should want. A sociallyoptimised energy world might, for instance, foster vernacular
architectural styles rather than international ones; make practical use of the outdoors; value energy sufficiency; and model
buildings as they are used in practice instead of as the sum of
their physical parts. In this view, people and groups become
valuable and definable assets, rather than instruments of policy
or causes of energy use problems.
What kind of prospective changes might be seen as a matter
of social potential for energy use? The discussions below offer
two additional forms that the concept of social potential could
help develop: citizen science and “middle out” approaches.
Building Literacy and Citizen Science
What if building users were conceptualized as citizens rather
than consumers? What would a citizen science agenda look like
in the built environment? Current citizen science initiatives
range from programs that provide scientific data analysis in the
pursuit of social objectives (e.g., the Louisiana Bucket Brigade2)
to programs that use humans as information processors in pursuit of scientific objectives (e.g., the Andromeda Project3). We
suggest that there may be a form of “citizen science” that increases user understanding of building phenomena and enables
researchers to build much-needed real-world datasets. Such an
approach could advance both social and scientific objectives, as
well as offer a different way of transcending two of the “if only”
problems articulated earlier. In contrast to the current “if only
they knew” approach, a citizen science approach would foster
the co-production of knowledge, rather than focusing on delivery mechanisms for information that is thought to be useful to
its lucky recipients. In contrast to “if only they cared”, the idea
here is not to produce an entire society that will suddenly care
about energy. But some organizations and some people already
care and need more help than the “easy” steps oriented toward
the lowest denominator of popular interest. So a citizen science
approach could leverage what people actually care about, rather
than trying to impose a particular form of caring constructed
from top-down assumptions of what should matter.
Consider, for example, who gathers, gets, and uses finegrained residential energy use data, and what purposes these
data serve. Currently, most smart meters for electricity provide
most of their intelligence to the utility rather than to the user.
Third party companies like OPower (opower.com) help feed
this utility intelligence back to the user, but the data and algorithms remain proprietary and closely guarded. The “customer”
in such business models is the utility, not the energy consumer.
On the other end of the spectrum, many hand held devices,
home electricity monitors, and building management systems
1-379-13 MOEZZI, JANDA
provide information to the user only. These tools often cannot provide a context in which to situate the data, and the data
gathered is either “lost” after the owner reviews it or saved in a
computer file with little or no onward analysis. Academics and
researchers who are interested in understanding the larger systems of consumption have had a very hard time getting access
to detailed consumption data that could be used to increase
their own knowledge as well as those of policy makers and energy users.
In the UK, a company called Pilio4 aims to bridge this particular information gap. Pilio is oriented toward small and
medium enterprises lacking electricity and gas meters that can
be read remotely and automatically. Because these customers
have to read their meters themselves anyway (rare in the US,
but common in the UK and elsewhere), they already have their
own data. But many of them don’t know how to use this data.
Pilio provides energy management advice and weather-adjusted analysis to help turn data into useful information. It also
asks its customers to contribute their information to Pilio’s data
set. By contributing their data to Pilio, they agree to be a part
of an evolving dataset that can identify clusters of buildings by
owner as well as by type or size. This will help researchers to
understand how different types of owners manage their properties, while helping owners understand their buildings better,
and in a broader technical and environmental context. Pilio is
working with some unusual clients, including the Church of
England and a network of theatres and performing arts venues.
Pilio’s efforts have demonstrated that it is possible to develop
networks of citizen scientists and demand-side participation
outside the utility infrastructure. These networks have the potential to simultaneously serve their participants and contribute to broader scientific goals. Moreover, they build a shared
community around knowledge exchange in ways that technical
potential cannot and behavioural potential does not.
Midstream and Sideways: a Middle-Out Approach to Social
Potential
The broader idea of building both geographic and non-geographic communities around understanding energy practices
could be pursued in several different ways. Is it possible to “deindividualize” the energy and social research process? What
forms might research in this unexplored area take? Janda and
Parag (Parag and Janda 2010; Janda 2011; Janda 2013) argue
that a “middle-out” perspective is useful in investigating potential roles a broader set of actors in creating societal change.
Social and technological innovations are commonly seen as
either being induced from the “top-down” or evolving from
the “bottom-up.” Instead, a “middle-out” perspective focuses
on agents of change that are located in the middle, in between
the top and the bottom. The middle in energy systems is conceptualized in several different ways. On the energy supply
side, the middle can be defined by levels of scale, ownership
and resource aggregation (e.g., regionally distributed generation developed at the community or local government level).
This level is in between the highly concentrated, centralized
systems common in electricity markets today and the distributed, decentralized systems envisioned in the late 1970s by fu-
2. http://www.labucketbrigade.org, tagline “Clean air. Justice. Sustainability.”
3. http://www.andromedaproject.org, “With the Andromeda Project, we hope that
you will help us find the thousands of star clusters hiding in [our data set]”
4. http://www.pilio-ltd.com/, tagline “Saving you energy, emissions, and money.”
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turists such as Amory Lovins. On the demand side, there are
also a number of different conceptions of the middle. In 2010,
the UK Research Councils devoted £4 million for research in
the area of “energy and communities,” which includes both
renewable energy supply and demand reduction projects at the
community level. In the residential sector, identify three main
groups of actors that play essential roles: central government,
energy suppliers and energy users (Parag and Darby 2009). Focusing on tenanted commercial properties, Axon et al. (2012)
argue for the use of the notion of a ‘building community’ that
is in the middle between the general political context and the
physical reality of a building, as well as situated between three
different disciplinary themes: (1) legal and property aspects
of improving energy performance; (2) policy context and
organizational response; and (3) technology adoption and
environmental performance. This perspective sees organizations and their practices as middle agents who are central to
the successful deployment of low-carbon buildings. Although
these different conceptions of the middle are not functionally or conceptually cohesive, they all have the ability to affect
change in several different directions: upstream, downstream
and sideways. By linking the top and the bottom more explicitly, this approach is both an alternative and complementary
to “bottom-up” and “top-down” efforts to implementing low
carbon innovations and practices in society.
One direction forward would be working with communitybased organizations, such as churches and schools. This orientation connects readily with the public participation in scientific research (PPSR) agenda and could be pursued in tandem
with citizen science scholars. Another avenue could focus on
known organizational owners with existing building portfolios,
seeking to develop an area of research similar to PPSR, but at
the organizational level. Energy researchers do not often study
the effects of different types of organizational owners but this
approach has a lot to contribute to the field (Axon et al. 2012;
Janda and Brodsky 2000; Janda 2008; Lutzenhiser et al. 2002).
The “middle” also involves the work, aims, and goals of building professionals. The role of professionals is understudied
compared to the role of homeowners, but it was the subject
of a recent special issue of the journal Building Research and
Information (Volume 41, issue 1).
Conclusions
The challenges that the energy efficiency industry has set out to
address are immense. The master narratives that guide so much
of the industry’s current efforts to reduce energy use reflect an
unrealistic and unnecessarily narrow view of people with respect to how and why they use energy. These narratives create
a tendency to see energy savings as a matter of coercing people
to fit assumptions of “rational man” (economic models), “obedient man” (if only they followed instructions or interpreted
data in particular ways), or “moral man” (if only they cared
enough), or restricting human action to the home. The two
concepts of energy savings potential currently in use, technical potential and behavioural potential, synchronize with these
assumptions. Both lack the ability to capture energy use as a
system of social processes. A complementary concept of “social
potential” for energy savings could serve as a focal point for
developing new tools and frameworks that invite a more active
214 ECEEE 2013 SUMMER STUDY – RETHINK, RENEW, RESTART
1. Foundations of future energy policy
engagement of people – as building users, as architects, or in
any number of other professions, as citizens – in helping define
and address energy problems.
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