Energy Biographies: Understanding the Dynamics of Energy Use for Energy Demand Reduction
Lead Research Organisation:
Cardiff University
Department Name: Sch of Social Sciences
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Thomas G
(2017)
Texturing Waste: Attachment and Identity in Every-Day Consumption and Waste Practices
in Environmental Values
Shirani, F.
(2021)
'Who cares about Valley people?' - lived experiences of energy vulnerability in the South Wales Valleys.
in Journal of Poverty and Social Justice
Shirani F
(2015)
Asking about the future: methodological insights from energy biographies
in International Journal of Social Research Methodology
Shirani F
(2017)
Critical moments? Life transitions and energy biographies
in Geoforum
Shirani F
(2013)
Disconnected futures: exploring notions of ethical responsibility in energy practices
in Local Environment
Shirani F
(2020)
What Counts as Success? Wider Implications of Achieving Planning Permission in a Low-Impact Ecovillage
in Environmental Values
Shirani F
(2014)
'I'm not a tree hugger, I'm just like you': changing perceptions of sustainable lifestyles
in Environmental Politics
Shirani F
(2015)
Geographies of Global Issues: Change and Threat
Roberts E
(2019)
"It's an Old House and That's How It Works": Living Sufficiently Well in Inefficient Homes
in Housing, Theory and Society
Roberts E
(2018)
Exploring the everyday energyscapes of rural dwellers in Wales: Putting relational space to work in research on everyday energy use
in Energy Research & Social Science
| Description | Drawing on areas of particular strength within the UK social sciences, the energy biographies project developed an innovative approach to investigating energy transitions in everyday life. Methodological innovation was a key part of our work (see under 'Research Tools and Methods' for details of our-up-to-date, interactive (and hence engaging) digital, multi-modal and qualitative longitudinal/temporal methods). Our energy biographies methods enabled participants to reflect on the invisible, dynamic ways in which they use energy in everyday life across a range of settings (home, work, travel) and in their local communities where demand reduction interventions are in place. Our findings therefore suggest that these methods make it possible to bring into the open a wider range of important issues to which energy researchers have paid insufficient attention in their efforts to expand research and theorising to explain demand trajectories. Such issues include the usually hidden kinds of emotional investments that we make in everyday objects that use energy (washing machines, cars), everyday practices (driving or cycling to work) and the material infrastuctures that provide us with our electricity supplies (see our article published in the journal 'Environmental Values'). Our research approach also made it possible to access people's stories about the kinds of changes they experience across their own lifecourse. Analysis of such energy biographies stories has led to some of our publicly reported findings in a number of interdisciplinary academic journals (eg Science, Technology and Human Values). These findings suggest that the assumption that disruptive transitions in people's lives (such as birth of a child, or moving house) may offer opportunities to change extensively how they use energy may be too optimistic. They point instead to the importance of further temporal and cultural identity dynamics relating, for example, to shared narrative genres, that are involved in creating or obstructing opportunities for change. Changes in energy use and demand are unlikely to be possible if they create concerns for people about their everyday dependencies on energy and a resultant sense of being unable to live out a worthwhile life (e.g. because they cannot keep alive valued identities and desires or sustain their relationships with significant others). Overall, our research suggests that energy researchers could benefit more from investigating people as complexly psychological and social subjects. This 'psychosocial' project framing brings out of our data a multiplicity of additional issues, such as having regard for the effort involved when people are seeking to work out what is the best thing to do; how to resolve moral tensions over long-established and/or contemporary values; how difficult it can be to think about a longer-term future based on common-sense, contemporary ideals of what counts as a life worth living. In our study, we have also reported on the possibilities opened up for critically investigating established guidance for changing energy behaviours and practices, by studying what we have called the 'emotional labour of meaning making' (for a more detailed account of our findings see the full end of grant report at http://energybiographies.org/our-work/our-findings/reports/). More broadly, we have put in place a platform of ideas, analysis and research resources that complement ones that are already well established in multi-disciplinary academic and policy research and that is currently focussed on generating understanding of how it might be possible to transform the UK's whole energy system. As such, our work is making a specific contribution to efforts towards meeting the UK's international obligations in reducing carbon emissions. It provides an understanding of a range of important checks and balances for contemporary change agencies that may be emphasising more issues specific ways of shaping futures-oriented work with and for the public at devolved and national levels, taking into account more interrelated environmental and societal problems. Our platform serves as a means of thickening and diversifying the space of contemporary social research on energy consumption so that demand trajectories can be understood as involving more or less meaningful forms of engagement with how energy is used and its relationship with other environmental problems, that can become invested with deep and complex emotions. This is an important step if we are to be able appreciate the wider cultural affordances of our psychosocial investments in energy and ways of living with and through difficult personal and societal transitions. Approaching issues around energy consumption from this direction changes our understanding of how particular energy using practices affect identity and enrich lives worth living. Psychosocial dimensions of practice can provide the resources for re-imagining energy futures through the everyday, and in particular, for imagining alternative visions of convenience and comfort that are decoupled from overconsumption. |
| Exploitation Route | The Energy Biographies study has made substantial progress in establishing a distinctive programme of work with significant potential to complement the whole systems change perspective that is currently leading the direction of UK energy research. Further work is required to maximise the project outcomes' potential. The following continuity activities have been, and continue to be, undertaken by some of the key team members in collaboration with a number of wider research networks : (i) 2015-2016 impact activities involved organising a knowledge sharing workshop early in 2016 with the UK-wide Carbon conversations project (www.carbonconversations.org; www.surefoot-effect.com). This project is now an open source resource for use in conducting public group work on how to enable people to contemplate difficult changes in their lives as society adapts to pressures exerted by initiatives to deal with climate change, environmental degradation and decarbonisation. (ii) Energy Biographies makes a significant contribution to the work of the Energy Systems Research Institute (ESRI) at Cardiff University and its flagship Flexis research project (24 million, WEFO funded, 2016-21) that involves engineering research in Cardiff and an integrated programme of social sciences research by the Cardiff energy biographies research team. A breaking social sciences and energy topic that is part of the work of Flexis arose directly from the work of the energy biographies team (Groves at al, 2016), and concerns the implications of energy biographies work (methods development and findings) within the fields of responsible innovation and technology system assessment. Of utmost importance to delivering these objectives is the longstanding support within Cardiff University that continues to be provided by the wider Understanding Risk Group (URG) in the form of valuable intellectual and material resources to maintain the necessary teamwork. In addition, some implications of the latest developments of the work are being taken forward on an international footing through a planned joint initiative with a science and technology studies research group at Delft University (Response) that has a strong energy social science track record and leads in European RRI research. (iii) Fair Futures Programme, Welsh Government. A successful tender was made in February 2018 for a funded collaborative project under this programme to enable members of the Energy Biographies team, who are now working as part of Flexis, to develop a smart living demonstrator by working in wider partnerships (eg with the Energy Systems Catapult). iv) The empirical social sciences programme under development within the School of Social Sciences and URG at Cardiff University as a core part of the work of the Active Building Centre (2019-2022) EPSRC funded, Swansea University led) is drawing methodological ideas from the sustained programme of work undertaken by the energy biographies team work and outputs arising from the original research project. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Energy,Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | http://energybiographies.org/our-work/our-findings/reports/ |
| Description | The findings from this project, as disseminated in our academic publications and end of grant synthesis report, have been shared with non-academic partners at events that we have jointly attended and/or organized. Our collaborating partners included the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) and Carbon Conversations (CC) initiative. Following a workshop between the Energy Biographies (EBs) team and the Carbon Conversations initiative held in Cardiff, January 2016, Carbon Conversations stated in writing that a number of our important findings confirmed prior knowledge for them and that they had learned this directly from the encounters we provided for them with our energy biographies' data analytic work. Similarly, The Climate Psychology Alliance has been influenced by our work on narratives of energy use and identity transitions, and in June 2016 organised their own event on recovery narratives to reflect on insights from our published analyses. A shared understanding and sense of purpose had been built throughout the engagement events in which Energy Biographies, Carbon Conversations, and the Climate Psychology Alliance teams participated. This culminated in a series of email exchanges after our workshop in Cardiff January 2016, where the Carbon Conversations lead expressed an explicit interest in continuing to work with us to develop more flexible means of delivering their own approach, including their specific workshop materials, and to enable members of public to engage more successfully with energy consumption/carbon reduction initiatives/interventions. Subsequently, we learned that the Carbon Conversations resources had been made open access, so our collaboration was successful from the Carbon Conversations perspective. Accordingly, we had no reason to continue any direct collaboration with this initial partner organisation. Yet we have continued to engage with other partners who have expressed an interest in developing more research informed ways of developing capabilities within local communities in ways that account for what matters to people in the places and spaces where they live, given the dynamics of change experienced by them in and through time. These emergent collaborations have resulted in large part from further engagements in partnership working as part of more recently funded projects (Flexis, Coastweb, Better Energy Futures, Active Building Centre). Accordingly, we intend to continue to pursue our interests more generally in such ground-up activities among a broadly conceived public with whom we can continue to develop ideas concerning the protection and enablement of people and communities who may come to find themselves at risk, and in ways that draw on what we now understand from Energy Biographies research about the psychosocial dependencies and material conditions affecting meaningful change in the context of significant energy and environmental challenges (now net zero, green growth, (de)industrialisation, flooding, energy vulnerability and insecurity etc). In recent years, we have been doing this as part of our social science work programme within Flexis and, in particular, the smart living demonstrator on energy vulnerabilities and fuel poverty that we conducted 2018-19 with support from the Welsh Government (Department for Energy, Planning and Natural Resources) to collaborate with the Energy Systems Catapult, and subsequently involving the Centre for Sustainable Energy. From April 2020, we will also be working as the social science team within a new EPSRC project, as part of a UK-wide engineering and energy policy collaboration (NEUPA). This will afford us new pathways to impact by developing original knowledge about systems infrastructure change and local disruption, and through direct collaboration with organisations/agencies/companies now responsible for maintenance and upgrade of energy networks and other public utilities. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Energy,Environment |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Title | Bespoke Methods for Investigating 'Energy Biographies' |
| Description | As part of our innovative methodological approach (see also under key findings), we brought together a bespoke set of practical tools and methods suited to meeting our project aims. These were interactive, involved participants using multimodal digital tools, and were temporally organised. Our research participants were asked to engage in a number of face-to-face interviews conducted in their own homes, community settings and workplaces. Between interviews, they were asked to undertake activities such as using camera phones, watching film clips about technological change and "future homes", and sending us their own photographs on different occasions over one year (out of which the research team composed individual photo-narratives to help capture difficult to articulate patterns of energy use). Our particular interests in devising this carefully crafted set of methods was in developing new potentials for understanding what matters to people, but that may not be at all obvious to them, when they are faced with the demand to reduce or de-intensify their energy usage. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2011 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The methods used by the energy biographies team were of interest to other academic and policy research teams from the earliest days of the project, and at the launch of the ESRC/EPSRC Community Energies Initiative. The energy biographies website contained details of these methods throughout the period of study. They have subsequently been published as academic publications in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology (2015), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (2018) and an edited volume on Risk and Methods (2019, Palgrave Macmillan). |
| URL | http://www.energybiographies.org |
| Description | Coastweb |
| Organisation | Plymouth Marine Laboratory |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Specialist qualitative social sciences work package exploring the values and meanings of saltmarsh and the coast more generally, and their contribution to well being. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Plymouth Marine Laboratory provide the overall network support and are holders of the NERC Coastweb award. |
| Impact | The broader economics, natural sciences and arts teams within the network have published aspects of their work. Two specialist academic publications have been prepared and submitted for peer review. These encapsulate findings arising from the work of the interdisciplinary social science team based in the School of Social science and Understanding Risk Group at Cardiff University. Talks were presented regularly by the team at network-wide events of the overarching Valuing Nature programme (VNP) that had funded the whole Coastweb project (disciplines span social psychology/sociology and geography). In January 2020, we shared with Natural Resources Wales (NRW) key findings based on using the multimodal maps we had developed out of fieldwork activities at two case sites (Mawddach/Gwynedd and Taf/Camarthenshire) to elucidate well being values of saltmarshes and intertidal estuaries given their ecological affordances and by approaching them as changing ecological and socio-cultural landscapes. In January-February 2020, two exhibitions took place, one in London (RGS offices) one in Cardiff (civic venue) where our qualitative multimodal outputs featured in both event brochures under the title "Exploring intangible values associated with saltmarshes". The contribution from the team's part within the overall project at the exhibitions involved the development of an interactive version of the multi-model maps, and these are proving of potential interest to NRW colleagues for possible use as part of their own public engagement activities. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | FLEXIS collaboration |
| Organisation | Government of Wales |
| Department | Welsh European Funding Office |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | FLEXIS (Flexible Integrated Energy Systems) collaboration was funded as an ERDF project - end date currently 2021. I co-lead the social sciences programme within Flexis, steering the empirical work and supporting partnership building by the whole Cardiff University social sciences team. Delft University of Technology have become our main international partners. They have co-produced workshops with us over the last 3 years, and have involved us in their efforts to submit a major research proposal September 2020. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Shared 5 year research programme from January 2016 with engineering colleagues in Cardiff University, Swansea University and University of South Wales. Total project budget £24 million. |
| Impact | Multidisciplinary. Civil and mechanical engineering, electronics, environmental chemistry and sciences, social sciences. New research grant arising in part from this WEFO collaboration reported under "Other outputs section" [Proposal details are EP/T023031/1 'Network headroom, engineering upgrades and public acceptance (NEUPA): Connecting engineering for heat system change to consumers and citizens'] |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | Workshop - partnership development |
| Organisation | Open University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The energy biographies and understanding risk group at Cardiff University jointly organised an event held at the OU offices in Camden, North London, on "Contemporary life practices: Risk, Moralities and Psychosocial Research; June 11th , 2015 |
| Collaborator Contribution | This event emerged out of two earlier UKERC organised seminars involving both partners on individual complexity in energy use and climate change communication. |
| Impact | None as yet. |
| Start Year | 2014 |
| Description | A Sense of Energy - A Public Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | discussion at the event and afterwards led to policy briefing supplied to NGO public groups have expressed their interest in replicating the exhibition idea for their own purposes postgraduate student learning about methods innovation and research impact schools that did not attend the exhibition's ecochampions workshop have invited the energy biographies team to give talks to their pupils |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Encounters with energy - A public meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | discussions involving community members and community research partners discussions have led to a diaried further meeting on the theme of energy stories |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Exhibits presented at Energy on your Doorstep events, Caerau, Bridgend. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Exhibits presented and discussed at 2 Energy on your Doorstep events in February 2017, held in Caerau, Bridgend, South Glamorgan. Discussion of future district heating scheme for low income households. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Film of the 2014 Sense of Energy exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Extended engagement by permanent web presence of film of our collaborative exhibition (Cardiff, Goldsmiths, Keele, Sussex, Oxford Brookes)about local communities and their understandings of the changing energy landscape This film of a creative arts-social science installation of a public-policy engagement exhibition extended the breadth of awareness and involvement with the original SENSE OF ENERGY exhibition that was held in two locations (Cardiff and London) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015 |
| URL | http://energybiographies.org/our-work/exhibition-2/ |
| Description | Heating Homes : A Local Community Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | "Heating Homes: Disrupting homes and neighborhood on the route to net zero" was a public exhibition showing how the new technologies needed to make heating climate safe could mean changes to the fabric of our homes, communities, and how we pay for energy. Visitors to a community center in the City of Cardiff had an opportunity to join in a wider ranging conversation about what net zero might mean not only in contemporary policy making, for technology development, or for energy consumers but in ways that were accessible to families and citizens. To extend their potentials for impact, exhibits and engagement activities made use of multimodal techniques. The exhibition was funded by the EPSRC project NEUPA (2020-2023) and was part of the ESRC's Festival of Social Sciences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/heating-homes-disrupting-homes-neighbourhoods-on-the-route-to-net-zer... |
| Description | PI attended round table with Nick Hurd (BEIS UK Energy and Climate Change Minister) round table on engaging the public with climate change and decarbonisation policy |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | PI attended round table in Feb 2017 with Nick Hurd and advisors (BEIS UK Energy and Climate Change Minister) round table on engaging the public with climate change and decarbonisation policy. In run up to development of new UK government Energy Strategy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Participation in HubNet colloquium on District Heating Networks |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on 1 March 2017 at Colloquium jointly organised by Cardiff University and the HubNet consortium. Purpose was to develop understanding in an area of significant lack (heat networks) of skills and awareness from customers in the UK. Sharing current practices in the district heating sector and how to address the barriers and innovation gaps. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Presentation and debate at Smart Living "Inside smart homes and workplaces" event 13-14th March 2017 organised by Welsh Government |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | PI presentation and contribution to debate at Smart Living "Inside smart homes and workplaces" event 13-14th March 2017 for policymakers organised by Welsh Government |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Press release - energy biographies reveal the challenges of changing our habits |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | still pending |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Project exhibits shown and discussed at an event organised by STEMETTES aimed at encouraging young women into STEM subjects |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Project exhibits shown and discussed at an event organised by STEMETTES in January 2017 aimed at encouraging young women into STEM subjects. This event also featured in a BBC news report. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-37639052 |
| Description | User Engagement Workshop (Cardiff University) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Discussion of shared knowledge and problem orientation between research group and non-government organisation, the latter with an interest in making practical use of our study findings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://energybiographies.org |