Reversing lifestyle. Future energy technologies as a focus for analysing future energy behaviour

Panel: Panel 4: Human dimensions of energy use and efficiency

Author:
Bastiaan de Laat, Centre de sociologie de l'innovation, Ecole nationale supérieure des mines de Paris

Abstract

Lifestyles is an issue of growing importance for energy policy makers and energy modelers. It concerns the study of the (aggregated) energy behaviour of people, in order to assess potential energy demand and eventually adapt energy policies and technologies to this behaviour. Recent innovation studies propose however that any energy policy measure or technology in itself implicitly incorporates a hypothesis about such behaviour. Hence, the issue of energy lifestyles can also be reversed. Instead of determining how, for instance, a ?tatistically significant… person drives a car, washes his/her clothes or uses the television, it appears possible to analyse the socio-technical hypotheses which engineers and policy makers inscribe into the designs of such objects. Proposing an electric car for inner city transport presupposes that people start to use electricity stations, gain a certain competence in recharging batteries instead of filling a gas tank, and do not want to accelerate too quickly. The energy saving programme of a washing machine presupposes that the person who washes clothes not only understands how to push the right buttons but also uses it. The television stand-by mode in principle allows people to consume energy even when they are not watching. In other words, peopleƒs lifestyles are largely inscribed in the different objects they use every day. Based on this view of socio-technical relationships, and drawing upon some researched examples of technologies now ?n the makingƒ, this paper proposes a complementary way of dealing with the issue of energy lifestyles.